response part 1: hu feng, the nation and the subject

CONSTITUTING THE NATION: WHAT IS THE SOUL OF THE MODERN MAN?

In our reading of the last 2 weeks I believe that a complex web of linkages between the constitution of the nation state, the notion of the modern and the creation of the subject has become apparent. In my response below I seek to begin to explore these linkages through the politics of the PRC literary field as they relate to the subject and to the work of authors Can Xue and Lu Ling whose writings though related explore subjectivity and society in quite different ways and in different contexts.

1. THE SUBJECTIVITY OF THE EMBRACE:

After many years in prison and off the record books of literature, Hu Feng and Lu Ling have re-emerged into the literary consciousness of the PRC. Previously identified as comprising an unsavory and un-revolutionary “clique” jituan 集团　imperiling the revolutionary project we must ask what it is about Hu Feng’s conception, and Lu Ling’s representation of the subject, of individualism and subjectivity, variously described, and inscribed within a leftist discourse that constituted such a threat to the wellbeing of the body literary/politic that they had to be expunged with such zealous virulence. Further to this and looking at the works of Kirk Denton and Lydia Liu, we should consider the state of subjectivity and individualism in Chinese literature relative to the thought of Hu and what it is about his works and those of Lu Ling that enabled them to have resonance with the post-Mao populace of China sufficiently that their authors and the school they represented were re-embraced, rehabilitated from a jituan to a pai 派 as Denton argues.

I spoke above of the literary consciousness of China and perhaps that is precisely the heart of the matter…is the issue of sovereignty truly separate from that of consciousness? Sovereignty being the making and definition of a national identity separate from the auspices and pressures of other invading forces, contrasted against these aggressors and against those nations lacking in agency, or sovereignty and indeed modernity can indeed be seen to be on the same continuum as the constitution of the individual subject, the individual consciousness and the individual interior life. We may think of the May 4th arguments for China’s rightful and sovereign position to lie somewhere between the modern poles (as they saw them) of Japan and Europe (or the US). We may like to make a link between this kind of national self-constitution and Bourdieu’s idea of the triangular literary field, seeing a parallel here with between the nation striving for sovereignty and the avant-garde that creates itself through “double-disavowal” (also cf. “the Third man group” and Hu Feng’s own vision of the group that grew up around Hope and July). This also perhaps again points to the relationship between the national and the individual that occurs along link of desire as in the case of the geming jia aiqing tradition and It is interesting to note on this score that the content of Hu Feng’s Journal Qiyue (July) was largely a mixture of war reportage and poetry, the overtly national/political and the romantic/lyrical.

“In the mid-1940s, in the wake of the Yan’an Rectification campaign, Hu Feng was attacked by party critics for promoting “subjectivism” (zhuguan zhuyi), which to them was idealist and sought a dynamic role for the subject in social transformation that conflicted with official materialist ideology and the primacy of the Party in historical transformation.”
Kirk Denton “The Hu Feng Group: The Genealogy of a Literary School” obtained through MCLC

The subjectivity of Hu Feng as described by Denton in both the above quoted essay and the section of his book that we have examined places his ideas within a context of Confucian concepts of self improvement as well as at the 3rd position within the nexus of ideological foment occurring between the 20’s and the talks at Yan’an; what is described is a vision of the self as produced both by social interaction and individual creativity, an agent that may at times grate against the
“mechanical determinism” (jixie juedinglun 机械决定论) of Maoist Marxist thought . In this way Hu Feng’s self is more akin to the fractured soul of the modern than to the proscribed positions advocated by Mao Zedong even as he places it in the service of a leftist agenda, and it can be seen that this is a significant step to departing from the wholeness of the enlightenment polemic of self knowledge that in many senses was reproduced in politically inflected literature of China at the time. That writing that opens up the possibility for an individual will to both move in concert with, to lead and to inform as well as be constituted by the “masses” should be rejected in the process of rectification of literature of the CCP following the talks at Yan’an should come as no surprise, since just as fragmentation and doubt of the self must be suppressed in order to create a solid national subject that can operate efficiently to the greater endeavors of the state, so polyphony in the literary constitution of the leftist body politic must be suppressed in order to create a sovereignty that is similarly self knowing, similarly delineated and superficially unperturbed by hybridity within itself. Thus the “other” is cast.

Hu Feng identified himself with the project and person of Lu Xun, and re-emerging into the literary landscape we can certainly see both the link and the tension between the writing projects and visions of these two authors. As Kuangren Riji implies, a radical outsider cannot truly exist, a person is always implicated in the society that in part creates him, and just as the madman suspects himself of having eaten human flesh, the third position of Hu Feng cannot be thought of as a radical outside, but rather a further product of the political and literary milieu, even as his subject may be one that disturbs the Manichean dualism so conducive to the aims of political struggle of the maoist type. This in-between-ness, this liminal and ambivalent position is one present too in the writings of Hu Feng;s protégé Lu Ling. Lu Ling seeks to explore the project of writing "for" the subaltern with a critical, one might say an “objective” eye, and as a consequence his writings and the vision of the self that is present in his writing is complicated, and imbued with the uncanny…the self that sees society around it as at once horrific and familiar.

Chinese subjectivity

This week's reading suggests that the self/ subjectivity engendered in the chaos of modernity to a practical purpose: to save China. It seems that the subjectivity emerged due to, in C.T. Hsia's terminology, the obsession with China. Indeed from the late Qing thinkers to post-May Fourth intellectuals, the motive or stimulus of revolution in every field was the tremendous fear of the clash of China and strong desire to revive it. In this context, the subjectivity in modern China was to be distinguished from the self-consciousness in Western culture(s), to which Denton and Lydia Liu claim to be one of the sources of modern Chinese subjectivity. Furthermore, the obsession with China would lead to distinguish the subjectivity in modern China from the self-consciousness in pre-modern China such as Wei Jin period. Here comes the question. Why Chinese intellectuals in the late 19th century and early 20th century were obsessed to 'China' to such a great extent, compared to intellectuals in other epochs or other parts of the world? Lydia Liu's discussion regarding the issue of foreign and 'central state' might be helpful.
My personal question is why Lydia Liu adopted the terminology of 'translingual practice' in her books? Because that multiple languages involved in the shaping of Chinese self? Is that trans-cultural practice?