Chinese Thirdspace - (Global Chinese Culture) by Jianmei Liu

About the Book

"The overriding narrative of Chinese political, cultural, and literary history of the past century has been dominated by either/or thinking and conflicts derived from opposing binaries. Chinese intellectuals have been required to take sides in debates such as revolution versus antirevolution, progress versus regression, tradition versus modernity, the West versus the East, and leftist versus rightist. Jianmei Liu uses the concept of Third Space, as coined by Homi Bhabha and further theorized by Edward Soja, to explore the ways in which, from the 1930s to today, Chinese thinkers at home and abroad have attempted to find a way out of these binaries. Liu's choice of case studies spans the political philosophy of Zhang Dongsun, who tried to forge a path that assimilated the benefits of both capitalism and socialism, mediating between the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) during the Republic period, to Jin Yong's martial arts fiction and Nobel laureate Gao Xingjian's transmedia practice in his cine-poems. She ends with a look at what's happening today, including the controversy over Fang Fang's Wuhan Diary"-- Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

Chinese intellectuals have long chafed under the dominance of dualities--the sense that they are trapped between two diametrically opposed forces, with no choice but to pick one side or the other. Over the years, they have been driven into binary debates such as reform versus revolution, tradition versus modernity, the West versus the East, and left versus right. At the same time, a number of key thinkers have sought to transcend the extremes and find middle ground.

This book examines how a diverse set of Chinese intellectuals carved out in-between spaces beyond the poles of competing ideologies for greater openness, multiplicity, and pluralism. Reappropriating and rehistoricizing the concept of Thirdspace--theorized by Homi Bhabha and Edward Soja--Jianmei Liu traces how writers and artists, in different times and places, have explored and developed alternatives to either/or dichotomies. Chinese Thirdspace brings together an unexpected group of cases, including Zhang Dongsun's political philosophy, Yin Haiguang's "colorless thought," Jin Yong's martial arts fiction, Liu Zaifu's fragmentary writing, Gao Xingjian's transmedia cine-poems, Xi Xi's hybrid works, Chi Zijian's eulogy of shamanism, Chu Tien-Hsin's various heterotopias, and Chan Koonchuang's speculative political novel, concluding with the controversy over Fang Fang's Wuhan Diary. Their works offer new ways to grapple with the modern Chinese experience, and as Liu shows, they contain alternative possibilities for a future beyond the binary oppositions of our current era. Wide-ranging and theoretically rich, this interdisciplinary book demonstrates the pivotal role of Thirdspace in the intellectual history, politics, philosophy, literature, aesthetics, art, and film of modern China.

Review Quotes

Jianmei Liu masterfully elucidates paradoxes embraced by--and experienced due to--the 'both/and' logic of Chinese Thirdspace intellectuals. Analyzing works of writers and thinkers from Hong Kong, Taiwan, mainland China, and the diaspora, Liu argues for the potency of radical openness in an era dominated by deadly dualistic political frameworks.--Robin Visser, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Liu focuses on a parallel tradition of Chinese writers and intellectuals reaching from the late Republican era to the present. The thinkers of the third space rejected the dominant binaries of East and West, liberalism and communism, and tried to create an intermediate zone in a time of political polarization. For this, they were criticized by more political writers like Lu Xun, as well as being persecuted by politicians. The book makes an important contribution in moving the readers' gaze away from the highly politicized canon of twentieth-century Chinese literature and prompting readers to think about other lineages and other possibilities in the development of the modern intellectual history of China.--Sebastian Veg, School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences

From philosophical treatises to martial arts novels, from cine-poems to cyberspace, Jianmei Liu shows how Chinese writers and intellectuals constructed public spheres to accommodate heterogeneous ideas and carved out aesthetic realms to transcend ideological binaries. Erudite and revelatory, Chinese Thirdspace presents salient alternatives to the contentious polemics of a tumultuous century.--Jie Li, Harvard University

About the Author

Jianmei Liu is chair professor of Chinese literature at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. She is the author of Zhuangzi and Modern Chinese Literature (2016) and Revolution Plus Love: Literary History, Women's Bodies, and Thematic Repetition in Twentieth-Century Chinese Fiction (2003).