China and the postcolonial imagination: Literature, empire, and cross-cultural exchanges—An interview with Jonathan Locke Hart

Abstract

This interview with Professor Jonathan Locke Hart, a distinguished literary critic, historian, and poet who specializes in literary theory, empires, colonies, cultural and intellectual history as well as Shakespearean studies, explores the institutionalization of postcolonial theory in Chinese academia and its engagement with world literature. It focuses on how concepts such as otherness, hybridity, mimicry, and the subaltern have been translated into Chinese academic discourse, and it considers institutional mechanisms, such as prizes, publishing networks, and evaluation systems that influence the reception of postcolonial writers in China. Hart identifies the contributions of Chinese scholars to global postcolonial debates and highlights the unique capacity of poetry and diasporic writing to embody postcolonial concerns more directly than pure theory. Finally, Hart draws on his own cross‑cultural experience as a scholar‑poet to advocate close reading, archival research, and a humble, evidence‑based approach to future scholarship on Chinese diasporic writing.