Challenge of Linear Time

Viren Murthy, (Ph.D. 2007, University of Chicago), Assistant Professor in Transnational Asian History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He specializes in Chinese and Japanese intellectual history and is especially interested in the critique of capitalist modernity and imagining Asian identity.Axel Schneider, (Ph.D. 1994, Bochum University), is Professor of Modern Sinology at the University of Göttingen. He specializes in modern Chinese intellectual history, especially the history of historical writing and historical thinking.

• IntroductionViren Murthy, Axel SchneiderTime, History, and Moral Responsibility1. Negativity and historicist time: facticity and intellectual history of the 1930s Naoki Sakai 2. Ontological Optimism, Cosmological Confusion, and Unstable Evolution: Tan Sitong’s Renxue and Zhang Taiyan’s Response Viren Murthy3. Nation, history and ethics: the choices of post-imperial historiography in China Axel Schneider 4. Reading Takeuchi Yoshimi and Reading History Sun GeThe Burden of the Past and the Hope for a Better Future5. An Eschatological View of History: Yoshimi Takeuchi in the 1960s Takahiro Nakajima 6. The Campaign to Criticize Lin Biao and Confucius (批林批孔) and the Problem of “Restoration” in Chinese Marxist Historiography Susanne Weigelin-SchwiedrzikRecollection of the Past and the Popularization of History 7. Popular Readings and Wartime Historical Writings in Modern China Long-hsin Liu8. Figuring History and Horror in a Provincial Museum: The Water Dungeon, the Rent Collection Courtyard, and the Socialist Undead Haiyan LeeHistory and the Definition of Spatial, Cultural and Temporal Boundaries 9. Revolution as Restoration: Meanings of “National Essence” and “National Learning” in Guocui xuebao Tze-ki Hon 10. Temporality of Knowledge and History Writing in Early Twentieth-Century China. Liu Yizheng and A History of Chinese Culture Ya-pei Kuo

"This edited volume addresses a problem which fascinated intellectuals from East Asia for decades...To conclude, this volume is a great contribution to the discussion of the Kyoto School and East Asian Modernity in English-language scholarship"Zhiguang Yin, Zayed University; The Journal of Northeast Asian History 11.1, Summer 2014