Lu Xun's Affirmative Biopolitics argues that central to Lu Xun's critical intervention into Chinese modernity is a vitalist, “naturalistic” philosophy of culture that demands that the latter be in the service of human life. With the term “affirmative biopolitics,” Wenjin Cui places Lu Xun in the global turn of biopolitical modernity while maintaining that the Western paradigm of political management of vital matters theorized by Foucault differs from Lu Xun's evolutionary, self-transcending, “affirmative” power of life à la Darwin and Nietzsche. The book's seven chapters can be roughly grouped into two major parts. The first four chapters elaborate on the concept of affirmative biopolitics, how the concept is generative of reflections about individual autonomy, collective empowerment, cosmopolitan openness, and cultural critique, while laying out its genealogical ramifications. The remaining three probe the negative backdrop against which Lu Xun's affirmation of life is staged—namely, the despair over nothingness, nihilism, or finitude...
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