1. There had been fervent discussions, especially toward the latter half of 1986, about the difficulties of carrying out the formula of market economy due to the unsuccessful attempts of the economic sector to transform the old system of party supervision over the administration of factories. The call for political reform was seen in policy slogans such as ''the division of Party and politics" ( dangzheng fen'gong ) and the "separation of corporate industry from politics" ( zhengqi fenkai ). A sample of such discussions can be found in Zhao Guoquan's "Fazhan shangping jingji mianling wuge fangmian maodun'' (The development of commodity economy is facing five aspects of contradictions), Renmin ribao , 1 December 1986, overseas edition, 2.

2. Zhao Ziyang, "Yanzhe you Zhongguo tese de shehui zhuyi daolu qianjin" (Marching toward the path of socialism with Chinese characteristics), Renmin ribao , 4 November 1987, overseas edition. Emphasis is mine.

3. Carma Hinton and Richard Gordon's latest documentary, "The Gate of Heavenly Peace," critically examines the students' movement. It demonstrates how the more radical students prevailed over the moderate elements in insisting on not abandoning the square. The film quotes the influential leader Chai Ling as saying that "only when the square is awash with blood will the people of China open their eyes." See David Ansen, "Raise a Red Flag," Newsweek , Oct. 9 (1995), 75.

4. Paul Rabinow, introduction to French Modern: Norms and Forms of the Social Environment (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989), 15.

5. Chen Pingyuan, Huang Ziping, and Qian Liqun, "Guanyu 'Ershi shiji Zhongguo wenxue' de duihua" (Dialogues on "Twentieth-century Chinese literature"), in ''Ershi shiji Zhongguo wenxue" sanren tan (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1988), 58, quoting Qian Liqun.

6. Zhang Yiwu, "Lun 'houwutuobang' huayu: Jiushi niandai Zhongguo wenxue de yizhong quxiang" (On the post-topian discourse: A tendency of Chinese literature of the 1990s), Wenyi lilun 6 (1993), 181-87.

7. The critique of anti-leftism, an increasingly important trend after the June Fourth crackdown, is primarily undertaken by mainland Chinese intellectuals who stayed in the U.S. and who maintained close affiliations with the humanities in the American academy. Those critics include graduate students in literature and history programs and cultural and literary critics in exile like Li Tuo. Li takes a much more complicated ideological position than his peers at Princeton who belong to the Princeton China Initiative, an exile group headed by Liu Binyan. Though he is critical of Maoism, Li is more interested in exploring than explaining away the ideological appeal of Maoism to Chinese intellectuals during the 1950s and 1960s. He attempts to reconstruct Maoism as a double discourse of anti-imperialism and modernization and is opposed to the standard practice of setting up an absolute antagonism between Mao's discourse and the discourse of modernity. See Li Tuo, "Ding Ling bu jiandan: Mao tizhi xia zhishi fenzi zai huayu shengchan zhong de fuza jiaose" (Ding Ling is not simple: The complicated role that intellectuals played in the production of discourse under the Maoist regime), Jintian 3 (1993), 236-40.

8. On "pan-ideologization," see Yin Hong, Luo Chengyan, and Kang Lin, "Xiandai wenxue yanjiu de disandai: Zouxiang chenggong yu mianling tiaozhan" (The third generation of modern Chinese literary studies: Marching toward success and facing challenges), Wenxue pinglun 5 (1989), 72. The three critics advocate "literature's return to its own subjectivity." If they are vague about the definition of such a self-sufficient domain, they are precise in their condemnation of literature's entrapment in ideology.

On the inaccessibility of literature to the people, see Ye Lihua, "Wenxue: 'shichanghua' de qianti yu lujing" (Literature: The premise and strategies of "marketization"), Wenxue pinglun 5 (1993), 15. For Ye Lihua, the literature's return to its "original nature" means the creation of literature that is not only accessible to the common people, but also prioritizes the function of entertainment.

On the intellectuals and enlightenment, see the symposium of "Dangdai zhishi fenzi de jiazhi guifan" (The values and norms of contemporary intellectuals), chaired by Chen Sihe. An article bearing the title of the symposium, transcribed by Zhang Xinying, appeared in Shanghai wenxue 7 (1993), 69, 70.

9. Wang Meng and Wang Gan, "Piruan? Huapo?" (Exhaustion? Decline?), Zhongshan 3 (1989), 159, quoting Wang Meng.

10. Zhang Xinying, "Dangdai zhishi fenzi de jiazhi guifan," 64, quoting Chen Sihe.

11. Li Zehou, "Ershi shiji Zhongguo wenyi yipie" (A glimpse at the twentieth-century Chinese literature), in Zhongguo xiandai sixiang shilun (Treatise on the history of modern Chinese thought) (Taibei: Fengyun shidai chuban gongsi, 1990), 330.

12. On the hedonism of the 1990s, see Zhang Jingchao, "Wenxue zhineng shi yizhong youxian de cunzai" (Literature can only be a limited existence), Wenyi pinglun 1 (1993), 22-28. Whereas most Chinese intellectuals condemn popular hedonism, Zhang characterizes it as a sign that shows the "considerable progress" that Chinese people have made in their way of living. Hedonism, according to him, signifies the new emphasis on individual lives and on the world of the "here and now" (24).

1. One notable example is the Chinese students' enthusiastic endorsement of the government's bid for hosting the 2000 A.D. Olympic games in Beijing. In October 1993, on the eve of the Olympic Committee's final vote, thousands of college students in Beijing gathered at the Tian'anmen Square to render moral support to the government. According to the BBC reports, security forces were sent to forestall riots with the sole purpose of safeguarding the students. The sacrilegious implications of such a "demonstration" at the square will certainly ring loudly to those who remember the June Fourth Incident in 1989.

2. The slogan that "consumerism is the motivating force for the development of production" has become popular in the wake of Deng Xiaoping's talks given during his much publicized southern excursions in February 1992. See Zhou Guanwu, "Xiaofei shi fazhan shengchan de dongli" (Consumerism serves as the motivating force for the development of production), Renmin ribao , 7 June 1992, 2.

3. Ren a ren is the title of Dai Houying's novel originally published by Huacheng chubanshe at Guangzhou in 1980, reprinted by Xiangjiang Publishing Company in Hong Kong, 1985.

4. In the Manuscripts , Marx speaks of three kinds of alienation. Human beings are alienated from their work (a break between the individual and productive activity), from their own products (a break between the individual and the material world), and from other human beings (species alienation). Attributing alienation to the birth of private property in capitalist society, Marx believed that the total liberation of human beings could only take place at the complete elimination of private property. See Karl Marx: Early Writings , trans. Rodney Livingstone and Gregor Benton (New York: Vintage Books, 1975), 279-400.

5. Stuart Schram, Ideology and Policy in China Since the Third Plenum , 1978-84 (London: Contemporary China Institute, SOAS, University of London, 1984), 55.

6. See Schram, Ideology , 42-56. Also see Bill Brugger and David Kelly, Chinese Marxism in the Post-Mao Era (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), 139-70; David Kelly, "The Emergence of Humanism: Wang Ruoshui and the Critique of Socialist Alienation," in China's Intellectuals and the State: In Search of a New Relationship , ed. Merle Goldman et al. (Cambridge: The Council on East Asian Studies at Harvard University, 1987), 159-82.

7. Zhou Yang's talk "Guanyu Makesi zhuyi de jige lilun wenti de tantao" (On the inquiry into several theoretical questions of Marxism) was published in Renmin ribao , 16 March 1983, with the help of Wang Ruoshui, who then served as the deputy editor-in-chief of the newspaper. Even long before 1983, Zhou Yang, Mao Zedong's cultural czar of the 1950s, had shown remorse at his earlier views. In November 1979, he apologized at the Fourth Congress of Artists and Writers to those (Ding Ling and Liu Binyan among them) whom he had purged during the 1940s and 1950s. Hu Qiaomu's article, "Guanyu rendao zhuyi he yihua wenti" (With regard to the question of humanism and alienation) was originally published in Renmin ribao , 27 January 1984, 1-5; it was reprinted in Wenyi lilun 1 (1984), 57-72.

8. Chinese theorists emphasized that Marx dissociates himself from Hegel's belief that every objectification is necessarily an instance of alienation. Articles and books on the distinction between duixianghua and yihua were abundant during the debate. See Yang Shi, "Yihua yu duixianghua" (Alienation and objectification), in Makesi zhuyi yu ren (Marxism and human beings), ed. The Department of Philosophy of Beijing University (Beijing: Beijing University Press, 1983), 175-200; Liu Minzhong, "Makesi yihua lun chutan" (A preliminary inquiry into Marx's theory of alienation), in Renxing rendao zhuyi wenti taolun ji (A collection of essays on the problem of human nature and humanism), ed. the Research Institute of Philosophy of the Chinese Academy of the Social Sciences (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1983), 366-82; and Feng Shen, trans., translator's preface to Yihua yu laodong (Alienation and labor), by I. S. Narsky (Changsha: Hunan renmin chubanshe, 1987), 8-10. Originally published as Otchuzhdenie i trud: po stranitsam i proizvedenii (Moscow: Izd. "Mysl," 1983).

Lukacs himself admitted in 1967 that the term "reification" is "neither socially nor conceptually identical to alienation." For Lefebvre and others, reification is only one of the manifestations of alienation, albeit the most radical one. See Ignace Feuerlicht, Alienation: From the Past to the Future (Wesport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1978), 13.

