Modern Chinese Literary Self and Identity - Assignment Example

Modern Chinese Literary Self and Identity The narrative of the Nobel Prize for Literature happens alongside an intense and foundational stage in the growth of modern Chinese literature and cultural identity—the decline of the Confucian philosophy, the interaction with Western modernism and the development of the contemporary idea of writing. China has not used up decades worrying over the Nobel Prize. An intense concern for the Nobel Prize occurred in the 1980s. But the reality that the Nobel Prize has activated a stream of unrest in modern Chinese literature is almost insignificant without a focus on opposing notions about writing that appeared in the 20th century—the huge effort of numerous Chinese authors to meet a theoretically, global, and modern independent criteria of writing while working toward national recovery have produced serious conflicts within the writing tradition (Lovell 74). Throughout a century wherein the building of a national literature and cultural identity that would allow China to contend with Western writers has been quite vital, Chinese experiences with the Nobel Literature Prize prior to the latter part of the 1970s reveal symbolic issues in the modern Chinese literature identity (Lovell 74-75). This essay argues that the pursuit of a new individuality, identity, and selfhood, the building of a national identity and the aspiration to compete with the West form the foundation of the modern Chinese literary identity. Seeking a Chinese Cultural Identity The cultural discourse in the latter half of the 1980s was focused on reviving and strengthening a Chinese culture that had been blemished in the Cultural Revolution. What began as an obvious politically motivated campaign by Deng Xiaoping to create the atmosphere for transitioning into a new government, in his support for the expression or communication of new ideas or thoughts, the national cultural discourse in the end branched off into two paths (Lovell 88). In the place of established institutions, like the Beijing University and Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, experts and cultural frontrunners like Li Zehou—his re-creation of the Enlightenment agenda of China which is a mixture of scientism, Kantianism, Neo-Confucianism, and Marxism—and Liu Zaifu—his model of aesthetic autonomy and subjectivity, effort to instill encouraging ideals and attitudes into society by recommending new ambitious frameworks for social and cultural reforms has been taking place (Chen 33). However, there are also uncertain and suspicious scholars who decline to look outside memory and history to envision a healthy future for the continuously developing and modernizing Chinese society. These scholars fill the cultural discourse with new insights and techniques to help bridge the gap between history and the current period. In the place of semi-established institutions, attempts are initiated to bring in new ideas and research on various forms of production and expression from other countries (Chen 33-34). The scope of every effort is incomplete and minor, but that could be what is truly required in a society where numerous macro-reform frameworks have been proposed and numerous hegemonic ideals have been demanded (Taylor 49). The widespread feeling of nationalism suggests a sign of identity crisis—cultural and national alike. As revealed in the literary works created in the mid-1970s after the demise of the Gang of Four until the mid-1980s—root-seeking, self-reflective, scar literature—it is obvious that the Cultural Revolution’s outcome has raised issues about the legitimacy of the revolutionary efforts of Mao and more widely in Marxism-Maoism (Chen 34). Most significantly, much of the population has sensed an enormous cultural loss. Furthermore, the government of Deng backing out on its promotion of freedom of expression, the 1979 suppression of the Democracy Wall campaign, and the subsequent two years’ greater restriction of free speech have merely heightened the disappointment of the people with the government and further intensified the society’s ontological and epistemological dilemmas (Denton 93). Faith in socialist ideals, the power of the ‘collective’, the validity of national history, thus the role of the individual, has been questioned. A chain of studies and discussions on ideas like knowledge, culture, history, man, belief, truth, etc. all but exposes the start of an ultimate collapse of the value systems of the society. The popular Cultural Discussion was established in 1985 by the Academy of Chinese Culture (Chen 34). The participation of the group signals the ‘official’ start of the active involvement of Chinese scholars in going back to the unfinished May Fourth agenda of enlightenment and modernization. Intellectuals as a whole view 1985 as the turning point of modern Chinese literature’s separation from the earlier ten years’ soul-searching, root-seeking, reflexive literature, to try new methods and aesthetic insights, as well as a reevaluation of the secularism of the May Fourth literature, its connection to Western literature, and the weight of history on the people’s cultural