Politics, Ideology, and Literary Discourse in Modern China: Theoretical Interventions and Cultural Critique

Published by Duke University Press 1993

Politics, Ideology, and Literary Discourse in Modern China

Theoretical Interventions and Cultural Critique

Edited by: Kang Liu and Xiaobing Tang
With contributions by: Fredric Jameson , Liu Kang and Liu Zaifu

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822381846

Overview
Contents

About this book

This collection of essays addresses the perception that our understanding of modern China will be enhanced by opening the literature of China to more rigorous theoretical and comparative study. In doing so, the book confronts the problematic and complex subject of China's literary, theoretical, and cultural responses to the experience of the modern. With chapters by writers, scholars, and critics from mainland China, Hong Kong, and the United States, this volume explores the complexity of representing modernity within the Chinese context. Addressing the problem of finding a proper language for articulating fundamental issues in the historical experience of twentieth-century China, the authors critically re-examine notions of realism, the self/subject, and modernity and draw on perspectives from feminist criticism, ideological analysis, and postmodern theory. Among the many topics explored are subjectivity in Chinese cultural theory, Chinese gender relations, the viability of a Lacanian approach to Chinese identity, the politics of subversion in Chinese reportage, and the ambivalent status of the icon of paternity since Mao. At the same time this book offers a probing look into the transformation that Chinese culture as well as the study of that culture is currently undergoing, it also reconfirms private discourse as an ideal site for an investigation into a real and imaginary, private and collective encounter with history. Contributors. Liu Kang, Xiaobing Tang, Liu Zaifu, Stephen Chan, Lydia H. Liu, Wendy Larson, Theodore Huters, David Wang, Tonglin Lu, Yingjin Zhang, Yuejin Wang, Li Tuo, Leo Ou-fan Lee

Author / Editor information

Liu Kang is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Chinese at Pennsylvania State University. Xiaobing Tang, Assistant Professor of Chinese at the University of Colorado, has translated Fredric Jameson's Postmodernism and Cultural Theories into Chinese.

Reviews

"This present volume, as a whole, abundantly demonstrates that the much talked-about 'paradigm shift' in our field is no longer merely wishful thinking or hot air. It provides us with convincing examples of what some new directions and subjects of investigation may be, and what reading strategies we could apply to old, familiar texts. It is a volume that the next generation of students of modern Chinese literature will have to come to terms with."—Leo Ou-fan Lee, from the Postscript

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Foreword Fredric Jameson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Introduction Liu Kong and Xiaobing Tang Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	8
PART ONE Problematics of Subjectivity and Modernity
Subjectivity, Marxism, and Cultural Theory in China Liu Kong Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	23
The Subjectivity of Literature Revisited Liu Zoifu Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	56
Split China, or, The Historical/Imaginary: Toward a Theory of the Displacement of Subjectivity at the Margins of Modernity Ching-kiu Stephen Chan Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	70
Narratives of Modern Selfhood: First-Person Fiction in May Fourth Literature Lydia H. Liu Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	102
Female Subjectivity and Gender Relations: The Early Stories of Lu Yin and Bing Xin Wendy Larson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	124
PART TWO Representation, Realism, and the Question of History
Ideologies of Realism in Modern China: The Hard Imperatives of Imported Theory Theodore Huters Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	147
Lu Xun, Shen Congwen, and Decapitation David D. W. Wang Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	174
Red Sorghum: Limits of Transgression Tonglin Lu Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	188
PART THREE Cultural Critique and Ideology
Narrative, Ideology, Subjectivity: Defining a Subversive Discourse in Chinese Reportage Yingjin Zhang Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	211
Anxiety of Portraiture: Quest for/Questioning Ancestral Icons in Post-Mao China Yuejin Wang Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	243
Resisting Writing Li Tuo Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	273
The Function of New Theory: What Does It Mean to Talk about Postmodernism in China? Xiaobing Tang Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	278
Postscript Leo Ou-fan Lee Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	301
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	305
Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	315

Language: English
Publisher: Duke University Press
Pages
- Main content: 325

eBook

Published: November 16, 1993
ISBN: 9780822381846