9. Zhou Guoping and Jia Zelin, "Sulian zhexue zhong de ren he rendao zhuyi wenti" (The question of (hu)man and humanism in Soviet philosophy), in Ren shi Makesi zhuyi de chufa dian (Human beings are the starting point of Marxism), ed. The Editorial Committee of Renmin chubanshe (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1981), 242.

10. Wang Ruoshui, "Tantan yihua wenti" (On the problem of alienation), Xinwen zhanxian (The battle front of news) 8 (August 1980), reprinted in Wei rendao zhuyi bianhu (In defense of humanism)(Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 1986), 186-99.

11. See Adam Schaff, "Makesi yihua lilun de gainian xitong" (The conceptual system of Marx's theory of alienation), Zhexue yicong 1 and 2 (1979); Schaff, "Yihua shi shehui wenti he zhexue wenti" (Alienation is a social problem and a philosophical question), Zhexue yicong 4 (1981); Schaff, "Yinggai yanjiu yihua lilun" (We ought to study the theory of alienation), Zhexue yicong 6 (1981). Also see Gajo Petrovic, ''Lun yihua'' (On alienation), Zhexue yicong 2 (1979).

12. Adam Schaff, Marxismus und das menschliche Individuum (Vienna: Europa-Verlag, 1965), 168-69, 178, 180, 254. Gajo Petrovic, "The Philosophical and Sociological Relevance of Marx's Concept of Alienation," in Marx and the Western World , ed. Nicholas Lobkowicz (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1967), 152.

13. Adam Schaff, Marxism and the Human Individual , ed. Robert S. Cohen, based on a translation by Olgierd Wojtasiewicz (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1970), 108.

14. Ibid., 131, 135.

15. Ibid., 15.

16. Wang Ruoshui, "Tantan yihua wenti," 195.

17. Hu Qiaomu, "Guanyu rendao zhuyi he yihua wenti," Wenyi lilun 1 (1984), 70-71. Also see Rendao zhuyi he yihua sanshi ti (Thirty questions on humanism and alienation), ed. The Research Institute of Philosophy at the Shanghai Academy of the Social Sciences (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1984), 184. Hereafter, I will refer to Rendao zhuyi he yihua sanshi ti as Sanshi ti .

18. Sanshi ti , 196.

19. Schram reported a conversation with Deng Liqun (director of the Propaganda Department of the Party's Central Committee) in 1984. During the conversation, Deng accused Wang of "reasserting the theory of continuous revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat." Deng went even further by proclaiming that Wang suggested that "a new Cultural Revolution was necessary to overturn the privileged caste of Party officials." See Schram, Ideology , 56.

20. Brugger and Kelly, Chinese Marxism , 145. Brugger and Kelly argue that although the leftists during the Cultural Revolution did not use the term "alienation," what they combated was something similar to what Wang Ruoshui proposed in his definition of "economical alienation."

21. Zhou Yang, "Guanyu Makesi zhuyi de jige lilun wenti de tantao," 4.

22. Brugger and Kelly, Chinese Marxism , 153.

23. Sanshi ti , 185-86.

24. Deng Liqun, "'Makesi zhuyi yu ren' xueshu taolunhui chuanda Deng Liqun jianghua: Taolun rendao zhuyi renxinglun henyou haochu" (Deng Liqun's talk at the symposium on "Marxism and human beings": The advantage of discussing humanism and the theory of humanity), originally published in Renmin ribao , 12 April 1983, 1; also in Rendao zhuyi renxing lun yihua wenti yanjiu zhuanji (Studies on humanism, theories of human nature, and the problem of alienation: A special collection of essays), ed. Center of Newspapers and Research Materials at People's University (Beijing: Renmin daxue, 1983), 5.

25. Albrecht Wellmer, Critical Theory of Society , trans. John Cumming (New York: Herder and Herder, 1971), 54.

26. On the fetishism of politics, see Gao Ertai, "Yihua xianxiang jinguan" (A recent observation of the phenomenon of alienation), in Ren shi Makesi zhuyi de chufa dian , 83. Gao elaborates upon the definition of the "fetishism of politics" and identifies it with ''the fetishism of power." His definition of ''political alienation" is innovative. He identifies all the obsequious and humiliating measures of securing one's political well-being during the revolutionary years as a kind of political labor that kept churning out political commodities—one's own soul, relatives, and friends—commodities that one sold for the exchange of political profits. Gao argues that it was power, not money, that served as the equivalent of Marx's exchange value during the fifties and sixties (88).

27. Wang Ruoshui, "Tantan yihua wenti," 196.

28. Ibid., 195.

29. Ibid., 197.

30. Ferenc Fehér and Agnes Heller, "Are There Prospects for Change in the U.S.S.R. and Eastern Europe?" Praxis International 5, no. 3 (1985), 323-32.

31. Iring Fetscher, "Hegel, the Young Marx, and Soviet Philosophy: A Reply to E. M. Sitnikov," appendix to Marx and Marxism (New York: Herder and Herder, 1971), 342.

32. Erica Sherover-Marcuse, Emancipation and Consciousness: Dogmatic and Dialectical Perspectives in the Early Marx (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), 122.

33. Schram, Ideology , 49.

34. Many important issues related to the contemporary critique of the classical production paradigm cannot be fully explored here. One of the most well-known cases is Jean Baudrillard's questioning of the adaptability of the Marxian concepts of labor and production to postindustrial society. The dominant social form of advanced capitalism, according to Baudrillard, is not the commodity, but the sign. His intellectual agenda was clearly defined as freeing the Marxist logic from the confining context of political economy. See his The Mirror of Production , trans. Mark Poster (St. Louis: Telos Press, 1975). I do not feel well equipped to plunge into the debate as to whether the category of work and labor should be rejected in the contemporary context. It is, however, important to note that the material basis for the automatic growth of capital has changed dramatically in an age when capital assumes total mobility. Disembodied capital—the nonmaterial perception of production—that took the form of transnational buying and selling seems to replace the old concept of capital that was closely tied to labor and production in a fixed locale. Exchange no longer takes place between capital and labor, but between capital and capital. What this new form of exchange entails is, of course, the changing locus and nature of labor if we do not want to subscribe to Baudrillard's radical thesis of the total disappearance of labor.

35. Sherover-Marcuse, Emancipation , 126.

36. On the initiating capacity of the subject, see Wang Ruoshui, "Wo dui rendao zhuyi wenti de kanfa" (My views on the issue of humanism), in Wei rendao zhuyi bianhu , 273. On human beings as the subject of praxis and history, see Zhou Guoping and Jia Zelin, "Sulian zhexue," 242, 261.

37. Wang Ruoshui, "Ren shi Makesi zhuyi de chufa dian" (Human beings are the starting point of Marxism), in Wei rendao zhuyi bianhu , 201. Also see Zhou Yang, "Guanyu Makesi zhuyi," 8.

38. E. M. Sitnikov, "A Soviet Critique of 'Western' Interpretations of Marx," appendix to Marx and Marxism , 320-21. "If the self-awareness of the proletariat is idolized, as Hegel idolized the self-awareness of men in general by imagining it in the form of the absolute spirit of the world, then the entire historical process is identified with the idolized self-awareness of the proletariat and moves spontaneously forward" (321).

39. Most Western political commentators such as Brugger, Kelly, and Schram are more critical of Hu Qiaomu than of Wang and Zhou. All three of them confirm the existence of the three specific forms of alienation delineated by Wang and Zhou in their essays. Brugger, for instance, thinks that the proposition of socialist alienation is crucial to the working out of "a socialist telos which takes unalienated human nature as its goal" (150). See his "Alienation Revisited," The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs 12 (1984), 143-51.

40. Sanshi ti , 186.

41. Hu Qiaomu, "Guanyu rendao zhuyi," 60.

42. Jürgen Habermas, "On the Obsolescence of the Production Paradigm," in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures , trans. Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987), 75-82. Ludwig Nagl, "Obsolescence of the Production Paradigm?" in Alienation, Society, and the Individual: Continuity and Change in Theory and Research , ed. Felix Geyer and Walter R. Heinz (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1992), 17.

43. Habermas, "On the Obsolescence," 81.

44. Nagl, "Obsolescence," 19.

45. Victor Zitta, Georg Lukács' Marxism, Alienation, Dialectics, Revolution: A Study in Utopia and Ideology (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1964), 150. Georg Lukács, Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein: Studien über Marxistische dialektik (Berlin: Der Malik-Verlag, 1923), 184.

46. Huang Nansen, "Guanyu ren de ruogan lilun wenti" (On several theoretical questions regarding human beings), in Makesi zhuyi yu ren (Marxism and human beings), ed. The Department of Philosophy of Beijing University (Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 1983), 16, 15.

47. Brugger, "Alienation Revisited," 150.

48. I want to point out that both the revisionists and orthodox Marxists made the exclusive claim that there is only one single authentic Marx. For the former, what the young Marx propagated is the only true Marxism; for the latter, the only true Marxism is the scientific Marxism advocated by the mature Marx. The thesis of an integral Marxism was supported by those theorists who proposed the paradigm of socialist alienation.

49. See Zhao Fengqi, "Nansilafu zhexuejie guanyu ren he yihua wenti de yanjiu" (Studies on the problem of human beings and alienation in Yugoslavic philosophy), Zhexue yanjiu 1 (1981), 76-78. Also see Zhou Guoping and Jia Zelin, "Sulian zhexue," 241-89.

