Abstract
For more than three decades there have been calls for a “locally produced” history of Hong Kong literature by scholars born in Hong Kong or long resident there. Following an overview of the “Hong Kong dilemma” and of scholarly endeavors to meet the three challenges of information selection, historical contextualization, and epistemological configuration, this essay discusses the merits and limitations of the three analytic perspectives and proposes the paradigmatic image of the constellation to situate Hong Kong literary history more suitably in the multiple dimensions of world literary space. It recommends the same paradigm for an effective history that forges connections beyond binarisms like East-West, mainland China–Hong Kong, and center-periphery.
