SOAS Research Online

Abstract

The following remarks on the articulation between the end of the Cultural Revolution and the birth of the Society for the Study of the History of Chinese Atheism amounts to no more than a sketch, rapidly put together from whatever materials I have found to hand, in the hope that others may produce a more finished picture at another time, perhaps after erasing some of the shakier lines roughed out here. No convenient history of the study of Chinese atheism exists as yet; even the course of Chinese studies of religion, a category unknown in pre-modern times, has only recently been mapped out in a preliminary way. The topic in fact also deals with categories the meaning of which are not at all self-evident in the Chinese context any more than the notion of religion, so a few initial strokes here indicating the necessary background may be felt to be particularly inadequate, and can do no more than simply introduce the matter. One might, for example, hope that the idea of history in China would be non-problematic, given that China has so much of it, but even this comforting thought has been challenged…