50. Ru Xin, director of the Philosophy Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of the Social Sciences, defends the historical continuity between the two Marxisms in his "Rendao zhuyi jiushi xiuzheng zhuyi ma? Dui rendao zhuyi de zairenshi" (Is humanism revisionism? Reacquainting with humanism), in Renxing rendao zhuyi wenti taolun ji , 25. But Ru Xin was forced to retract many of his earlier views after the campaign was launched against the humanists. His later antihumanist views are found in "Pipan zichan jieji rendao zhuyi, xuanchuan shehui zhuyi rendao zhuyi" (Criticize bourgeois humanism, promote socialist humanism) Renmin ribao , 9 January 1984, 5.

51. Zhao Fengqi, "Nansilafu zhexuejie guanyu ren he yihua wenti de yanjiu," 76-78.

52. Zhou Guoping and Jia Zelin, "Sulian zhexue," 266-67.

53. Wang Ruoshui, "Wei rendao zhuyi bianhu" (In defense of humanism), in Wei rendao zhuyi bianhu , 222.

54. Wang Ruoshui, "Ren shi Makesi zhuyi de chufa dian," 200.

55. In his essay on "Guanyu 'geming rendao zhuyi'" (Regarding "revolutionary humanism"), in Wei rendao zhuyi bianhu , Wang Ruoshui congratulates China on the popular currency of the two catchphrases "Marxist humanism" and "socialist humanism'' (236). In "Wo dui rendao zhuyi wenti de kanfa,'' Wang hails the emergence of the phrase "socialist humanism" as "the most important achievement" produced by the debate (263). There was, however, really no good reason for Wang Ruoshui to be overjoyed at this, because Hu Qiaomu never gave up the thesis that "revolutionary humanism is the precursor of socialist humanism." Because the former term was concocted by Mao, Hu stripped the proposition of socialist humanism of any modern connotations of humanism.

56. Hu Qiaomu, "Guanyu rendao zhuyi," 64.

57. Wang Ruoshui, "Wo dui rendao zhuyi wenti de kanfa," 255.

58. Huang Songjie, Wu Xiaoming, and An Yanming, Sate qi ren jiqi renxue (Sartre the man and his humanist philosophy)(Shanghai: Fudan daxue, 1986), 269-70.

59. Wang Shouchang, "Sate de cunzai zhuyi rendao zhuyi tantao" (An inquiry into Sartrean existentialist humanism), in Ren shi Makesi zhuyi de chufa dian , 223-34.

60. Wang Ruoshui, "Wei rendao zhuyi bianhu," 231.

61. Zhou Yang, "Guanyu Makesi zhuyi de jige lilun wenti de tantao," 4.

62. Brugger and Kelly cite a source from the Summary of World Broadcasts to the effect that Wang Ruoshui criticized Sartre's anti-essentialist stance. See Chinese Marxism , 140.

63. Wang Shouchang, "Sate," 239.

64. Alvin Gouldner, The Two Marxisms (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 34.

65. Herbert Marcuse, "Re-Examination of the Concept of Revolution," in Karl Marx and Contemporary Scientific Thought (The Hague: Mouton, 1969), 481.

66. Wei Jingsheng, "Who Should Take the Responsibility?" China Focus: A Publication of the Princeton China Initiative 1, no. 10 (November 1993), 1. The abridged essay is taken from the first article that Wei published after his release. It originally appeared in Open Magazine 11 (1993), published in Hong Kong.

67. See He Xin's "Lanse de xue" (Blue snow), Wang Meng's "Hudie" (Butterfly), Dai Qing's "Xueqiu" (Snowball), and Zong Pu's "Wo shi shei?" (Who am I?) and "Woju" (Snail shelter).

68. To cite one example of such a commonplace symposium: In early March 1993, three leading theoretical organs in Beijing— Wenyi bao, Wenyi yanjiu , and Wenxue pinglun —called for a meeting of literary theorists and critics to discuss the issues of humanism. Although criticizing the antihumanist inclination of the ultra-leftists during the revolutionary years, the symposium also listed the ideological "mistakes" committed by some writers in their depiction of human nature. See Renmin ribao , 8 March 1993, 5.

69. Zhu Guangqian, "Guanyu renxing, rendao zhuyi, renqingwei he gongtongmei wenti" (On the issues of human nature, humanism, human touch, and shared aesthetics), in Renxing rendao zhuyi wenti taolun ji , 182.

70. Liu Xinwu, "Wo shi wo ziji," Renmin ribao , 24 January 1986, overseas edition. The romantic celebration of human value and creative subjectivity actually started much earlier in China. It made its debut in 1974 in Wu Meng's underground collection of Ganyou geyin dongdi ai (Daring to sing songs that move the earth to sorrow), a volume published by Qishi niandai Biweekly in Kowloon. In 1978, with the establishment of an underground poetry magazine, Jintian (Today), another circle of poets and critics addressed the issues raised earlier in Wu's collection such as the unresolved contradiction between subjectivity and objectivity and between humanitarianism and class struggle. Reinforcing Wu Meng's conviction that the individual's subjectivity never fails to transcend its hostile objective environment, the Today writers first articulated the agony of the collectivized individual in terms of alienation understood as a nihilist feeling of being uprooted from their essence as authentic human beings. See Leo Lee, "The Politics of Technique: Perspectives of Literary Dissidence in Contemporary Chinese Fiction," in After Mao: Chinese Literature and Society , ed. Jeffrey C. Kinkley (Cambridge: The Council on East Asian Studies of Harvard University, 1985), 183.

71. Critic Lei Da dwells on the definition of the "paradoxical self" in his "Zhuti yishi de qianghua: Dui jinnian xiaoshuo fazhan de sikao" (The intensification of subjective consciousness: Thoughts on the recent development of narrative fiction), Wenxue pinglun 1 (1986), 121-25. Also see Lei Da, "Lun chuangzuo zhuti de duoyanghua qushi'' (On the tendency of creative subjectivity toward diverseness), Wenxue pinglun 1 (1986), 63-70. According to Lei, "Social conflicts and psychic contradictions of the writer's creative self correspond to each other. The change of social structure is closely related to the change in the psychic structure of the writer's creative self. . . . A writer who genuinely feels the pulse of his epoch will undoubtedly assimilate and reflect social conflicts and paradoxes through the medium of the consciousness of subjectivity" (69).

72. The Association of Chinese Writers and the Chinese Federation of Writers held a joint symposium in April 1993 to discuss the issues of humanism and alienation in conjunction with the publication of Hu Qiaomu's seminal essay "Guanyu rendao zhuyi he yihua wenti." In the symposium some writers suggested, in the spirit of reconciling the official line with their stance of critical realism (in opposition to revolutionary socialist realism), that "writing about contradictions is not tantamount to writing about alienation." See "Wenyi chuangzuo zhong yao genghao fanying shehui zhuyi rendao zhuyi" (Literary and artistic works should reflect socialist humanism better), Renmin ribao , 18 April 1984, 3. On "the heat wave of alienation," see Ye Lang, ''Kafuka: Yihualun lishiguan de tujiezhe" (Kafka: The interpreter of the historical view of the theory of alienation), in Rendao zhuyi he yihua wenti yanjiu (Beijing: Beida chubanshe, 1985), 186.

73. Gao Ertai, "Yihua xianxiang jinguan," 76.

74. Dai Houying, Ren a ren , 349.

75. Rensheng was published in Shouhuo 3 (1982), 4-90. "Wanxia xiaoshi de shihou" was published in Shiyue (October) 1 (1981), 77-134. See Bai Hua's analysis of "When the Sunset Clouds Disappeared" in his "Dangqian wenyi chuangzuo zhong de renxing rendao zhuyi wenti" (The question of human nature and humanism in current literary works), Wenyi lilun 1 (1984), 88-89. Bai's article was originally published in Wenyi lilun yanjiu 3 (1983), 27-38.

76. Rendao zhongnian was published in Shouhuo 1 (1980), 52-92. The Chinese reading public was moved by the moral integrity and humanist spirit that Lu Wenting, the protagonist of the novella, displays in her capacity as an altruistic doctor. The image of the suffering middle-aged intellectual also touched her counterparts in real life. Portrayed as flawless and completely selfless, Lu's appeal to Chinese readers consists in the unambiguous totality of her noble character. For a typical analysis of Lu Wenting, see Tang Zhi, "Wenxue zhong de renxing yu rendao zhuyi wenti: Du Hu Qiaomu tongzhi 'Guanyu rendao zhuyi he yihua wenti' biji" (The question of human nature and humanism in literature: Notes on my reading of comrade Hu Qiaomu's "On humanism and the question of alienation"), Wenyi lilun 4 (1984), 35. The essay was originally published in Wenyi bao 4 (1984), 31-39.

77. Gao Ertai, "Yihua jiqi lishi kaocha" (Alienation and its historical inquiry), in Ren shi Makesi zhuyi de chufa dian , 163.

78. Zong Pu, "Wo shi shei?" in Zong Pu xiaoshuo sanwen xuan (Selections of Zong Pu's short stories and essays)(Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1991), 39. The story was originally published in Changchun (Eternal spring) 12 (1979).

1. Zhang Yiwu, "Shide weiji yu zhishi fenzi de weiji" (The crisis of poetry and the crisis of intellectuals), Dushu 5 (1989), 77-82.

