Stateless Subjects

Stateless Subjects is the first comprehensive English-language study of the influential genre and the role it has played in the formation of modern Chinese cultures. Rejecting common interpretations of martial arts novels as mass entertainment, as patriotic celebrations of a national identity, or as escapist comfort in response to Western imperialism, Liu argues that these novels engage in the most important political debates of their day by charting a nonstate alternative path of public responsibility. This book offers a reconstruction of martial arts literature as a serious mode of social thought that unveils and challenges teleological narratives of Chinese modernization in nationalist historiography