Introduction

This book inquires into the important interactions between space and revolution in modern China as expressed through various cultural representations. Specifically, it analyzes how revolution constructs, conceives of, and transforms space. Revolution is usually understood as an event that is historical and historiographical: it changes not only the course of history but also the writing and even the rewriting of history. Such a notion holds particularly strong in the Marxist-materialistic outlook. Although this outlook gives revolution well-deserved credit for its impact on history, it overlooks the action of revolution over space. Moreover, history and historiography must begin with a spatial definition, be it local, regional, national, or global. In this book I argue for a reconsideration of revolution as a reorganization of space, no less than time. Regarding revolution as a spatial practice, I demonstrate how it works in modern China through literature and culture. I approach revolution from three spatial dimensions: physical, social and symbolic. First, physical space is material, referring both to the space in which people live and to that which can be physically perceived. In a way, physical space can be equated with geographic space, with land as its primary form. Due to the material nature of land, physical space is related to ownership, which means that it is regarded as either private or public property. Second, social space is relational as the distribution of physical space forms the social relations among human beings. The amount of land, or its equivalent value in other forms of property, determines one’s class in the social hierarchy and thus one’s social status. Social relations involve human interactions with one another as well as with their environment, regulated by norms that assign individuals a social role. Thus morality, ethics, and justice are all part of the norms that maintain the social structure. Changes in social relations very often result in a reconstruction of social space. Third, symbolic space is representational, encompassing the domain in which people undertake cultural production and in which cultural capital is circulated. It represents how physical space is perceived and how social

space is constructed through cultural apparatuses. By virtue of psychological interventions in the process of cultural productions, symbolic space may project the content of psychological space, either exactly or in a distorted way. Thus symbolic space opens a secret door to the inner individual or to the collective psyche. In this sense, it can be understood as a container of individual imaginations, the collective unconscious, public memory, and mass fantasy. Because of its closeness to consciousness, symbolic space becomes a battlefield of ideologies, where different parties fight for recognition and influence. It is necessary to note these three dimensions of space are not absolutely exclusive of each other, since cultural production oftentimes concerns more than one dimensions in praxis. The articulation of different modalities of space serves as both foundational framework and pragmatic entry point in approaching the issues concerning space and revolution. Scholars in political science, history, and literary studies have recognized the historical significance of revolution, but its spatial significance has yet to be adequately studied. In light of these distinctions of space, I choose six spatially significant revolutionary events as my case studies: Jing Ke’s assassination of the King of Qin (227 bc); the territorial dispute between Russia and the Qing dynasty in 1892; the Land Reform in the 1920s; the Long March (1934-36); the mainland-Taiwan split in 1949; and the Cultural Revolution (1966-76). I use materials associated with these events, including primarily literature, as well as maps, political treatises, historiography, plays, films, and art. I argue that in addition to redirecting the flow of Chinese history, revolutionary movements operate in and on space in three main ways: maintaining territorial sovereignty, redefining social relations, and governing an imaginary realm. The central theme is how revolutionary discourses and practices-battles over land in physical space, struggles over power in social space, efforts to dominate consciousness in symbolic space-construct, subvert, and even smash national space. My focus is not so much on cartography per se, but on taking cartography as a point of departure for spatial configurations and the ways spatiality has been perceived and imagined, as well as the resulting implications for the process of spatial construction. I attempt to sketch a trajectory in which revolution and space proceed in tension and in unison, as both mutually contradictory and complementary in a cultural endeavor to build and consolidate China as a modern nation-state. First, this study departs from the traditional view of revolution along a historical-temporal dimension and calls attention to the neglected connection between revolution and space. Second, with respect to space and culture, by introducing space and spatiality as a critical category, methodologically this study challenges the historical dominance of the study of modern Chinese literature. Third, I demonstrate how revolution and culture both work to construct national space, determine social relations, and form a spatial consciousness in modern China. To accommodate the depth and historical span of my study and the diversity of materials incorporated, I have developed a versatile and flexible interdisciplinary approach informed by relevant theories. Some nuanced analysis is not

directly concerned with the central issue of space. I aim to find a balance between the larger conceptual framework and detailed analyses of the case studies. Trained as a literary critic, I respect the significance of the primary materials and try not to treat them only as supportive examples of the issues I address. An integrative approach is more productive than a deductive approach in order to unfold the complexities of the revolutionary event per se, the subjects participating in the revolution, and the cultural representations of the revolution. Premised on the map as a symbol of space, this introductory chapter brings upfront the issue of revolution and space by highlighting mapping politics and the politics of maps in China based on two episodes, one at the transition from state to empire and the other in the move from empire to nation-state: Jing Ke’s assassination of the King of Qin in 227 bc and the territorial dispute between tsarist Russia and the Qing government over the Pamir Mountain region in 1892. By revisiting this ancient assassination story, I aim to highlight the triad of sovereignty, human, and violence as embodied by the three objects (the map, the human head, and the dagger) Jing Ke carried with him on his mission. The relationship among these three objects in a failed assassination attempt foretells a structure of human, land, and violence in Chinese revolution for centuries to come. In the 1892 territorial dispute, Russia used a map that had been issued by the Qing government to support its territorial claims. This map was a reprint based on a copy that Hong Jun 洪钧 had purchased in Russia while he was serving as Qing ambassador to Russia. This map incident crystallizes some of the politics of cartography: authorship, ownership, circulation of the map, and how these factors change individual fates and the power relations between different sovereign entities.