2. Liang Zhiping, "Chuantong wenhua de gengxin yu zaisheng" (The renewals and rebirth of traditional culture), Dushu 3 (1989), 13.

3. On scientific rationality, see Jin Guantao, Wode zhexue tansuo (My inquiry into philosophy)(Taibei: Fengyun shidai chubangongsi, 1989), 22.

4. Li Tuo was the main propagator of the notion of the "Mao Style" as early as in 1989. See his discussion of the notion in Li Tuo, Zhang Ling, and Wang Bin, "Yuyan de fanpan: Jinliangnian xiaoshuo xianxiang" (The rebellion of language: The trends of the last two years' fiction), Wenyi yanjiu 2 (1989), 79-80. After Li came to the States, he continued to sharpen his arguments on the Mao Style. He is now working on a manuscript on "Mao Style and Its Political Institutionalization." See note 19 in chapter four.

5. See Chen Lai, "Fulu: Sixiang chulu de sandongxiang" (Appendix: The three orientations in the outlets of thought), in Zhongguo dangdai wenhua yishi (Cultural consciousness of contemporary China), ed. Gan Yang (Hong Kong: Sanlian shudian, 1989), 581-87. Also see Chen Kuide, "Wenhua re: Beijing sichao ji liangzhong quingxiang" (Culture fever: Background, schools of thought, and two kinds of tendencies), in Zhongguo dalu dangdai wenhua bianqian , 1978-1989 (Cultural transformations of contemporary mainland China, 1978-1989), ed. Chen Kuide (Taibei: Guiguan tushu gufen youxian gongsi, 1991), 37-61.

6. The group of Culture: China and the World published a journal under the same name, printed by the Sanlian Bookstore in Beijing. It also published three subseries: a series in "The Library of Modern Western Academic Learning," another one in "The Library of New Knowledge," and the third one in "The Studies of the Humanities."

7. Lin Nan, "Local Market Socialism: Rural Reform in China" (paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, Pitts-burgh, Pa., August 1992, and at the conference "Great Transformation in South China and Taiwan," Cornell University, October 1992).

8. Han Shi, ed., Bashi niandai: Gaibian Zhongguo de sanshisanben shu (The 1980s: The thirty-three books that changed China)(Hong Kong: Tiandi tushu youxian gongsi, 1992), 13-14.

9. Ibid., quoting the concluding speech given by the head of Chinese People's Bank Chen Muhua in an international symposium on "China Faces Future" held on May 8, 1985.

10. Brugger and Kelly, Chinese Marxism , 43. Based on their analysis of an article written by Jia Xinmin (a contributor to the founding issue of the journal published by the "Marching Toward the Future" group), Brugger and Kelly implied that although Chinese futurology is "Marxist," it has "lost much of its recognizable Chinese flavor of optimism and triumphalism" (44).

11. Mao Zedong, "Sixty Points on Working Methods," in Mao Papers , ed. Jerome Ch'en (London: Oxford University Press, 1970), 64.

12. Wang Lin, "Shi juhao haishi wenhao?" (Was it a period or a question mark?), Dushu 5 (1989), 135.

13. In Li Tuo's talk "Literature as Social Practice in Contemporary China," given at the Asian/Pacific Studies Institute of Duke University on March 1, 1993, he discusses the significance of pizi as a cluster of "elements" that emerged with the deep penetration of urban reform into the cities during the late 1980s.

14. On residual modernity, see Tang Xiaobing, "Residual Modernism: Narrative of the Self in Contemporary Chinese Fiction," Modern Chinese Literature 7, no. 1 (1993), 7-31. On Chinese postmodernism, see Tang's "The Function of New Theory: What Does It Mean to Talk About Post-Modernism in China?" Public Culture 4, no. 1 (1991), 89-108. Tang was one of the critics in the early 1990s who wrote about "Chinese postmodernism." See my critique of the pseudoproposition of Chinese postmodernism in chapter six.

15. Gan Yang has been promoting the concept of the "alternative modern" since 1992, if not earlier. He stresses the importance of exploring the mechanism operating in rural Chinese industries. He argues that rural China ( xiangtu Zhongguo ) illustrates the unique pattern of "development without privatization," an economic law that contradicts the rationale of modernity understood solely in Western terms. See Gan Yang, "Wenhua Zhongguo yu xiangtu Zhongguo: Houlengzhan shidai de Zhongguo qianjing jiqi wenhua" (Cultural China and rural China: The prospects and culture of post-Cold-War China)(paper presented at the conference "Cultural China: Interpretations and Communications," Harvard University, September 3, 1992). In his edited volume China after 1989: An Alternative to Shock Therapy (New York: Oxford University Press, in press), he devotes a chapter to ''The Chinese Alternative to Privatization.'' In his unpublished proposal for the manuscript, he pinpoints the "uniqueness of the Chinese experience, expecially in comparison with its counterparts in Eastern Europe and the USSR."

16. Tu Weiming spoke of the monolithic versus pluralistic modernity that distinguished the May Fourth and contemporary Chinese experiment with the notion of modernity. See his Ruxue disanqi fazhan de qianjing wenti: Dalu jiangxue, wennan he taolun (Questions regarding the prospects of developing the third-stage Confucianism: Lectures, inquiries, and discussions during my trips to mainland China)(Taibei: Lianjing chuban shiye gongsi, 1989), 13.

17. Gan Yang, "Bashi niandai wenhua taolun de jige wenti" (Several questions about the Cultural Discussion of the 1980s), in Women zai chuangzao chuantong (We are creating tradition) (Taibei: Lianjing chuban shiye gongsi, 1989), 28.

18. See Chen Kuide, "Wenhua re," 50, and Su Xiaokang, "Dangdai Zhongguo de wenhua jinzhang" (The cultural tensions of contemporary China), in Zhongguo dalu dangdai wenhua bianqian , 1978-1989, 24-25.

19. Li Zhongming, "Cong fanziyouhua douzheng dao Lei Feng yangban (11)" (From the antiliberalism purge to the model of Lei Feng: Part 2), Zhongyang ribao , 13 March 1987, overseas edition, 2, based on a report in the Hong Kong political journal Zhengming (Contending) 3 (1987).

20. For a detailed discussion of the problematic enlightenment program propagated in the TV series, see chapter three, " Heshang and the Paradoxes of the Chinese Enlightenment." A slightly different version of the chapter was published in Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 23, no. 3 (1991), 23-33.

21. Yan Bofei, "Paoqi wutuobang: Du Hengtingdun Bianhua shehui zhong de zhengzhi zhixu " (Let go of utopia: Reading Huntington's "Political order in changing societies"), Dushu 2 (1989), 10.

22. Jin, Wode zhexue tansuo , 11-14.

23. Ibid., 51-52.

24. Ibid., 53 and 37.

25. Fu Weixun faulted Jin, whom he considered still a believer in scientific Marxism, for not abandoning Marxism completely. See Fu Weixun, "Zhongguo sixiangjie de Shate yu Bowa" (Sartre and de Beauvoir in China's intellectual arena), in Jin Guantao and Liu Qingfeng, Xingsheng yu weiji: Lun Zhongguo fengjian shehui de chaowending jiegou (Prosperity and crisis: On the ultrastability of Chinese feudal society) (Taibei: Fengyun shidai chuban gongsi, 1989), 26-27. Brugger and Kelly are more thoughtful in their effort to label Jin. They ascribe Jin's position to scientific Marxism and humanist Marxism respectively. According to them, Jin was able to "make a commitment to scientific rationality through . . . commitment to Marxism" ( Chinese Marxism , 7, emphasis in the original). They relegate Jin (together with Wang Ruoshui) to the camp of Marxist humanists who are aware of the need to "hold the line for a renewed Marxism'' against the "invasive forces of the irrational" (158).

26. Brugger and Kelly, Chinese Marxism , 61.

27. Jin and Liu, Xingsheng yu weiji , 8-13 and 44-51.

28. Ibid., 51-55.

29. Tu Weiming, "Dalu ruxue xindongxiang de hanyi" (The implications of the new development of mainland Confucianism), Zhongguo luntan 27, no. 7 (1989), 31.

30. One of the most frequently cited articles was written by Jin Guantao, Liu Qingfeng, and Fan Hongye, "Wenhua beijing yu kexue jishu jiegou yanbian" (Cultural background and the structural change of science and technology), in Kexue chuantong yu wenhua: Zhongguo jindai kexue luohou de yuanyin (Scientific tradition and culture: Reasons why modern Chinese science lagged behind), ed. the editorial board from Ziran bianzhengfa tongxun of the Academy of the Natural Sciences (Shannxi: Kexue jishu chubanshe, 1983).

31. Jin Guantao and Liu Qingfeng, "Kexue: Wenhua yanjiu zhong beihulue de zhuti" (Science: The neglected thesis of cultural studies), in Jin and Liu, Xingsheng yu weiji , 422.

32. Ibid., 428. Emphasis is mine.

33. Jürgen Habermas, "The Undermining of Western Rationalism through the Critique of Metaphysics: Martin Heidegger," in The Philosophical Discourse , 113.

34. Yu Wujin, "Lun dangdai Zhongguo wenhua de jizhong beilun" (On some contradictory theses regarding contemporary Chinese culture), Renmin ribao , 23 August 1988, overseas edition.

