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Copyright by Xiaoping Wang 2010 The Dissertation Committee for Xiaoping Wang Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Contending for the Chinese Modern: The Writing of Fiction in the Great Transformative Epoch of Modern China, 1937-1949 Committee: ____________________________________________ Sung-Sheng Yvonne Chang, Supervisor ____________________________________________ Huaiyin Li ____________________________________________ Lynn Wilkinson ____________________________________________ Martha Selby ____________________________________________ Xudong Zhang Contending for the Chinese Modern: The Writing of Fiction in the Great Transformative Epoch of Modern China, 1937-1949 by Xiaoping Wang, B.A.; M.Phil. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May, 2010 Dedication I dedicate this dissertation to my parents in China. Contending for the Chinese Modern: The Writing of Fiction in the Great Transformative Epoch of Modern China, 1937-1949 Publication No._____________ Xiaoping Wang, Ph.D The University of Texas at Austin, 2010 Supervisor: Sung-sheng Yvonne Chang This dissertation studies the writing of fiction in modern China from 1937 to 1949 in the three politically-divided areas: the Nationalist-controlled area, the Communist- dominated region, and the Japanese-occupied districts (before 1945), under the framework of “contested modernities” (the capitalist, the colonialist, and the socialist). Works of fiction here are explored as fundamentally cultural responses to the social, political, and historical experience. Therefore, it appreciates the dialectics of the content- form of these works as expressions, manifestations, and articulations of the contending modernities that competed against each other during that era. Methodologically, this project combines the application of the theory of “field of cultural production” promoted by Pierre Bourdieu, with the approach of historical/political hermeneutics as advocated by Fredric Jameson. The three areas set the stage for cultural productions of differing ideological tendencies. In this context, fiction is a testing ground for various versions and visions of “new cultures” of Chinese modernities. Here, we treat “1940s China” as a social-cultural space and “fiction” as a literary and intellectual institution in which various visions of “new cultures” expressed themselves. “Style” or “form” then becomes a socially symbolic, political action in which writers’ search for social and symbolic certainty was incarnated. v Part I, “Negotiating with the Nightmarish Modern,” explores writers from the Japanese-occupied areas. The first chapter studies the relationship between the experience of exile and Xiao Hong’s war-time diasporic literature. The second chapter explores the middle-brow boudoir literature from Shanghai. In particular, it studies the works by Zhang Ailing. Part II, “Rethinking the Disjointed Modern,” investigates the Nationalist-controlled regions. The so-called “neo-romanticist” writers Wumingshi and Xu Xu, as well as the famed writer of the “July School” Lu Ling, are its objects of study. The third part, “Contending for a New Modern,” takes as its object of research writings from the Communist-controlled area. It looks into the “peasant writer” Zhao Shuli’s stories and the works by the May-Fourth-writer-turned-Communist-intellectual, Ding Ling. The study not only substantiates the argument that in modern China, the search for a new subjectivity was undertaken through conquering the identity crisis of the “new man” and “new woman,” but also testifies to the fact that this “control of the form” was simultaneously a symbolic action that articulated the anxiety of the intellectuals about becoming a new, modern Chinese. Put in other way, this search for a new identity is premised upon the establishment of a new subjectivity, which was an integral part of the project of building various “new cultures.” Through a practice of political hermeneutics of fictional texts and social-historical subtexts, this dissertation shows that social modernity and literary modernity intertwined and interacted with each other in the development of modern Chinese literature. vi Table of Contents Introduction………………………………………………………………………1 Part One Negotiating with the Nightmarish Modern……………………....….....27 Chapter One A Homeless Soul and a Dispossessed Nostalgia Exiled Experience and Xiao Hong’s War-time Diasporic Literature……………43 Chapter Two Matrimonial Anxiety in a Besieged City: Identity Complex in Zhang Ailing’s “Boudoir” Stories…………………………95 Part Two Rethinking the Disjointed Modern……………………………..