Professor David Der-wei Wang (Harvard University)

Taking as a starting point PRC President Xi Jinping’s dictum to “Tell China’s Story Well” (2013), this lecture seeks to observe the multiple attempts to tell the “China story” since the millennial turn. At a time when both “history” and “story” are incorporated into the truth regime of the state, fiction is now, more than ever, a highly contested form in manifesting the power of polyphony. The speaker will discuss three of 'the most exciting' aspects of contemporary fiction in the Chinese and Sinophone world via three related terms: transgression, transmigration, and transillumination; and ponder their political and ethical implications.