awareness (Chen 34). The literary pattern of this new period can be largely characterized in two groups—new realism literature and avant-garde literature. Avant-garde literature focuses on methods and examines the irrationality of the human situation, trying to address the ontological dilemma authors undergo in the present cultural situation of China; new realism literature goes back to realism to look for values and meanings in the commonplace and to deal with the epistemological dilemma rooted in daily life (Lovell 62). In addition, what gives the literary works created after 1985 a feeling of complexity and remarkability is the substantial introduction and interpretation of post-colonialism, postmodernism, aesthetics, and theories from non-Western and Western societies. It seems that authors of this set of literary works were experimenting ways to express the self, identity, and its subjectivity (Denton 74). The concept of self and subjectivity and the issue of identity are just starting to be developed by Chinese authors. In the stories of Han Shaogong, for instance, what is being aimed at is not the self but the foundation upon which the self is established. To argue that the self has been ‘mutilated’ could be quite careless (Chen 34). Rather, what is more likely is a continuous course of compromise and discussion with cultural past, memory, and history through which a new subject could develop. The story Guiqulai or Homecoming released in 1985 depicts the heightening sense of insecurity of the individual about his own identity. While the awareness of the narrator of the present becomes increasingly ambiguous and his recollection of the past increasingly fades, he ultimately misplaces his identity, even uncertain of his own name (Chen 34-35). Even though it can be believed that in order to begin a voyage to look for a person’s cultural origins, the person should first have a clear sense of identity, a strong center that is the drive behind the passion to search for his/her origins. Obviously, since the latter half of the 1980s Chinese authors tend to undermine of even ignore traditional cultural doctrines. They examine how assets of culture and history are applied to develop and understand identities; how the national discourse impacts the vision of the self; and how the image of this self is established by language (Denton 63). All identities have its boundaries; and it is apparent that the boundary of Chinese identities has already transformed and it reveals a pattern of questioning such shared Chinese identities which were profoundly embedded in the dominant Chinese cultural realm fabricated and re-fabricated over many centuries, and both adopted, criticized, and demeaned during the previous century of socialism and modernization. The perception of Chinese identities has started to branch out in the latter part of the 20th century (Taylor 95). One of the important issues at this point concerns the impact China’s current economic changes have on the circumstances of modern Chinese culture and afterward the view of dominant Chinese cultural identity (Taylor 95-96). Among modern Chinese authors, Wang Anyi greatly depicts the collective fear and uncertainty toward the development of a new identity dialogue. Exploring the writing career of Wang offers a precise direction of such efforts to abolish numerous social bans after the demise of the Gang of Four and then by the economic reform agendas of Deng Xiaoping (Chen 35). The uncertainty of Wang Anyi toward traditionalism and revolution has its origins in the historical dilemma and the feeling of moral duty of Chinese scholars, as well as their involvement and troubles in the social, cultural, and political reforms in China in the recent decades (Chen 35-36). The participation of Chinese scholars in building nationalism is based on the principles of Confucianism. Although China in the early 20th century was involved in different secular campaigns to challenge Confucianism and tradition, Chinese scholars stay committed to their welfare of society. In the long Confucian history of China, scholars have been granted with moral and social duties to the nation and central government (Lovell 98). By tradition they are a distinctive social class not distinguished by economic status but by a collective moral and spiritual desire. Building the Modern Chinese Literary Identity Charles Taylor, in Sources of the Self, emphasizes the core essence in the modern period of cultural identity and individuality, “our sense of what underlies our own dignity… what makes our lives meaningful or fulfilling” (Taylor 4). The self-expressive, autonomous abilities of the person have assumed a leading role in modern literary writing, owing mainly to the Romantic focus on the importance of self-articulation; Western literature holds the actual symbol of this modern pursuit of identity. Focus on the person pushed Western literature into the innermost parts during the 18th century, and an obvious connection can be identified between Joyce’s Ulysses and Rousseau’s Confessions (Lovell 75). The growth of individualism resulted in an emphasis on the individual with a related division between subject and