Chinese intellectuals have long chafed under the dominance of dualitiesthe 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 Thirdspacetheorized by Homi Bhabha and Edward SojaJianmei 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 Dongsuns political philosophy, Yin Haiguangs colorless thought, Jin Yongs martial arts fiction, Liu Zaifus fragmentary writing, Gao Xingjians transmedia cine-poems, Xi Xis hybrid works, Chi Zijians eulogy of shamanism, Chu Tien-Hsins various heterotopias, and Chan Koonchungs speculative political novel, concluding with the controversy over Fang Fangs 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.