Postmodernism and post-socialist society: Cultural politics in China after the 'New Era'

New Left Review

Volumn , Issue 237, 1999, Pages 77-105

  Zhang, Xudong ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0033470710     PISSN: 00286060     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (33)

1. In a recent article in Modern Chinese Literature Studies (Xiandai wenxue yanjiu congkan), a backbone publication of the establishment of modern Chinese literary studies, Yu Hua, the star of avant-garde fiction in the 1980s, who spearheaded the 'subversion' of the humanist-realist canon, is compared to Lu Xun, the ultimate canonical figure in modern Chinese literature, in terms of their standing and contribution to the development of modern Chinese literature. See Geng Chuanming, 'Shilun Yu Hua xiaoshuo zhong de hou rendaozhuyi qingxiang Ji qi dui Lu Xun qimeng huayu de jiegou' (On the Post-Humanist Tendency in Yu Hua's Fiction and Its Deconstruction of the Enlightenment Discourse of Lu Xun), Xiandai wenxue yanjiu congkan, vol. 72, no. 3, 1997, pp. 79-93.
2. In a recent article in Modern Chinese Literature Studies (Xiandai wenxue yanjiu congkan), a backbone publication of the establishment of modern Chinese literary studies, Yu Hua, the star of avant-garde fiction in the 1980s, who spearheaded the 'subversion' of the humanist-realist canon, is compared to Lu Xun, the ultimate canonical figure in modern Chinese literature, in terms of their standing and contribution to the development of modern Chinese literature. See Geng Chuanming, 'Shilun Yu Hua xiaoshuo zhong de hou rendaozhuyi qingxiang Ji qi dui Lu Xun qimeng huayu de jiegou' (On the Post-Humanist Tendency in Yu Hua's Fiction and Its Deconstruction of the Enlightenment Discourse of Lu Xun), Xiandai wenxue yanjiu congkan, vol. 72, no. 3, 1997, pp. 79-93.
3. In this case, China is following the developmental model of Japan, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. The socialist discourse of market activity and state regulation has -until the recent stock-market meltdown in East Southeast Asia - often eclipsed the triumphant rhetoric of the East Asian model or 'Confucian capitalism'.
4. Naoki Sakai, 'Modernity and Its Critique: The Problem of Universalism and Particularism', in Postmodernism and Japan, edited by Masao Miyosh, and Harry Harootunian, Durham, NC 1989, p. 94.
5. For an incisive analysis of the Japanese discourse of 'the overcoming of the modern', see Harry Harootunian, 'Visible Discourses/Invisible Ideologies', in Postmodernism and Japan, pp. 63-92.
6. am also grateful to Harootunian for letting me read his forthcoming book, Overcome by Modernity: History, Culture and Community in Interwar Japan, Princeton 1999.
7. For a critical examination of the Beijing-centered Chinese modernism in the 1980s, see Xudong Zhang, Chinese Modernism in the Era of Reforms, Durham, NC 1997. For a historical study of the Shanghai-based modernism and middle-class urban culture of the 1930s and early 1940s, see Leo Lee, Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of New Urban Culture in China, 1930-1945, Cambridge, MA 1999.
8. For a critical examination of the Beijing-centered Chinese modernism in the 1980s, see Xudong Zhang, Chinese Modernism in the Era of Reforms, Durham, NC 1997. For a historical study of the Shanghai-based modernism and middle-class urban culture of the 1930s and early 1940s, see Leo Lee, Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of New Urban Culture in China, 1930-1945, Cambridge, MA 1999.
9. For a useful discussion of Mannheim's observations, see Fritz K. Ringer, The Decline of the German Mandarins, Hanover, NH 1990, p. 2.
10. A critical analysis of Chinese liberalism as an anti-democratic conservatism can be found in Gan Yang, 'A Critique of Chinese Conservatism in the 1990s', Social Text, no. 55. Summer 1998, pp. 45-66.
11. For a collection of essays analyzing the political differentiation of post-Mao Chinese intellectual discourse, see Intellectual Politics in Post-Tiananmen China, edited by Xudong Zhang, a special issue of Social Text, no. 55, Summer 1998.
12. For a collection of essays analyzing the political differentiation of post-Mao Chinese intellectual discourse, see Intellectual Politics in Post-Tiananmen China, edited by Xudong Zhang, a special issue of Social Text, no. 55, Summer 1998.
13. For a particularly crude attack on Chinese postmodernism as an expression of Western theory and indebted to the Chinese Cultural Revolution, see Guo Jian, 'Wenge sichao yu "houxue"' (The Cultural Revolution as an Intellectual Trend and 'Post-ologies') in Wenbua da geming: shisbi yu yanjiu (The Cultural Revolution: Historical Facts and Research), edited by Liu Qingfeng, Hong Kong 1996, pp. 347-56.
14. Zhiyuan Cui et al., Nanjiecun (The Nanjie Village), Beijing 1996. Cuis views are critized by his liberal opponents as a defence of the Cultural Revolution.
15. See Fei Xiatong, Peasant Life in China, London 1939; Xiang Tu Chung Jian (Rural Reconstruction), Shanghai 1948; and Rural Development in China, Chicago 1989; Philip Huang, The Peasant Family and Rural Development in the Yangzi Delta, 1350-1988, Stanford 1990.