…….143 Chapter Three Alienated Minds Dreaming for Integration Constrained Cosmopolitanism in Wumingshi and Xu Xu’s “Modern Literati Novel”………………………………………………………………….………..158 Chapter Four “Subjectivity” and Class Consciousness Intellectual’s Predicament and Lu Ling’s Neo-Leftist Stories………………… 214 Part Three Contending for a New Modern……………………………………...260 Chapter Five “National Form” and “Problem Stories” Rural Society in Transition and Zhao Shuli’s “Peasant Stories” ……………… 275 Chapter Six Feminine Woman, Social Critic, and Cultural Worker Identity (Trans- ) Formation and Ding Ling’s “Stories of New Woman”…………......................326 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………384 References……………………………………………………………………….396 Vita………………………………………………………………………………403 vii Introduction In China’s modern era, especially in the 1940s, various political and cultural forces vied with and competed against each other for hegemony. In particular, we witness that various political forces advocated their versions of “new cultures” for the Chinese people: The Nationalist Party (KMT) held neo-traditionalist ethics, promoted “nationalist literature” (Guofang wenxue) and a “New Life movement,”1 the Japanese occupants propagated a “new,” “sanitized,” “healthy” culture that was allegedly immune of decadent Western Euro-American cultural influence; the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) also advanced a “new democratic culture.” Most of modern Chinese intellectuals joined into these ideologically-diversified ranks to pursue their ideals and dreams. Indeed, ever since the late Qing, and especially after the May Fourth era, modern Chinese intellectuals were consistently fighting for a new society that would be more democratized in terms of political arrangements, more equal in regard to class hierarchy, a society that would enjoy more freedom in the sense of owning national independence and more social and individual liberty. This competition for the “Chinese modern” in the cultural realm was simultaneously a process of contending for differing roads into the modernity, or “modernities;” to vie with one another for the hegemony and the right of claiming for the nation’s future. Under these circumstances, this era witnessed diversified writings of fiction, which were the records of the dynamic historical experience, and the crystallizations, articulations, 1 The goal of the movement allegedly is to militarize the life of the people of the entire nation. The “new life style” placed emphasis on hygienic practices, promptness, truthfulness, and courtesy. It promoted four traditional values: politeness, righteousness, integrity, and self-respect. The movement was suddenly introduced but quickly ended. 1 projections, and promotions of the writers’ visions of different “new cultures” for China as a new, modern nation. This dissertation studies the writing of fiction in the three politically-divided areas (which also happened to become three distinguished fields of cultural production) during this period: the Nationalist-controlled area, the Communist-dominated region, and the Japanese-occupied districts (before 1945). This introduction includes four sections. In the very beginning, I explain why I choose Chinese fiction in the 1940s as the project of my dissertation; secondly, I will introduce the methodology that I adopt for my study; then, I will make a brief survey of the existing scholarship and lay out my own vision of the literature of this period, and briefly introduce the content of each chapter; this is to be followed with a section discussing a thematic concern that ties in these chapters and the three parts together: the problematic of the “woman problem,” as shown in the characters of the stories and the writers themselves. The various ways to negotiate the “woman problem” is symptomatic of the differing ways to approach the “Chinese modern” and to solve the historical dilemma (in terms of social contradictions and international conflicts) of modern China. Fiction Writing in the Great Transformative Epoch of 1940s China The 1940s (1937-1949) entered as the third decade of the construction and development of Chinese “new culture” since the May Fourth movement.2 It was a culturally 2 The May Fourth Movement was an anti-imperialist, cultural, and political movement. It grew out of the student demonstrations that took place in Beijing on May 4, 1919, which protested the Chinese government's attitude towards the Treaty of Versailles, especially the items regarding the Shandong Problem. The demonstrations marked the upsurge of modern China’s anti-imperialistic, patriotic nationalism. The term “May Fourth Movement,” however, often refers to a broader period around 1915-1921, which is also called “New Culture Movement.” For reference, see Chow