Precarious Universality: Russia in Modern Chinese Literature

Precarious Universality explores the diverse and complex ways that the engagement of Chinese literature with Russia in the twentieth century grappled with universality, both as a challenge to be overcome and as an aspirational ideal.Roy Chan argues that Chinese cultural interest in Russia was not solely due to political expedience but instead constituted a broader meditation on what it means to be modern.Russia became a dynamic pivot around which China might gain a sense of world historical recognition amid global capitalism, colonialism, and revolution.This allowed Chinese writers to reflect on China's worldly existence beyond the confines of any particular cultural difference, searching for a novel - if elusive - universal logic that would include both of them. Following the protean relationship between China and Russia, Chan proposes a notion of universality born from concrete cultural engagements, relationships, and comparisons.Both China and Russia were consigned as existing "outs