China’s search for the future to answer the past: Liu Cixin, (science-)fiction and Chinese developmentalism

Abstract

This paper analyses Remembrance of Earth’s Past, also known as The Three-Body Trilogy, by Liu Cixin and its connections to Chinese politics and Historical IR. I examine how the Trilogy as a contemporary pop-cultural artefact and a fictional narrative sustains, recrafts and critically deals with the historical, conceived here as constructions of history, historical trajectories and the key historic challenges. I respond to the call of this special issue to consider new dimensions of how storytelling and Historical IR can be disruptive. On the theoretical level, I distinguish the notions of external and internal disruptions (critiques) with the help of pragmatism and post-colonialism. On the empirical level, I argue that the Trilogy offers an internal critique of China’s long-term obsession with developmentalist modernisation by expressing ironies and uncertainties of it. It reveals limits (‘selvedges’) of development(alism) by showing that it is ultimately unachievable, unnecessary and uncontrollable. In other words, the internal disruption stems from exposing the final frontiers of the given tradition where its internal logic starts to crumble.