16. See Fei Xiatong, Peasant Life in China, London 1939; Xiang Tu Chung Jian (Rural Reconstruction), Shanghai 1948; and Rural Development in China, Chicago 1989; Philip Huang, The Peasant Family and Rural Development in the Yangzi Delta, 1350-1988, Stanford 1990.
17. See Fei Xiatong, Peasant Life in China, London 1939; Xiang Tu Chung Jian (Rural Reconstruction), Shanghai 1948; and Rural Development in China, Chicago 1989; Philip Huang, The Peasant Family and Rural Development in the Yangzi Delta, 1350-1988, Stanford 1990.
18. See Fei Xiatong, Peasant Life in China, London 1939; Xiang Tu Chung Jian (Rural Reconstruction), Shanghai 1948; and Rural Development in China, Chicago 1989; Philip Huang, The Peasant Family and Rural Development in the Yangzi Delta, 1350-1988, Stanford 1990.
19. Zhiyuan Cui, Di er ci sixiang jiefang yu zbidu chuangxin (The Second Intellectual Liberation and Institutional Innovations), Hong Kong 1994, p. 13.
20. Ibid.
21. Eric Hobsbawm observes that the sweeping success of Chinese communism after World War II may be due to the Marxist-Leninist party organization's capacity of 'bringing government policy from the centre to the remotest villages of the giant country (as, in the mind of most Chinese, a proper empire should do).' The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914-1991, New York 1995, p. 465. For Hobsbawm, Chinese socialism benefited from the enormous continuities of Chinese history and is likely to survive as the national ideology. Pye, basing himself on the assumption that the realization of universal modernity requires the actualization of the modern bourgeois nation-state, argues that China is 'really a civilization pretending to be a nation-state', and that it still needs to turn itself from a political dinosaur into a qualified nation-state by following the classical European model. See Lucien Pye, 'How Chinese Nationalism Was Shanghaied', in Chinese Nationalism, edited by Jonathan Unger, New York 1993, pp. 86-112.
22. Eric Hobsbawm observes that the sweeping success of Chinese communism after World War II may be due to the Marxist-Leninist party organization's capacity of 'bringing government policy from the centre to the remotest villages of the giant country (as, in the mind of most Chinese, a proper empire should do).' The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914-1991, New York 1995, p. 465. For Hobsbawm, Chinese socialism benefited from the enormous continuities of Chinese history and is likely to survive as the national ideology. Pye, basing himself on the assumption that the realization of universal modernity requires the actualization of the modern bourgeois nation-state, argues that China is 'really a civilization pretending to be a nation-state', and that it still needs to turn itself from a political dinosaur into a qualified nation-state by following the classical European model. See Lucien Pye, 'How Chinese Nationalism Was Shanghaied', in Chinese Nationalism, edited by Jonathan Unger, New York 1993, pp. 86-112.
23. For a discussion of market-born Chinese nationalism - with the global media as its midwife - see Xudong Zhang, 'Mass Culture, Nationalism, and Chinese Intellectual Strategies in the 1990s', Social Text, no. 55, Summer 1998, pp. 109-40.
24. Hu Shi, 'Bishang Iiangshan' (A Forced Rebellion), in Zhongguo xinwenxue daxi, jianshe lilun ji (The Great Anthology of Modern Chinese Literature, Collection in Theoretical Constructions), Shanghai 1935.
25. Liu Xinwu and Zhang Yiwu, Liu Xinwu Zhang Yiwu duihualu (Dialogues between Liu Xinwu and Zhang Yiwu; A Post-Century Cultural Outlook), Guilin 1996, p. 40.
26. Ibid., pp. 56-7.
27. Ibid., Chapter 3, 'Shimin shehui de chengzhang' (The Development of Civil Society), pp. 43-61.
28. Two recent works, namely Michael Dutton's Street Life China, Cambridge 1998 - a theoretically inspired survey - and Gereme Barmé's In the Red, New York 1999 -an intimate cultural journalistic exposé - are among the first in English to grapple with those unclassifiable elements (such as liumang) in contemporary Chinese social and cultural life.
29. Two recent works, namely Michael Dutton's Street Life China, Cambridge 1998 - a theoretically inspired survey - and Gereme Barmé's In the Red, New York 1999 -an intimate cultural journalistic exposé - are among the first in English to grapple with those unclassifiable elements (such as liumang) in contemporary Chinese social and cultural life.
30. See Wang Hui, 'PRC Cultural Studies and Cultural Criticism in the 1990s', positions, vol. 6, no. 1, Spring 1998, pp. 239-51.
31. Gan Yang, 'Shehui yu sixiang cong shu yuanqi' (Preface to the Society and Thought Book Series), in Cui, Di er ci sixiang jiefang yu zhidu chuangxin, pp. vff.
32. Gan Yang, 'Shehui yu sixiang cong shu yuanqi' (Preface to the Society and Thought Book Series), in Cui, Di er ci sixiang jiefang yu zhidu chuangxin, pp. vff.
33. Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes, p. 517.