Post-Diaspora Literature (New and Expanded Edition)

The discussed works span important representative authors from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China.

Newly Added—
．New Edition Preface: "Who Are the Post-Yimin?"
．The Thousand-Year Dream of Hua Xu—Dong Qizhang, Meng Yuanlao, and the "Menghua Style" Narrative
．The "Later" Hong Kong Story—Liao Weitang's The Practice of Doomsday
．My Nostalgia, Like a Flash and a Spark—Lin Chun-ying's July Shines


The "post-" in post-yimin writing originally implied liberation from the clichés of yimin discourse. However, this is not the case. "Post-" can not only suggest the end of a generation but also the unending of a generation that has ended. And "yi" (遺) means "loss"—to lose or reject; "yi" also means "remnant"—deficiency and scarcity; "yi" simultaneously means "inheritance"—to transmit and endure.

"Post-yimin" refers to a paradox of time and ideology. It is a critique of the yimin imagination, yet also a continuation of historical debt. If yimin consciousness has always implied the disappearance and dislocation of time and space, and the replacement and succession of orthodoxy, then "post-yimin" intensifies this, preferring to further dislocate the already dislocated time and space, and to recall an orthodoxy that may never have been upright. Both become the most intense mockery of any emerging "imagined community." The anxiety and desire, compromise and resistance thus generated become the focus of contemporary literary national discourse.

This book addresses the broader Sinophone world, including mainland China. Some of the works discussed directly confront the rise and fall of nations or ideologies, some mourn the passage of time and events, where treasures turn to stone, and some create traditions that never existed, projecting imagined pasts and futures. Readers may not agree with their stances, but they must admit that the "politics of time and memory" they provoke is the most thought-provoking and brilliant aspect of contemporary Sinophone literature.

The book is divided into three mutually reinforcing themes: "Awakening from and Entering Dreams," "Disenchantment and Summoning Souls," and "Homeland and Other Lands." "Awakening from and Entering Dreams" involves the psychological mechanisms of the subject entering and exiting post-yimin consciousness and subconsciousness; "Disenchantment and Summoning Souls" highlights the ritualistic engineering of a society or culture confronting historical debt; and "Homeland and Other Lands" discusses the spatiotemporal situations forged by imaginations of nationhood and diaspora. Post-yimin writing takes various forms, but the propositions it touches upon are none other than the politics of time and memory.