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Reinventing Modern China: Imagination and Authenticity in Chinese Historical Writing . HUAIYIN LI . Honolulu : University of Hawai'i Press , 2013. xii + 338 pp. £52.00. ISBN 978-0-8248-3608-5
Book Reviews
This book proposes itself as an answer to a potentially interesting question: why did Chinese historians begin to use narrative as a form of history writing in the 20th century, and in what paradigmatic ways? Unfortunately, the author contents himself with a narrow deconstruction of pre-ordained narratives/paradigms ("modernizationist," "revolutionary," etc.) in relation to corresponding predetermined political-ideological predispositions ("liberal," "Marxist," etc.). Eschewing a more dialectical - thus historical - version of this emergence, this book offers only a symptomatic interpretive reading of the historiography of modern Chinese history in the 20th century from a particular perspective; it does little to push the narrative deconstructive method in any new directions and little to explain the relation historically. Are we surprised that history is written to serve the ideological present? Are Chinese historians uniquely imprisoned by this practice? Under what historical conditions and from what omniscient perspective can "objective" history be written? Little discussion of this problem ensues. There is, however, an abundance of cited material; thus even if the theoretical contribution is slim, the book is perhaps useful for a critical audience in its marshalling of a number of works into one neatly wrapped package.
The introduction situates 20th-century Chinese historiography in a "'modern history' ... [as an ongoing] process full of uncertainties and yet to be finished" (p. 2). Is any modern history 'finished' and certain? What would that mean? No matter. This first chapter promotes the idea that one can "distinguish between professional historians who eschew overt engagement in politics and those...