object, self and world. Even though the context of Taylor is mostly restricted to Western literature on the identity and self, and a great deal of his argument is influenced by the view of morality historically rooted in the Judeo-Christian philosophy, since Taylor is investigating the modern setting, his opinions about the importance of individuality are very applicable to issues confronted by Chinese literary scholars in the 20th century (Taylor 4-5). Chinese problems about the literary self and identity have been made all the more debatable by their history. The painful experience with imperialism, which pushed involvement in the global structure by means of nation building into the prevailing framework of modernity in China, encouraged authors to articulate a new form of individuality in their literary works that put together universalism and internationalism, nation building and collectivism, autonomy and individualism. The believed urgency for a new form of awareness reiterates the demand to ‘restore’ that, John Fitzgerald explains, has been hugely influential in China’s modern nation-building philosophy. This ‘restoration’ was not just to the demand of nationhood, but to a related horde of “universal ideals of enlightenment, progress, and science, to the autonomy of the individual and ‘self-realization’” (Lovell 74), as well. Within the concept of literature, this implied an acceptance of the independent aesthetic, linked particularly to the May Fourth campaign of a realist writing influenced by Western styles and created by free-thinking, open-minded people-- the literary equal of the modern works of democracy and science. However, although this notion of the independent aesthetic in the field of literature has been very powerful in China at different periods in the 20th century, it has been most essentially valued, ironically, for its dynamically revolutionary nature or ability to bring about transformation—the capability to free the Chinese from traditional beliefs and practices and build a national culture that would raise China as a powerful force on the international arena (Denton 63). The notion of literary independence—influenced by the West, so as to rival the West—has been raised in modern China with the intention of preserving the nation. As expected, these grand and conflicting expectations of the independent aesthetic and of its facilitator, the expert author, have usually been problematic. Opposing the concept of the modern identity and self were long-established Confucian beliefs about the mind and self, elements of which have persevered in the intellectual identity of modern China. Self-consciousness, for the Chinese people, implied understanding of external forces, particularly the social domain of human interactions and relationships. Traditional Chinese literature does not express similar fascination like Western literary works with embodying, by means of writing, the self and mind separated from the outside world (Lovell 75-76). Such enduring beliefs and pattern of thinking, Kirk Denton argues, lie beneath the profoundly new literary framework of Chinese modernism (Denton 41): In both literary theory and practice, modern writers were unconsciously working out, with new discursive tools borrowed from the West, a predicament about the self’s relationship to the world and its role in social transformation that had ties to tradition. With the appropriation of Western liberal humanist models of self by intellectuals in the late Qing and May Fourth periods, the neo-Confucian promise of mind’s linkage to the outer world was broken, although the desire for such a linkage continued. The traditional tension surrounding the linkage was enhanced in the process of borrowing from the West and became an epistemological problem that… lies at the heart of Chinese modernity. In aspiring to attain national appreciation by means of a literary award like the Nobel Prize, modern Chinese authors have been pushed to aim at nationalist collectivism and aesthetic individuality (Lovell 76); to be their people’s expression and voice that can reach a global audience. Conclusions Literary scholars assigned a challenging mission to modern Chinese literature in the contemporary period. Not merely was the modern literature directed toward attaining social change, it also became the launch pad of China into the global arena. Chinese literary identity in the modern era has been placed between some coinciding domains: tradition vs. modernity, Confucianism vs. individualism, independent aesthetic vs. social transformation, and so on. Such conflicts of Chinese literary identity persisted until the 20th century. Works Cited Chen, Lingchei. Writing Chinese: Reshaping Chinese Cultural Identity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Print. Denton, Kirk. The Problematic of Self in Modern Chinese Literature: Hu Feng and Lu Ling. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998. Print. Lovell, Julia. The Politics of Cultural Capital: China’s Quest for a Nobel Prize in Literature. Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press, 2006. Print. Taylor, Charles. Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Print. Read More