Classicism in Digital Times

Abstract

Abstract This article, the introduction to the special issue, proposes “Sinophone classicism” as a new paradigm to investigate Chineseness as an identity shaped by cultural and digital memories in the global cyberspace. Digital technology has drastically transformed the world we inhabit, particularly the way in which we symbiotically remember and imagine our cultural legacies and visions. To rethink the relations between the humanities and digital technicity, we seek to invoke “classicism” as a keyword through which to engage questions from temporality to virtuality and “Sinophone” as a topos through which to discover the pluriverse of China. Being “Chinese” in cyberspace, therefore, entails a constant and dynamic process of remembering, performing, (re)imagining, and (re)negotiating one's cultural identities.