Memory, Violence, Queues: Lu Xun Interprets China

摘要

The famous (or infamous) anecdote by Lu Xun in his 1923 Preface to Nahan (Call to Arms) describes seeing a lantern slide in Sendai of the execution of a Chinese spy by Japanese troops surrounded by indifferent Chinese spectators during the Russo-Japanese War. Lu Xun used this to explain his epiphanic shift from the study of Western-style medicine to writing in order to cure the Chinese mind rather than body. In this same preface Lu Xun points to the centrality of literature and art in the project of modernity in which he and others are engaged.