35. Jin, Wode zhexue tansuo , 53.

36. Li Zehou, Zhongguo xiandai sixiang shilun , 46-47.

37. When I was in China during the latter half of 1987, Haideng fashi (Haideng the High Priest) was the most popular series on TV. During conversations with Chinese friends and strangers whom I met on trains and on the streets, I learned that the popularity of Taiji boxing and qigong since the mid-1980s had a lot to do with the popular imagination of magic healing and Daoist occultism.

38. The debate involved May Fourth celebrities Hu Shi, Chen Duxiu, and Liang Qichao, representative figures in different ideological camps. Because the cultural agenda of China at that time was inextricably subjugated to the historical imperative of national survival, the terms of debate were inevitably overdetermined by the utilitarian concerns of the reconstruction of social mores ( shehui gaizao ), for which issues of worldview ( rensheng guan ) appeared far more urgent than those of methodology. As a result, the May Fourth debate was cast in arguments voiced between those who advocated a deterministic scientific worldview that claimed to lay bare historical processes and those who clung to an old humanistic worldview self-enclosed in the local ideology of free will, self-cultivation, and intuitive reasoning.

39. Su Xiaokang, "Dangdai Zhongguo de wenhua jinzhang," 21, 23.

40. As early as 1948, Mou Zongsan classified the history of Chinese Confucianism into three different stages of development. He raised the problematic of "Confucianism of the third stage" that included the systems of thoughts represented by Liang Shuming and his peers such as Zhang Junli, Xiong Shili, Feng Youlan, Qian Mu, Tang Junyi, and Xu Fuguan. Mou traced the Confucian tradition of the Dao back to the first stage (the period from Confucius, Mencius, and Xunzi to Dong Zhongshu of Han Dynasty) and the second stage (the neo-Confucian learning of Song and Ming Dynasty). Tu Weiming reiterated the principle of Mou Zongsan's classification while emphasizing that the contemporary revival of neo-Confucianism during the 1980s served as the continuation of the third stage ruxue that Mou's generation pioneered, and that the completion of the third stage ruxue depends upon the younger generation such as Cai Renhou, Liu Shuxiang, and himself.

41. For creative transformation of neo-Confucianism, see Tu Weiming, "Rujia chuantong de xiandai zhuanhua" (The modern transformation of Confucian tradition), "Chuantong wenhua yu Zhongguo xianshi" (Traditional culture and Chinese reality), and "Chuangzao de zhuanhua'' (Creative transformation), in Ruxue disanqi fazhan de qianjing wenti , 3-144.

42. Tu Weiming was prolific in his writings about neo-Confucianism. For a detailed account of his thoughts on Confucianism of the third stage, see "Ruxue disanqi fazhan de qianjing wenti: 1, 2 & 3" (The problems about the future development of the Confucianism of the third stage: 1, 2 & 3), Mingbao yuekan , 21, no. 1 (1986), 27-32; 21, no. 2 (1986), 36-38; and 21, no. 3 (1986), 65-68. Yu Yingshi, "Zhongguo jinshi zongjiao lunli yu shangren jingshen" (Religion and ethics in modern China and the spirit of merchants), Zhishi fenzi (Intellectuals) 2, no. 2 (1986), 3-45.

43. Arif Dirlik, "Post-Socialism/Flexible Production: Marxism in Contemporary Radicalism," Polygraph 6/7 (1993), 149.

44. Song Zhongfu, Zhao Jihui, and Pei Dayang, Ruxue zai xiandai Zhongguo (Confucianism in modern China ) (Zhengzhou: Zhongzhou guji chubanshe, 1991), 377.

45. Ibid., 418-30.

46. Yang Bingzhang, "Guanyu ruxue disanqi he Zhongguo wenhua de qiantu" (Regarding Confucianism of the third stage and the future of Chinese culture), in Zhongguo dalu dangdai wenhua bianqian , 163.

47. Song, Zhao, and Pei, Ruxue zai xiandai Zhongguo , quoting Zhang Dainian, 355.

48. Between August 31 and September 4 in 1987, The China Foundation of Confucius held a joint international conference with the Research Institute of East Asian Philosophy in Singapore at Qufu. The main theme of the conference was the revalorization of Confucianism as a cultural model for East Asian industrial nations. The Weberian influence was evident. In October 1989, on the 2540th anniversary of the birth of Confucius, another international symposium on Confucianism was held in Beijing. Ibid., 357-58.

49. Li Zonggui, "'Xiandai xinrujia sichao yanjiu' de youlai he Xuanzhou huiyi de zhengming" (The origin of "studies on modern neo-Confucian thoughts" and the debates at the Xuanzhou Conference), in Xiandai xinruxue yanjiu lunji (The collection of essays on modern neo-Confucianism), ed. Fang Keli and Li Jinquan (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 1989), 1: 333-35.

50. Tu, "Dalu ruxue," 31.

51. In his interviews with Tu Weiming, Xue Young raised the issue of the potential misuse of Confucianism in mainland China. Tu Weiming also recognized that it was difficult for Confucianism to attain a "healthy development" in China. Though it is understandable that Xue Young might feel constrained to discuss the issue, Tu's unwillingness to examine the question more thoroughly gives the impression that he wishes to promote a Chinese neo-Confucian revival at any cost. His evasiveness about the problematic implications of the neo-Confucian renaissance in the context of mainland Chinese politics is disturbing. See Tu's Ruxue disanqi fazhan de qianjing wenti , 57. On the Party's involvement in Confucian revivalism, see Yang Bingzhang, "Guanyu ruxue," 167.

52. Song, Zhao, and Pei, Ruxue zai xiandai Zhongguo , 447.

53. Su Xiaokang, "Dangdai Zhongguo de wenhua jinzhang," 27.

54. Su Xiaokang attributes the onset of the Fever to the cultural and spiritual rebellion of Chinese intellectuals against the tyrannical rule of a homogeneous ideology. Ibid., 31. Chen Kuide summarizes the activities of the Cultural Discussion in terms of a pan-culturalism that took form in the intellectuals' critique of the regime under the disguise of an all-out cultural critique. See Chen Kuide, "Wenhua re," 51-55. Both critics presuppose that the Cultural Discussion was targeted at an antagonist—sometimes named as the Party, sometimes as the socialist system, but most of the time, as a vague combination of both.

55. In the following two sections on instrumental and substantive rationality, I will make frequent references to the information given in the following articles: Wang Hongzhou, "Gang-Tai xuezhe dui Zhongguo chuantong wenhua de yanjiu: Jinnianlai guanyu Zhongguo wenhua wenti yanjiu zhongshu" (Researches of Hong Kong and Taiwan scholars on Chinese traditional culture: A summary of the studies of the problems of Chinese culture in recent years), Renmin ribao , 30 May 1989, overseas edition, 2; Wang He, "Ruhe pingjia chuantong wenhua: Jinnianlai guanyu Zhongguo wenhua wenti yanjiu zongshu" (How to evaluate traditional culture: A summary of the studies of the problems of Chinese culture in recent years), Renmin ribao , 27 May 1989, overseas edition, 2; Li Cunshan, ''Zhongguo chuantong wenhua yu Zhongguo xiandaihua: II" (Chinese traditional culture and Chinese modernization: A sequel) Renmin ribao , 20 August 1986, overseas edition, 2; Guo Qiyong, "Guanyu jinnianlai Zhongguo wenhua he Zhongxi wenhua bijiao yanjiu de pingjie" (Comments on Chinese culture studies and the comparative studies of Chinese and Western cultures in recent years), Renmin ribao , 3 December 1986, overseas edition, 2. A longer version of this article was published in Dongfang de liming: Zhongguo wenhua zouxiang jindai de licheng (The dawn in the east: The journey of Chinese culture toward modern times), ed. Feng Tianyu (Chengdu: Bashu shushe, 1988), 464-82. Other articles that helped my understanding of the neo-Confucian revival include "Guanyu Zhongguo chuantong wenhua de xingzhi'' (Regarding the nature of traditional Chinese culture"), Qiusuo (Quest) 2 (1988); "Gaige yu chuantong wenhua moshi de zhuanhuan" (Reform and the transformation of the models of traditional culture), Jinyang Xuekan (Jinyang journal) 3 (1988); "Lun dangdai Zhongguo wenhua de neizai chongtu" (On the internal conflicts of contemporary Chinese culture), Fudan Xuebao (Fudan journal) 3 (1988); "Zhongguo chuantong wenhua 'hexie' tezheng de fansi" (Reflections on the characteristics of "harmony" in Traditional Chinese Culture), Tianjin shehui kexue (Tianjin social sciences) 5 (1988); "Guanyu Zhongguo chuantong wenhua de zhengti fansi yu chaoyue" (Thoughts on the totalizing introspection and transcendence of traditional Chinese culture), Xuexi yu tansuo (Learning and exploration) 4 (1988).

56. A typical argument from the middle ground can be found in Feng Tianyu, "Dai xuyan: Zhongguo wenhua de jindaihua wenti" (Preface: The issues of the modernization of Chinese culture) in Dongfang de liming , 9-10. Feng pointed out that Japan's modernization could not be exclusively attributed to Confucianism because Japan benefited primarily from its creative utilization of Western learning that was introduced into the country in the mid-nineteenth century.

I need to point out that all the major players (advocates as well as critics) overseas and at home in the neo-Confucian revivalism were male intellectuals. I believe that what is at stake in the potential breakdown of Confucian values is not simply tradition or communal values, but patriarchal elitism, and in more specific terms, the privileged status of the gendered power elite—the legitimate guardians and owners of hard-core and orthodox knowledge. This may in part explain why the spokespeople of neo-Confucianism were exclusively male. It is understandable that female scholars were not interested in propagating a state philosophy from which they had nothing to gain for thousands of years. But it surprised me that Chinese women scholars did not seize this opportunity to join the male critics of neo-Confucianism in critiquing the five hierarchical relations ( wulun ) that victimized them for thousands of years.

