Richard Wilhelm Lecture 2024: Rescuing Literature from the Nation

Prof. David Der-wei Wang (Harvard University)

Literature Can Think: Debating Utopia in Modern China
Monday, 06.05.2024, 18-20:00
Location: CAS 1.812
(The lecture will be followed by a small reception.)
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https://uni-frankfurt.zoom-x.de/j/66746636838…
Meeting ID: 667 4663 6838
Passcode: 665741

Utopia, as a literary genre, a type of political thought, and a method of speculative inquiry, was introduced to China in the late Qing era. Through modern times, multiple utopian projects were conceived, debated, and contested by writers, thinkers, and political activists, to the point where utopia morphed into dystopia and literature became politics. This lecture seeks to rethink the dynamics of modern Chinese utopia as manifested in forms from fiction to conceptual treatises and political manifestos. The cases discussed will include Lu Xun, Shen Congwen,

Zhang Jingsheng, and Mao Zedong.

The Monster That Is Fiction: The Politics of “Storytelling” in Contemporary China
Wednesday, 08.05.2024, 18-20:00,
Location: IG 1.314 (Eisenhower Raum)
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https://uni-frankfurt.zoom-x.de/j/63253391612…
Meeting ID: 632 5339 1612
Passcode: 248006

This lecture invokes fiction as one of the most polemical ways to engage with Chinese (post)modernity. It takes as its point of departure President Xi Jinping’s 2013 call to “tell the good China story,” not only explicating the “fictional turn” of contemporary Chinese cultural politics vis à vis the world, but also tracing its genealogy to early modern times. Inspired by Hannah Arendt’s notion of “the fearful imagination,” the lecture tries to answer the question:

Why does fiction and storytelling matter in China and the rest of the world, not only through the modern period but also in the contemporary era?