“Solemn Progress”: Modernism, Social Constitution, and Cosmic Life
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
“SOLEMN PROGRESS”: MODERNISM, SOCIAL CONSTITUTION, AND COSMIC LIFE by Nan Zhang A dissertation submitted to Johns Hopkins University in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Baltimore, Maryland August 2014 © 2014 Nan Zhang All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT This dissertation examines how modernist writers engaged with various forms of civic virtue even as they considered how still broader affective investments might sustain a common humanity. Employing a method similar to what Susan Stanford Friedman has termed “cultural parataxis” (the use of global juxtapositions to highlight cross-cultural ramifications of modernist texts), it illuminates affinities and divergences in works by Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Lin Yutang, and Rabindranath Tagore to uncover a shared attentiveness, on the part of writers in the East and the West, to the implications of collective modes of feeling for public life. Though writing from different sides of the colonial divide, the authors under discussion remained similarly vigilant about the ways in which patriotic sentiments could be marshaled for militant and self-interested purposes in the name of civic virtue. Instead of negating the significance of civic engagement, however, they sought to create alternative understandings of collective spirit that they believed would be nourishing for modern life. I argue that the re-imaginings of solidarity in these writers’ works involve two moves that are temporally divergent yet temperamentally complementary: a renewal of attention to older conceptions of civil society whose ethic was civilized rather than narrowly civic; and an extension of the domain of society to a cosmic realm of life beyond the purview of the political state. Focusing on the relation between shared cosmopolitan sensibilities and various imaginings of the cosmic in modernist literature across cultural boundaries, the project sheds light on aspects of collective experience that are structured (but not completely circumscribed) by economic models of globalization and opens up new avenues for thinking about the scope, content, and applicability of ii cosmopolitanism. Its ethico-aesthetically attuned approach, while attending to cultural particularities captured by these literary works, establishes deeper affinities between intellectual traditions in the East and the West. First Reader: Douglas Mao; Second Reader: Jesse Rosenthal iii ACKOWLEDGEMENTS It is a blessing to work with Doug Mao, who has been such a wonderful guide and friend in my intellectual odyssey in the past six years and has illuminated a way to the lighthouse. From him, I have learned not only the beautiful and profound art of close reading but also more subtle and rigorous ways of thinking and writing. This project began with a joyful exploration of the lambency and iridescence of Ulysses with Doug. He has since then read numerous rough drafts of this work with extraordinary patience, sympathy, and acuity, offering crucial insights, detailed comments, and generous support until the very last minute of its completion, for which I remain forever grateful. I would like to thank Simon During and Amanda Anderson for their inspiring seminars and scholarship, and for their great help and encouragement at Hopkins and from afar. I am grateful to Jesse Rosenthal for helping this project move into the final stage. My thanks also go to Frances Ferguson, Jonathan Kramnick, Eric Sundquist, Chris Nealon, Pat Kain, and Will Evans, who have provided me with invaluable guidance and support. Nicole Goode, Karen Tiefenwerth, and Sally Hauf have been extremely kind and helpful, and I thank them for keeping us all together. I must express my deep gratitude to professors Lu Gusun, Fan Jiacai, and Chu Xiaoquan at Fudan, who encouraged me to pursue my academic interests a decade ago, and whom I have continued to turn to for enlightenment, wisdom, and magnanimous help. It has been my great fortune to be part of the vibrant intellectual community at Johns Hopkins. For their warm friendship and for enriching my life in graduate school, I want to thank Jessica Valdez, David Schley, Elizabeth Brogden, and Roger Maioli. I owe a special debt to Elizabeth and to Chris Westcott, who read drafts of this work and iv offered incisive comments. Discussions with them and Katherine Goktepe, Ben Barasch, Will Miller, Ben Tam, as well as my fellow Philological Society members—including Shana O’Connell, Chris Geeke, and Jamie Gianoutsos—have enlarged my horizons and stimulated my thinking. And conversations with Mande Zecca, Anthony Wexler, Kara Wedekind, Christiane Gannon, and Kaitlyn Whyte have always been heartening. I want also to thank the East Asian Studies Program at Hopkins for a generous travel grant and for the great opportunity to meet Ryan Sayre, Yige Dong, and Ke Ren. I am deeply indebted to my old friends who have been there for me on this