Beyond the Secular

This special issue reflects on the entanglement of revolution, enlightenment, and the “religious question” throughout modern Chinese literary history. On the one hand, we pay critical attention to religion as a living force in propelling Chinese writers and intellectuals as they wrestled with the monstrous realities of a modern world. On the other hand, we examine the contested rise of secular ideals that competed for the sacredness previously reserved for religious traditions. Together, the individual cases demonstrate the fluid boundaries between the sacred and the profane as well as the imbrication of the articulation of the category of “religion/zongjiao” and the transformation of the practice of “literature/wen 文” in China’s long twentieth century.