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

AbstractThis 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. Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationFundingThis paper results from Metropolitan University Prague research project no. 100-4 ‘Center for Security Studies’ (2023) based on a grant from the Institutional Fund for the Long-term Strategic Development of Research Organizations.Notes on contributorsAleš KarmazinAleš Karmazin is an assistant professor at the Department of Asian Studies and the Center for Security Studies at the Metropolitan University Prague. He has been interested in analysing political order from different perspectives. He mainly focuses on China, India and global order. His works have been published by Politics, Journal of Chinese Political Science, Europe Asia Studies, Asia Europe Journal and others.