journey. Wang Qing and Gu Shaohua have given me a home from home in DC and often gone out of the way to help me. It is amazing to see the growth of their son, Xuanxuan, from such a tiny baby in Hong Kong to a little expert on international relations eager to challenge his “professor auntie.” Thanks are also due to Ella Ji, Steven Zhang, and Jody Zhao, who have made their places delightful havens for me outside of Baltimore; to Liu Weimin, Wang Genhua, Yang Hua, Hu Hongbo, and Glenn DeSouza for many a delicious treat here and there, and for perpetuating those precious moments in Beijing; to Jane Ding, Yunlong Sun, and Liang Mao for intellectual warmth. Iris Shi has been a most loving friend for more than a decade, always taking care of me wherever and whenever we were together. My parents’ love for me knows no bounds. They have not only indulged my wanderlust but also traveled with me, and for me, all these years. It is profoundly touching to see them embrace the world like two lovely children. I dedicate this dissertation to my grandma, who passed away ten years ago, but whose inner strength and largeness of spirit I won’t let go. v CONTENTS Abstract/ ii Acknowledgements/ iv INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1 17 “Solemn Progress”: Manners, Fate, and the Negotiation of Virtue in Mrs. Dalloway CHAPTER 2 66 “Be Just Before You Are Generous”: James Joyce and the Politics of Virtue CHAPTER 3 105 Civility and “The Cosmic Wind”: The Spirit of Social Constitution in Lin Yutang’s Moment in Peking CHAPTER 4 156 Home and Wanderlust: Patriotic Wayfarers on the Path of “Universal Life” in Tagore Bibliography 188 vi INTRODUCTION In the November 13, 1930 issue of The China Critic—a Chinese-owned English- language weekly edited by a group of Western-educated Chinese intellectuals and published in Shanghai from 1928 to 1945—there appeared an editorial titled “Proposal for a Liberal Cosmopolitan Club in Shanghai.” Addressing both Chinese and foreigners in Shanghai, the article suggests forming “a club of men who can think, or are willing to make an effort to think, over and above the merely nationalistic lines” in the “big cosmopolitan port.” The proposal is animated by both corrective and instructive purposes. On the one hand, it seeks to rectify “a common mental attitude [of so-called Woodheadism or anti-foreignism] … among the foreigners and Chinese alike.” On the other hand, as the article proclaims, it constitutes the editors’ effort “to establish and foster a tradition of liberal thought in China.” The liberal cosmopolitan club would be one of “internationally minded people, who come together for the purpose of better understanding one another’s point of view and culture, and for discussing problems of life common to the modern world. It will be exclusive in the sense of having for its members only such people as have the liberal cosmopolitan mind, people who are more interested in the examination of ideas than in national glorification, more in the common problems of modern life than in any patriotic propaganda.” The article further elaborates on the desirable qualities of prospective members: modesty (“humbler and less self- complacent souls”); a probing spirit (“men afflicted with the common human malady of searching and thinking and doubting and trying to understand”); open-mindedness and a 1 global consciousness (“men who are citizens of the world and can come together to thrash out some of the problems confronting mankind as a whole”).1 The article is informed by two cosmopolitan tendencies that have proven central to global modernist studies, one pertaining to the forces of economic globalization, the other signifying a cultural attitude and choice. First, describing Shanghai as a “big cosmopolitan port,” it highlights the image of a modern metropolis of transnational encounters and exchange while also alluding to the aggressive imperialist expansion that had turned Shanghai into a treaty port based on extraterritorial jurisdiction—an arrangement, legitimized through violent means, that granted legal impunity to foreign nationals in China. This silhouette of metropolitan modernity in Shanghai emblematizes what has become a familiar materialist account of globalization organized around a global market and capitalist world system.2 It also draws attention, however, to the temporality and extent of globalization in a way that aligns with an important reminder offered by Jean-Michel Rabaté. “Modernist globalization,” Rabaté observes, “should not be seen as a recent factor associated with late capitalism as we tend to believe, but as an older trend closely linked to the development of European and American imperialisms at the end of the nineteenth century, a development that reached a climax when the competitive logic of international capital and the explosion of newly unleashed nationalism inevitably led to a world war.”3 1 “Proposal for a Liberal Cosmopolitan Club in Shanghai,” in The China Critic: the Only Chinese Owned and Edited English Weekly. Eds. Chang, Hsin-hai et al.