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Relational Subjectivity in Modern Chinese Literature, 1919-1945

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Relational Subjectivity in Modern Chinese Literature, 1919-1945 The Path Toward the Other: Relational Subjectivity in Modern Chinese Literature, 1919-1945 Shannon M. Cannella Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2014 ©2013 Shannon M. Cannella All rights reserved Abstract The Path Toward the Other: Relational Subjectivity in Modern Chinese Literature, 1919-1945 Shannon M. Cannella This thesis explores the uncharted territory of relational subjectivity in modern Chinese literature. As a model of identity that positions the self in a web of social interaction and emotional connectivity, relational subjectivity suggests that the self is continually partial, open, and constantly “under construction.” Lacking an autonomous “closed system,” subjects remain open to exchange and to becoming agents of co-created meaning. Through readings of the fiction, essays, and poetry of Lu Xun, Ye Shaojun, Shen Congwen, Bing Xin, Xiao Hong, and Eileen Chang, I investigate the ways these writers manipulated narrative structure, texture and voice to present a discourse of openness, receptivity, and tolerance for difference. My investigation uncovers a wider range of subjectivities and relational yearning than was previously recognized for this era. Chinese writers also linked the discourse of relational subjectivity with a more generalized epistemological openness characterized by neutral visual attentiveness and acts of listening. This study reflects a growing interest in locating forms of sociality in the modern Chinese context. As such, my work furthers the theoretical discourse for examining self-other relationships, especially those shaped by multiple-perspectivism, non-hierarchy and horizontal ways of seeing. Finally, this research offers possibilities for locating an alternative beginning for modern Chinese conceptualizations of self in community. Table of Contents The Path Toward the Other: Theoretical Introduction 1 Organization of the Chapters 7 Theoretical Underpinnings I: A Review of Relational Theories of Subjectivity 12 Theoretical Underpinnings II: Communication and Social Theory 21 Addressing the Lacunae in the Definition of the Modern Chinese Self 28 I. The Dialogics of Literary Portraiture: Relationality in the Early Short Stories of Lu Xun and Ye Shaojun 36 Portraiture in the May Fourth Era 39 Copresence and Dialogue - Interactions with the Other 42 Lu Xun’s Middle Space of Relationality 50 Ye Shaojun – A Gardener of Life 68 Negotiated Encounters: “Barriers” and “Bitter Greens” 71 Realms of Intimacy in “Night” 85 Conclusion 96 II. Shen Congwen’s Listening Voice: A Study of Rhetorical “Belongingness” and Relational Narrative Desire 98 The Neutrality of Listening 106 Relationality, Openness and the Humanist Persona 113 Early Fiction: Locating the Voice of Relational Narrative Desire 135 Lyrical Fiction: Calling Readers to Listen 146 An “Ethics” of Listening: “Little Scenes of Guizhou” 159 Conclusion 165 III. The Epistemology of Love: Feminist Ways of Seeing in the Works of Bing Xin, Xiao Hong and Eileen Chang 168 Bing Xin’s “Philosophy of Love” in the Context of May Fourth Reforms 181 In Darkness there is Light: Bing Xin’s Intellectual Dualism 198 Xiao Hong and the Relationality of Compassionate Details 206 The Practice of Attentiveness 215 Historical Transition – The Importance of the Year 1943 220 Eileen Chang’s Alternative Vision of Love: The Search for Harmony 227 The Moment and the Sacred of the Everyday 235 Conclusion 244 Conclusion 246 Bibliography 255 i Acknowledgements This project would not have been possible without the support from the Department of East Asian Language and Cultures at Columbia University, especially Haruo Shirane, Shang Wei, Li Feng and Robert Hymes. A door that very well could have closed was held open and for that I am deeply grateful. Thank you to Shu Yunzhong and Hayes Moore for serving on my defense committee. I am especially indebted to my thesis sponsor, David Der-wei Wang, for his generosity of time, critical feedback, and support over many years. I am honored to have worked with these fine people. This intellectual journey took inspiration from many sources. I want to especially acknowledge my professors: David Der-wei Wang, Paul F. Rouzer, Michael Tsin, and David Sensabaugh, from my years at Columbia, and Paul Farmer, Ann Waltner, Rey Chow, Kimberly Besio, and the late Stephen Wang, from my early studies at the University of Minnesota. Fellow classmates and colleagues enriched this project with their insights and humor: Kim Dramer, Gustav Heldt, John Weinstein, Robin Visser, Jianmei Liu, Ann Huss, Steven Day, Charles Laughlin, Donna Kelly and Jesse Field. Finally, I thank my former colleagues at St. Olaf College for their unwavering support: Richard Bodman, Phyllis Larson, Pin P. Wan, Barbara Reed, Bob Entenmann, Rika Ito, Karil Kucera and Katherine Tegtmeyer-Pak. Initial