57. Mou Zongshan, Zhang Junli, Tang Junyi, and Xu Fuguan published their manifesto "Zhongguo wenhua yu shijie" (Chinese culture and the world) simultaneously in Hong Kong's Minzhu pinglun (Commentaries on democracy) and the Taiwan journal Zaisheng (Rebirth).

58. Han Qiang, "Xiandai xinruxue yanjiu zhongshu (1986-87)" (A synthetic account of the studies of modern neo-Confucianism (1986-87), in Xiandai xinruxue yanjiu lunji , 1: 346-49, quoting Zhu Riyao, Cao Deben, Sun Xiaochun, Mao Dan, and Bao Zunxin.

59. Ibid., 347, quoting Bao Zunxin.

60. For mainland Chinese scholars, modern neo-Confucianism is firmly grounded in the moral metaphysics of lixue , especially in the "Learning of the Mind" ( xinxing ) represented by Wang Yangming and Lu Jiuyuan's School. See Fang Keli, "Guanyu xiandai xinrujia yanjiu de jige wenti" (Several questions regarding the studies of modern neo-Confucianism), in Xiandai xinruxue yanjiu lunji , 1: 2; Li Zonggui, "'Xiandai xinrujia sichao yanjiu,''' 336, quoting Hu Xiao.

61. This response was made by Chen Kuide during my conversation with him at the "Culture China" conference, Princeton University, May 4, 1991.

62. Chen Kuide, "Wenhua re," 48.

63. Introductions about Marcuse, Adorno, and Horkheimer were seen in academic journals here and there. One of the typical presentations can be seen in Zhao Yifan, "Falankefu xuepai lümei wenhua piping" (The Frankfurt School and overseas culture criticism), Dushu 1 (1981), 34-43.

64. Max Horkheimer, Eclipse of Reason (New York: Oxford University Press, 1947), 174, 183.

65. "Chinese Dissent, Ready to Wear," Harper's , February 1993, 23.

66. Liu Xiaobo, "Yinzi: Fanchuantong yu Zhongguo zhishi fenzi" (Foreword Antitradition and Chinese intellectuals), in Xuanze de pipan: Yu sixiang lingxiu duihua (Choice and critique: A dialogue with the leader of philosophy ) (Taibei: Fengyun shidai chuban gongsi, 1989), 1-11. Liu propagated a "thorough break from traditional concepts" (5). In order to accomplish that goal, Liu argued that Chinese intellectuals have to take Western culture as the referential framework for their construction of Chinese modernity.

67. Chen Lai is perhaps the first who used the term "hermeneutics" to characterize Gan Yang's thoughts. See Chen Lai, "Fulu," 582-83. Zhang Xudong followed suit in ''The Political Hermeneutics of Cultural Constitution: Reflections on the Chinese 'Cultural Discussion' (1985-1989)" (working paper in Asian/Pacific Studies, Asian/Pacific Studies Institute, Duke University, 1994).

68. Feng Tianyu, "Dai xuyan," 6. Feng named several regions, including the mid- and lower-stream of the Yangzi River and the region surrounding the Pearl River, as locales where traces of the "capitalist mode of production" could be detected: textile and pottery industry, mining, and smeltery. Also see Xiao Shafu, "Zhongguo zhexue qimeng de kanke daolu" (The rugged path of the enlightenment [movement] in Chinese philosophy), in Dongfang de liming , 17.

69. Xiao Shafu, "Zhongguo zhexue qimeng de kanke daolu," 23-25.

70. Feng Tianyu, "Cong Ming Qing zhiji de zaoqi qimeng wenhua dao jindai xinxue" (From the early enlightenment culture of Ming and Qing to the new learning of the modern era), in Dongfang de liming , 52.

71. Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse , 58.

72. Fang Yizhi's concept of jinxin (to exert one's heart and mind) called for a thorough utilization of the intuitive nature of wisdom—a concept that keeps pace with Mencius' notion of liangzhi (innate knowledge), Daoists' wuzhi zhi zhi (knowledge that does not know), and the Buddhists' banruo (prajna) . Fang had the reputation of being half scientific and half religious. He tried to transcend all three traditional systems of thought but remained deeply embedded within them at the same time. For a detailed analysis of his thinking, see Wang Yu, "Du Fang Yizhi 'Dongxi jun'" (Reading "East-West equilibrium"), in Ming Qing sixiangjia lunji (A collection of essays on the Ming-Qing philosophers) (Taibei: Lianjing chuban shiye gongsi, 1981), 211-29, especially 212, 218-19.

73. Yu Wujin, "Lun dangdai Zhongguo wenhua de jizhong beilun," 2.

74. Wang Fuzhi, "Tun," in Zhouyi waizhuan in Zhongguo xueshu minzhu jinshi yuyi (Recent interpretations and translation of the classical Chinese Great Books), ed. the Xi'nan Books Editorial Committee (Taibei: Xi'nan shuju, 1972), 5: 115.

75. See Huang Zongxi, "Yuan jun," "Yuan chen," "Yuan fa," in Mingyi daifang lu , in Zhongguo xueshu minzhu jinshi yuyi , 5: 3-5, 7-9, 10-11.

76. Huang Zongxi, "Caiji 3," in Minyi daifang lu , in Zhongguo xueshu minzhu jinshi yuyi , 5: 32.

77. Tang Zhen, "Daming," in Qianshu in Zhongguo xueshu minzhu jinshi yuyi , 5: 245, 257.

78. Xu tended to comply. Fang tended to critically select. See Zhang Yongtang, "Fang Yizhi yu xixue" (Fang Yizhi and Western learning), in Zhongguo zhexue sixiang lunji , ed. Yu Yingshi, Xiang Weixin, and Liu Fuzeng (The collection of essays on Chinese philosophy and thought) (Taibei: Mutong chubanshe, 1976), the Qing volume, 200.

79. Liang Qichao, "Ming Qing zhijiao Zhongguo sixiangjie jiqi daibiao renwu" (The field of Chinese philosophy at the transition between Ming and Qing dynasty and its representative figures), in Zhongguo zhexue sixiang lunji , the Qing volume, 6.

80. Tu, "Ruxue disanqi fazhan de qianjing wenti," 310, 308-9. Li Zehou agrees with Tu on this point. He cites Gu Yanwu's pragmatic spirit as a good example of the learning of waiwang (the kingliness without) emphasized by modern and contemporary neo-Confucianists. See Li Zehou, Zhongguo gudai sixiang shilun (On the history of ancient Chinese history of thought) (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1985), 278.

81. Xiao Gongquan, Zhongguo zhengzhi sixiang shi (The history of Chinese political thought) (Taibei: Wenhua University Press, 1980), 2: 607-10.

82. See ibid., 622, and Yu Yingshi, "Qingdai sixiangshi de yige xinjieshi" (A new interpretation of the intellectual history of the Qing Dynasty), in Zhongguo zhexue sixiang lunji , 5: 11-48, originally published in Zhonghua wenhua fuxing yuekan (The Chinese cultural renaissance monthly) 9, no. 1. Although Gu Yanwu and Huang Zongxi earned reputations as anti- lixue thinkers, Yu Yingshi demonstrates that they both had deep ties with the "Learning of Reason," the neo-Confucian school of the Cheng-Zhu sect.

83. Yu Yingshi, "Qingdai sixiangshi de yige xinjieshi," 29.

84. Some mainland cultural critics of the post-Mao era have begun to comment on the paradoxes of Chinese enlightenment movements that failed throughout modern Chinese history. Yu Wujin's "Dangdai Zhongguo wenhua de jizhong beilun" is one example. Even Liu Zaifu, a representative of cultural elite, dwells at length on the personality split from which the May Fourth generation suffered by being caught in two conflicting cultural models. See Liu Zaifu, "Liangci lishixing de tupo: Cong 'Wusi' xinwenhua yundong dao xinshiqi de 'xiandai wenhua yishi'") (Two historical breakthroughs: From the "May Fourth'' New Culture Movement to "modern cultural consciousness" of the new era), Renmin ribao , 27 April 1980, overseas edition, 2. This kind of critique was accompanied by a small handful of articles that emerged toward the end of the 1980s to question the concept of utopia. The two critiques—that of enlightenment and that of utopia—were parallel discourses that could lead to the long overdue discussions of the paralogics of Chinese enlightenment. Besides Yan Bofei's "Paoqi wutuobang," an example of such discourse is Wang Meng, ''Fanmian wutuobang de qishi" (The revelation of reverse utopianism), Dushu 2 (1989), 44-47. Both essays call for anti-utopianism.

85. Gan Yang, "Ruxue zai xiandai Zhongguo de jiaose yu chulu" (The role and prospects of Confucianism in modern China), in Women zai chuangzao chuantong , 1, 2.

86. Ibid., 10, 7. Gan Yang quotes from Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France —"We compensate, we reconcile, we balance"—to suggest that the modern mission and function of Confucianism consists in its compensatory role to help modernity achieve its equilibrium.

