Organizers: Haili Kong, Swarthmore College
Chair: Howard Goldblatt, University of Colorado, Boulder
Discussant: Lydia Liu, University of California, Berkeley
The period following the May Fourth Movement (1919) saw extensive literary activity in China. Previous scholarship has paid much attention to the creative output resulting from that activity, probing the extent to which the literature from this period lived up to its self-proclaimed aims of being "new," "modern" or "revolutionary." Besides literary writing, however, the entire literary practice also went through significant changes.
New types of interaction between literary writers and their professional environment led to increasing public visibility for the "literary scene" or wentan. Wentan was a metaphorical reference to the "stage" (tan) for those who wanted to display their talent in literary writing (wen). It was also a concrete living environment within which literature was produced and writers had to survive. Such an environment affected the direction of literary creation and the success of each writer or artist.
The wentan displayed unprecedented growth during the 1920s, taking shape as a relatively independent compartment of modern society. In the 1930s, a second generation of modern writers, for whom this independence was self-evident, entered the stage. At the same time, however, writers were facing increased demands to relinquish their independence, in favor of lending support to political action, and to the war effort against Japan.
This panel presents an overview of the workings of the literary scene in the 1930s, from four different perspectives. The panelists' studies of patronage, state censorship, cultural campaigns and gender geopolitics constitute a comprehensive approach, leading to a practical understanding of Chinese literature from this period and moving beyond the established modes of textual interpretation biographical investigation and discourse analysis.
In Defense of the Censor: State Authority and Literary Autonomy in China,
1930-1936
Michel Hockx, SOAS, University of London
In 1930, the Guomindang government issued a censorship law, followed by the publication of lists of forbidden books. The new law, which became effective in 1931, represented the first serious attempt by the state to influence the institutions of the modern Chinese literary field. Contrary to what one might expect, the production of literary works of all genres increased rapidly in the following years, leading to an all-time high in 1936. It is obvious that modern Chinese literature flourished under censorship. This paper explores the possibility of a causal relationship: did modern Chinese literature flourish because of censorship?
The paper begins with a description of the various institutions of literary production as they emerged during the 1920s. This will be followed by a detailed overview of the censorship law and of forbidden titles. By looking at concrete cases of censor involvement (individual writers or organizations forced to discontinue literary activities), the efficacy of censorship is determined. Examples will be given of publishers taking legal action against decisions of censors and the results of such action. I shall provide a categorization of works that were allowed to be published, and indicate the literary value attached to those works by contemporary and later critics. In conclusion, I shall argue that, during the 1930s, the effects of literary censorship were less devastating than is often claimed, and, especially on the Shanghai scene, the censors represented an intrinsic institution of the literary field, rather than a power threatening it from the outside.
Gender Geopolitics: Social Space and Volatile Bodies During 1937-1945
Jianmei Liu, Columbia University
In 1937 when Japan developed its full-scale war in China, a large number of writers who originally assembled in the cultural centers such as Beijing and Shanghai became war-refugees migrating and scattering to different areas. As a result, the newly regrouped writers during the War period (1937-1945) engendered different literary practices that made the original "wentan" (literary field) more diversified than before. The diversity of spatialized wentan is a challenge to literary historians who embrace a definition of cultural or social unity in terms of the Zeitgeist. Moreover, although different geopolitical powers could produce and shape literary products in certain ways, various position-taking and representations of the writers had much potential for possible reproducing and reshaping of the social space.
This paper explores the representation of women's bodies in three geopolitical spaces: Shanghai as an isolated land dominated by the Japanese, Yan'an as a center of literature highly mediated by Mao's Talk of Arts, and Chongqing and Hong Kong influenced by the KMT power. By considering women's bodies as a socially and geopolitically constructed entity, I interrogate the interconnection between social space and symbolic power. The contingency of space reproduction and the complexity of subject-positions become apparent when they are brought into contact with gender and politics. However, the elements of uncertainty derived from literary representations of women's bodies also have the possibility of transgressing the boundaries of space.
What Did Literary Patronage Mean to an Individual Writer in the 1930s: The Case
of Duanmu Hongliang
Haili Kong, Swarthmore College
During and after the May Fourth Movement, China's so-called "new literature" widely advocated the concept of individualism, not only as a theme of literary creation, but also a mode of literary production. In later years, however, conscious and unconscious collectivist tendencies turned out to be even stronger, and the independence of individual writers proved to be more vulnerable than the advocates of new literature had anticipated.
During the 1930s, literary associations and societies constituted visible strongholds of literary production, binding individual writers into collectively operating units. Writers who were not affiliated to any such organizations, especially latecomers, often felt the need to seek patronage. This literary patronage system affected individual creation positively, by providing publishing opportunities for young writers, but also negatively, by suffocating the "normal" development of many talented writers.
In this paper, I shall investigate the role of patronage in the literary debut of the author Duanmu Hongliang (1912-1996). Special attention will be paid to his complicated relationships with Lu Xun, Mao Dun, Hu Feng, Ding Ling, Xiao Hong, and Xiao Jun. I shall show that the phenomenon of literary patronage reflects the continuing influence of collectivity, which finally developed into a controlling power conforming the individual writers to the revolutionary regime, and establishing the vulnerability of intellectuals in a patriarchal society.
Marshalling the Facts: Chinese Literary Mobilization During the War Years
Charles A. Laughlin, Yale University
The 1930s and 40s witnessed the emergence of institutions and practices that would condition cultural production in China for the rest of the century. The threat of war with Japan and its realization from 1937-1945 played a major role in shaping organized literary and cultural activities. Reportage literature from this period offers a rich record of the ways in which writers captured their experiences of history in artistic form, as well as evidence of cultural organization and mobilization, especially for amateur writers.
This paper examines organized reportage campaigns from the 1930s and early 1940s, their relationship to the threat, outbreak and effects of war on the cultural industries, the place of literary work in the military effort, and especially the subjective effects of years at war on the consciousness and identity of writers. Some of the writers I discuss are unknown amateurs, while better known figures like Lao She, Ding Ling, and Bai Lang balance creative output with administrative and organizational roles. Finally, patterns of literary mobilization during the war reveal much about China's geopoetic configurations as insistent Japanese incursions make normal literary activity impossible.
My findings are not exclusive to reportage literature; fiction and drama during the war years emerged from very much the same practical situations as reportage, and exhibit many of the same aesthetic conventions and subject matter. However, reportage is more transparently representative of organized, collective activities, for the experience of participating in such activities often forms an important part of the subject matter of wartime reportage works.