This paper questions the purported universality of modern historiographical discourses grounded on the notion of linear time, progressivism, and evolutionary theory by bringing these discourses into a conversation with the Buddhist tradition of Late Qing and Republican China. An especially salient case can be found in Taixu 太虛 (1890–1947) and his corpus on Buddhist history and history writing. In his effort to spearhead the ‘doctrinal reform’ of Buddhism in China vis-à-vis modern historiographical discourses, Taixu sought to establish a pragmatic, critical, and structured Buddhist history with an emphasis on change, continuity, and relationship. What is particularly noteworthy about Taixu’s effort is his conscious utilization of various temporalities taken not only from Buddhism but also from Confucianism and Western theories. This consolidation of multiple temporalities was instrumental for Buddhist scholars in negotiating their cosmology with the modern worldview and in curving out a location for the Buddhist tradition within the world marked by a modern, linear, progressive temporality.

The theoretical and the empirical are often incongruous. This paper addresses the (in)adequacy of analytical categories of (non-)time, such as ‘the horizon of expectation’ (Koselleck) and the concept of ‘utopia’ (Mannheim, Ricoeur, and Jameson). In these conceptualizations, the future is defined as that which exists within the condition of the present, while the utopia occupies a non-place-non-time that functions as a diagnostic of the present. When applied to an analysis of imperial and colonial discourses of the Japanese Empire (1868–1947), however, these analytical categories become increasingly inadequate. As this paper points out, the utopian imagery of the Japanese empire, envisioned with slogans such as ‘hakkō ichiu’ (八紘一宇 Unify the eight corners of the world) and ‘daitōa kyōeiken’ (大東亜共栄圏 Great East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere), was not a diagnostic of the present but promoted instead by the political and intellectual centers as a legitimate expectation of the future. This transgression from a utopia to a legitimate expectation indicates a discursive restructuring of temporality went into Japan’s imperial and colonial project, which in turn necessitates a reconsideration of the (in)adequacy of available analytical categories of time.

Artistic practices have long been an important realm for exploring the conception of time and temporality. By focusing on a contemporary art project by Cao Fei 曹斐 (1978–), entitled ‘HX – Hongxia’ (2020), this paper examines the ways in which artistic practices challenge linear authoritative history and blur the lines between preconceived temporal registers. The Hongxia project is a multimedia, multi-temporal network of historical research, stories, and fabulations rooted in Chinese history of the late 1950s and early 1960s. But its storytelling through historical artifacts, photography, a documentary film, a catalog, a novelette, a retro-sci-fi movie, and virtual reality installation reaches into the now and beyond, forming a mesmerizing wormhole into history, the present, and the future. What is at play is multiple entangled temporalities. Such entangled temporalities are further emphasized through the theatricality of an art exhibition, which involves the presence of the audience, and which, therefore, adds ‘contemporaneity through exhibitionism,’ that is, another temporal layer, to the already multiple and heterogeneous temporalities of the Hongxia project.