87. Ibid., 20-21.

88. Ibid., 6, 21.

89. Chen Kuide, "Wenhua re," 47.

90. Gan's manifesto appears in "Bashi niandai," 70. His proposal of "conservationism"—crystallized in his paper "The Role and Prospects of Confucianism in Modern China"—was delivered at an international conference on "The Questions and Prospects about the Development of Confucianism" held in Singapore in August 1988.

91. Chen Lai mentions briefly Gan Yang's significant departure from the hermeneutic tradition of Gadamer. He emphasizes Gan's negative definition of the concept of tradition. Indeed, in his 1985 article "Bashi niandai wenhua taolun de jige wenti," Gan denies the existence of a tradition (of which Confucianism forms a major part) that stands outside of the hermeneutic enclosure of modernity. Tradition, in other words, is subordinate to modernity. Tradition can never recreate itself from its own standpoint. Only modernity can achieve the task. Very little was said about the subtle transition from Gan's earlier phase of neartotal negation of tradition to his middle career of conservationism. See Chen Lai, "Fulu," 583.

92. Gan Yang, "Bianzhe qianyan" (Editor's preface), in Zhongguo dangdai wenhua yishi , iii. It is also worth noting Gan's views about the sequence of events that led to the June Fourth crackdown in 1989. The crackdown served to reinforce Gan's antiradicalism and his conviction that revolution is not the best solution to China's dilemma. I had a lengthy conversation with Gan in Chicago in January 1993, during which we exchanged views on a variety of subjects pertaining to the politics of post-Mao China. His antiradicalist stance is expressed most clearly in the draft of a proposal for his manuscript China after 1989 .

93. Gan, "Ruxue zai xiandai Zhongguo de jiaose yu chulu," 22.

94. Gan, "Bashi niandai," 32.

95. Ibid., 30.

96. Zhang Xudong, "The Political Hermeneutics," 38-39.

97. Gan, "Bashi niandai," 55.

98. For his critique of "anxiety consciousness," see Gan Yang, "Ziyou de linian: Wusi chuantong zhi queshimian" (The ideal concept of freedom: The blind spots of the May Fourth tradition), Dushu 5 (1989), 12-13.

99. I am referring to Gan Yang's project China after 1989 . The draft of his proposal stresses the "uniqueness of the Chinese [economic] experience" in comparison with its counterparts in Eastern Europe and the USSR. Gan reaffirms the perspective of "gradualist reform" as a way of ''avoiding radical revolution" (1-2).

100. See the outline of Gan Yang's talk "Wenhua Zhongguo yu xiangtu Zhongguo," 1-5. Also see the draft proposal of his China after 1989 .

101. Zhang Xudong, "On Some Motifs in the Chinese 'Cultural Fever' of the Late 1980s: Social Change, Ideology, and Theory," Social Text 39 (summer 1994), 154.

102. Those who were closely associated with the committee (Chen Lai and Zhang Xudong, for instance) would disagree with me by arguing that Gan Yang's hermeneutic school occupied a central position in the Cultural Discussion. Both gave the school considerable coverage in their articles on the Cultural Discussion while leaving out the qimeng school completely. I need to emphasize that although all the discourses created during the Cultural Discussion were elitist, the hermeneutic school was twice-removed from the public because of its strong affiliation with the academy. Furthermore, the school's adoption of unfamiliar Western theoretical vocabulary of hermeneutics mystified and alienated many participants of the Cultural Discussion. Its position as a cultural discourse both during and after the Cultural Discussion is therefore marginal.

103. The traditional term qimeng invokes the beginning act of education in which a child departs from the state of ignorance with first lessons in learning how to read and write. In late Qing, the term incorporated the meaning of being enlightened with the knowledge of modernity.

104. Li Zehou, "Response to Lin Yu-sheng" (paper presented at the roundtable discussion of neo-Confucianism at the annual meeting of the Asian Studies Association, Washington, D.C., 26 March 1993).

105. Li Zehou, Pipan zhexue de pipan: Kangde shuping (Critiquing the critique of philosophy: On Kant), rev. ed. (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1986), 56-57. Li contrasts Hegel with Kant by emphasizing the former's theoretical focus on the "objective realistic struggles of the human subject." How to study the "subjective psychological composition" of human subjectivity, a Kantian thesis, constitutes, in Li's view, the most important problematic of the contemporary inquiry into the Communist philosophy of humanity.

106. Ibid., 56.

107. Li Zehou, "Manshuo xiti Zhongyong," in Zhongguo xiandai sixiang shilun , 419-20.

108. Ibid., 420, 421.

109. For case studies of rural economy, see N. C. Sen, Rural Economy and Development in China (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1990), especially 137-206. Also see Chengxiang xietiao fazhan yanjiu (Research on the urbanrural coordinated development), ed. Zhou Erliu and Zhang Yulin (Nanjing: Jiangsu renmin chubanshe, 1991). For the proposal of "rural China," see Gan, "Wenhua Zhongguo yu xiangtu Zhongguo," 2.

110. Li Zehou, "Manshuo xiti zhongyong," 424.

111. Ibid., 421.

112. For his discussion of China's cultural-psychological formation, see Li Zehou, Zhongguo gudai sixiang shilun , 32-34.

113. Ibid., 34-35, emphasis mine.

114. Li Zehou, "Manshuo xiti zhongyong," 426.

115. At the convention in March 1993, in his talk "Response to Lin Yusheng," Li Zehou also emphasized that both "sedimentation" and "cultural-psychological formation'' are not closed concepts.

116. Li Zehou, Zhongguo gudai sixiang shilun , 319.

117. Ibid., 322.

118. Ibid., 277-98.

119. Ibid., 322.

120. Li Zehou, Pipan zhexue , 436, n. 2.

121. Li Zehou, Zhongguo gudai sixiang shilun , 322.

122. Li Zehou, Pipan zhexue , 423-24, 435.

123. Ibid., 94.

124. Li Zehou, "Manshuo xiti zhongyong," 427-28.

125. Perry Anderson, Considerations on Western Marxism (London: Verso, 1979), 82. Emphasis is in the original text.

126. Li Zehou, Zhongguo gudai sixiang shilun , 316.

127. Anderson, Considerations , 82.

128. Li Zehou, Pipan zhexue , 362.

129. A quick look at Li Zehou's blanket condemnation of Western Marxism reveals a curious logic that spells out the subtle correspondence between Western Marxism and Maoism in his system of thought. What upsets Li Zehou the most (the section on Western Marxists is marred with a kind of raw emotionalism rarely seen in his writings) is labeled in a shorthand fashion as "subjectivism," "voluntarism," "individualism,'' "antagonism'' to the concept of "historical determinism" and their failure to recognize the objective laws of the motion of the forces of production (ibid., 358-59). Although Li Zehou stops short of openly evoking the name of Mao Zedong, his attacks on Western Marxists' turning away from economics and politics to the study of superstructures (cultural ideology in particular) and his sharp criticisms of their alleged indifference to the objective laws of society and history unmistakably evoke the memories of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, both of which were attributed to Mao's faith in voluntarism.

130. Ibid., 199.

131. Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923-50 (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1973), 4, 64.

132. Herbert Marcuse, Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory , rev. ed. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1960), 322.

133. Li Zehou, Pipan zhexue , 363.

134. Jay, The Dialectical Imagination , 280. Li Zehou, Pipan zhexue , 363.

135. Li Zehou, Zhongguo gudai sixiang shilun , 29.

136. Li Zehou, "Response to Lin Yu-sheng," 7.

137. Li Zehou, Zhongguo gudai sixiang shilun , 29.

138. Li Zehou, Pipan zhexue , 56-67.

139. Li Zehou, "Response to Lin Yu-sheng," 9.

140. For his discussion of shehui shijian , see Li Zehou, Pipan zhexue , 258.

141. Ibid., 340, 204.

142. Li Zehou, Zhongguo gudai sixiang shilun , 37.

143. In August 1987 when I visited the city with my students on the Duke Study in China Program, we danced in the square in the evenings and marveled at the temple's transformation from a religious shrine to a secular fairground at night. During the day, we could wander into the compound free, but in the evenings, tickets were sold at the main gate for admission.

144. Xu Junyao mentioned "fever for 'knowledgeable elements'" in his "Zhishi fenzi he xiandai shehui: Cong Gelanxi dao xinzuopai de sikao" (Intellectuals and modern society: From Gramci to the New Left), Dushu 9 (1988), 23.

145. See the section on "Liu Zaifu: The Master Grammarian of the Subject" in chapter five, "Romancing the Subject."

146. See Lin Jianchu's introduction to the book, "Yibu kaituoxing de zhuzuo: Ping Lei Zhenxiao Zhongguo rencai sixiangshi (diyi juan) ," Renmin ribao , 28 November 1986, overseas edition, 2.

147. Li Cunshan, "Zhongguo chuantong wenhua yu Zhongguo xiandaihua: II," 2.

148. There was a backlash starting in late 1985 on Zhang Xianliang's gender politics and on his portrayal of Zhang Yonglin, the main protagonist in his trilogy. Critiques were focused on Half of a Man Is a Woman . A typical review characterizes Zhang Yonglin as a hypocrite rather than a hero. Negative assessments of Zhang Yonglin abound. See Huang Ziping, "Zhengmian zhankai ling yu rou de bodou" (Positively unfold the fight between soul and flesh), Wenhui bao , 7 October 1985; Lu Rongchun, "Zhanshi de zitai yanbuzhu beique de linghun" (The posture of a warrior cannot hide a mean soul), Zuoping yu zhengming (Literary works and contending views) 2 (1986). Both articles were reprinted in a collection of critical essays Ping "Nanren de yiban shi nüren '' (On "Half of a man is a woman"), ed. by Ningxia People's Publishers (Yinchuan: Ningxia renmin chubanshe, 1987), 1-3, 62-67.