research for this project was conducted at National Taiwan University with Professor Chang Suk-hong and was funded by grants from Fulbright IIE and the American Council of Learned Societies. I am grateful for the financial support I received from these grants and from Columbia University. ii Dedication To my parents, Robert and Shirley Cannella, and to Isabelle iii Epigraphs We can never come to subjectivity apart from our relations with others. The self always has an “intersubjective core.” For another, we come to subjectivity by participating in language, or more broadly, in communication. -Noëlle McAfee1 The most insightful critiques of modernity have been concerned with how to restore the link between individual and community […] Before we arrive at a crossroads where individualism and collectivism seem the only available and mutually exclusive paths, an alternative middle ground needs to be elaborated in order to appreciate Chinese modernity’s endeavor to envision romantic individualism and revolutionary collectivism not as foes, but as fellow travelers. -Ban Wang2 1 Noëlle McAfee, Habermas, Kristeva and Citizenship (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000), 35. 2 Ban Wang, “Review of The Problematic of Self in Modern Chinese Literature: Hu Feng and Lu Ling” Comparative Literature 51, no. 4 (Autumn 1999), 354-356. iv The Path Toward the Other: Theoretical Introduction Whenever Father beat me, I went to Granddad’s room and stared out the window from dusk to late in the night. Granddad often placed his two wrinkled hands on my shoulders, then on my head, and my ears rang with the sounds of: “Hurry and grow up! It will be fine once you have grown up.” The year I reached the age of twenty I fled from the home of my father, and I have lived the life of a drifter ever since. I’ve “grown up,” all right, but things are not “fine.” Yet I learned from my grandfather that besides coldness and hatred, life also includes warmth and love. And so, for me there is a perpetual longing and pursuit to find this warmth and love.1 Xiao Hong, “My Everlasting Longing and Pursuit” (1937) It was spring of 1935 when Lu Xun 鲁迅 (1895-1936) took Xiao Hong 萧红 (1911- 1942) under his professional wings. The older writer was suffering from tuberculosis but was still active as an essayist, literary critic and editor. Lu Xun welcomed literary submissions by young writers, the best of which he helped find their way into the hands of publishers. This was the case with Xiao Hong’s novel, The Field of Life and Death (生死场 1934), which was published in December of 1935. The novel tells a story of Chinese suffering under landlord oppression and early resistance to Japanese occupation in Manchuria. The Field of Life and Death also marks the arrival of a fresh voice on the literary scene: lyrical, earthy, and realist. In his preface to The Field of Life and Death, Lu Xun 1 Xiao Hong 萧红, “My Everlasting Longing and Pursuit” 永远的憧憬和追求, trans. Howard Goldblatt in “Translator’s Introduction,” Market Street: A Chinese Woman in Harbin (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1986), xi-xii. Chinese text originally published in Baogao (Shanghai, 1937), 1: 1. 1 remarked that he was impressed by the novel’s “keen observations,” “extraordinary writing style,” and “robust” spirit.2 His only critique, though carefully worded, suggests that the work as a whole “is naturally more of a brief sketch” whose description of events and scene surpass its treatment of human figures.3 Beauty, death, literary stylization and realistic details all contribute to the success of Field of Life and Death in ways not unlike Lu Xun’s own lyrical fiction, such as “My Old Home” (故乡 1921), “Village Opera” (社戏 1922), and “In the Tavern” (在酒楼上 1924). These works disguise a similar kind of yearning for “warmth” (温暖) and love (爱). In particular, “New Year’s Sacrifice” (祝福 1924), in its near absence of human feeling, energizes a desire in the minds of readers: if only the narrator, the educated man from the city, and Xianglin’s wife could find common ground and if only there was some compassion among the families of that village, then perhaps the story could have a less tragic ending. Expressions of warmth and love float elusively around the periphery of Lu Xun’s stories and essays, but Xiao Hong brought that desire to the center of her work in ways that no doubt moved the heart of the older writer. Xiao Hong’s personal story illustrates a truth that was also at the heart of Lu Xun’s own life experience: the kind of warmth and love he sought could not be found within the traditional family unit – it had to be recreated elsewhere and through different types of new, 2 Lu Xun, “Preface to The Field of Life and Death,” trans. Howard Goldblatt The Field of Life and Death & Tales of Hulan River (Boston: Cheng & Tsui, 2002), 3. 3 Ibid., although I chose to alter the translation to include a direct translation of 自然, “naturally.” Chinese version in Xiao Hong, The Field of Life and Death, ed.
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