An Object In Between

Abstract By interrogating how the original composition and textual reincarnations of Lu Xun's “Diary of a Madman” manifest his idea of an “object in between,” this article celebrates an intertextual event in world literature. It traces how Lu Xun's “Diary of a Madman” came into being in conversation with preexisting literary creations and how the intertextual recasting of Lu Xun's story both within and beyond the Sinophone world incorporates postcolonial contexts and recent cyberculture. The intertextuality not only calls for a dynamic negotiation with Lu Xun's “Diary of a Madman” but also involves unexpected engagement with the literary antecedents to Lu Xun's work. By examining the transculturation of cannibalism and insanity in the works of Lu Xun, Liang Wern Fook, Ōe Kenzaburō, and Leonid Andreev, among others, this article reveals how “Diary of a Madman” as an object in between projects a vision of a future that resists the pressures of historical impasse.