The China that Could Have Been: Sinitic Rhetoric and the Expansion of Imagination, 1100-1600

What could China have been? Starting in the twelfth century, an increasing number of individuals in present-day China, Korea, and Vietnam were ruminating on this question in their own ways. They began by situating themselves in a historical moment and composing documents from the perspectives of the figures in question. In this process, they tested how those figures might have acted differently and how the world might have turned out otherwise—or not.
This talk, based on the book manuscript of the same title, traces how this form of counterfactualism gained popularity in East Asia through a shared curriculum of rhetoric. It presents a history of how imagination expanded: quantitatively, by spreading to hundreds of thousands of individuals across different realms, and qualitatively, by pushing beyond the established boundaries of what could be conceived. In doing so, it challenges us to reconsider both the significance and the limitations of the expansion of imagination—especially in a world beset by multiple crises.