149. Liu Xiaobo, "Wufa huibi de fansi: You jibu zhishi fenzi ticai de xiaoshuo suo xiangdaode" (An unavoidable introspection: Thoughts triggered by several novels on the subject of intellectuals), Wenyi lilun (Theories of literature and the arts) 12 (1986), 177.

150. Ibid., 175.

151. This excerpt was taken from a report on Fang Lizhi's lectures at Beijing University, "Fang Lizhi zai Beida yanjiang luyin jielu" (Summaries of Fang Lizhi's talks at Beida), Zhongyang ribao , 3 February 1987, overseas edition. For a critique of Fang Lizhi, see Richard C. Kraus, "The Lament of Astrophysicist Fang Lizhi: China's Intellectuals in a Global Context," in Marxism and the Chinese Experience , ed. Arif Dirlik and Maurice Meisner (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1989), 294-315.

152. Liu Zaifu, "Liangci lishixing de tupo," 2.

153. Liu Zaifu, Renlun ershiwuzhong (Treatises on twenty-five human species) (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1992), 52-60.

154. Ibid., 60.

1. Heshang 's critics included vice president Wang Zhen, overseas Nobel prize celebrities Yang Zhengning and Li Zhengdao, and Taiwan nationalist intellectual Yan Yuanshu. Zhao Ziyang was one of the few upper echelon Party leaders who endorsed the series. He reportedly gave Singapore's premier Lee Kuan Yew videotapes of the documentary as a personal gift. After the second broadcast, major newspapers such as Renmin ribao, Guangming ribao, Wenyi bao, Zhongguo qingnian bao, Jingji ribao, Beijing qingnian bao , and Wenhui bao sponsored endless discussion sessions on the miniseries and published numerous articles and editorials on the debate over the documentary.

2. Zhong Huamin et al., eds., Chongping "Heshang" (Reassessing "Yellow River elegy") (Hangzhou: Hangzhou daxue chubanshe, 1989), 1. Hereafter, I will refer to this edition of Heshang as CPHS . It is important to note that serious discrepancies exist between the various versions of Heshang texts in different publications. The specific entries of Heshang cited in this article appeared both in CPHS and in the TV documentary.

3. The script of Heshang was produced by a team of writers and scholars. In its printed form, the writing of the script was generally credited to Su Xiaokang and Wang Luxiang. In this essay, for convenience of citation, I refer to Su as the principal scriptwriter. Su Xiaokang, "Longnian de beichuang" (The sorrows of the year of the dragon), in Ziyou beiwanglu (A memorandum of freedom) (Hong Kong: Joint Publishing Co., 1989), 264.

4. Wang Zhihuan, "Deng Guanque Lou," Tangshi sanbaishou xiangxi (Taibei: Zhonghua shuju, 1972), 274. Wang's five-character jueju , which contains the famous line "The Yellow River flows into the sea," is a nature poem in which one finds the harmonious blending of the poet's physical eye and his mind's eye. The landscape of the spatial expanse is both physical and mental.

5. The translation is Frederic Wakeman's. See his "All the Rage in China," New York Review of Books , 2 March 1989, 3, 19. Prior to this finale, the tyrannical personification of the river as a "wreaker of havoc" is heard throughout the documentary, especially in the fifth episode, "Sorrows and Crises." See CPHS , 248-66.

6. From August to November 1989, Renmin ribao launched an editorial project entitled "One Hundred Mistakes in Heshang ." The project cites specific errors and conceptual fallacies that the scriptwriters of the documentary are said to have committed.

7. Wakeman, "All the Rage in China," 21.

8. Xiao Xu, " Heshang lunzheng qingkuang zongshu," in CPHS , provides an overview of the various critiques of Heshang . Wang Gaoling and Wu Xin argue in one critique that what the documentary reflects is nothing other than a deeprooted feeling of frustration brought about by an unjustifiable "competitive consciousness" of the intellectuals who seek to recapture the global hegemonic position that China once occupied.

The most detailed account of the tensions between enlightenment ( qimeng ) and saving the nation ( jiuguo ) that tore apart, and finally compromised, the May Fourth intellectuals is provided by Vera Schwarcz, The Chinese Enlightenment: Intellectuals and the Legacy of the May Fourth Movement of 1919 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986). Whereas Schwarcz argues that "enlightenment became first and foremost a means through which Chinese intellectuals defined themselves" (292), I would supplement her argument by pointing out that enlightenment became first and foremost a means through which Chinese intellectuals empowered themselves.

9. See Schwarcz, The Chinese Enlightenment , 240-82. It is worth noting that since June 1989, the Chinese government has renewed the slogan of aiguo zhuyi (patriotism) with such unprecedented fervor that the slogan appears on almost every important political occasion. Most notably, the 1990 annual May Fourth commemoration was marked by an important speech given by Jiang Zemin, "Aiguo zhuyi he woguo zhishi fenzi de shiming" (Patriotism and the mission of our intellectuals), Renmin ribao , 4 May 1990. The title of Jiang's speech spells out the thematic consistency that the party officials have always voiced in combating their resurgent nemesis—the alternative interpretation of May Fourth—namely, enlightenment.

10. Li Zehou, Zhongguo xiandai sixiang shilun , 19.

11. Liu Zaifu and Lin Gang, Chuantong yu Zhongguo ren (Hong Kong: Sanlian shudian, 1988), 255-79.

12. Schwarcz, The Chinese Enlightenment , 283.

13. Li Zehou, Zhongguo xiandai sixiang shilun , 45. The emphasis is mine.

14. In his own critique of Heshang after his escape from China, Su Xiaokang confessed that the documentary suffered many conceptual biases, one of which he characterized as "blaming the culture instead of the system for China's problems." See "Zai Bali xiangqi Caishikou: Liuwang ganhuai" (Thinking of Caishikou at Paris: Recollections in exile), Baixing 202 (16 October 1989), 3.

15. For discussion of the European Enlightenment, see Lucien Goldmann, The Philosophy of the Englightenment , trans. Henry Maas (Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1973), 27. According to the rationalist tradition of the Enlightenment, if every individual rationally pursues his or her own self-interest and happiness, the general interest of society will be fulfilled at the same time.

16. As if to resolve the unsettled ambiguity of this one-liner, the production team of Heshang chose May Fourth as the subject of its sequel. Unfortunately the sequel project was aborted in the turbulent year of 1989. See Yan Zisha, " Heshang jiemeipian Wusi liuchan ji" (The demise of the twin project of River elegy —"May Fourth"), Baixing 201 (1 October 1989), 36-37.

17. Su Xiaokang himself was not totally unaware of the problematic legacy of the movement. He once remarked, "The New Culture Movement, a possible symbol of the rising sun, marched right into a labyrinth on the very same day of the fourth of May." See Fang Xian'gan, " Heshang de quanpan xihua de zhuzhang" (The views on total westernization in River elegy ), in CPHS , 126, quoting Su Xiaokang's discussion of the May Fourth Movement. Seen in this light, Su Xiaokang's proposal that Chinese history start over again from May Fourth could signify the recovery of the original motivating force of the New Culture Movement, in other words, the agenda of enlightenment, before it is subsumed into the program of patriotism.

18. The classical Chinese writing tradition is dominated by the retroactive stance of writers and critics alike. Not only do Chinese literati feel the anxiety of continuing the great heritage of the Five Classics—their gaze is always turned backwards to the past in awe and nostalgia—but in the same vein, this complex of "return" is also manifested in one of the major characteristics of traditional evaluative criticism. Premodern commentators rely upon a small repertory of ancient texts as their aesthetic criterion, by means of which they make their assessment of both classical and contemporary literary and historical texts. Throughout the literary history of imperial China, one finds critics who obsessively return to those canonical texts whose orthodox and sacred stature encounters little challenge. Working in the name of "evaluation," they are particularly fond of tracing the source of influence of a new style to an older one, and in extreme cases, of identifying the moment of origination.

19. Hayden White, Metahistory (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), 128. White characterizes China as a "theocratic despotism" that operates on the "metaphorical apprehension of its civilizational projects." In such a historical field, formal distinctions between separate entities are eliminated and absorbed into the subjectivity of the sovereign who alone assigns and distributes meaning.

20. Zhang Guangxian argues that the emergence of the dragon as the totem symbol for the Chinese is a fairly recent fiction. He also argues against the association between dragon worship and the Yellow River civilization. See his article "Cong lishi de shijiao ping Heshang " (Critiquing River elegy from the viewpoint of history), Guangming ribao , 23 August 1989, 3. Another critic ridicules Su for relying on the fictional logic provided in the movie The 1894 Sino-Japanese War to explain the defeat of the Chinese fleet. See Zhong Huamin, "Zuowei zhenglunpian de Heshang " ( River elegy as a political docu-commentary), in CPHS , 9. Still other critics dismiss Su Xiaokang's theory of the mysterious affinity between the color yellow and the yellow skin of the Chinese people.

21. Lu Xun, "Changcheng" (The Great Wall), in Lu Xun quanji (The complete works of Lu Xun) (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1973), 3: 63.

22. For the discussion of the Enlightenment Society, see James D. Seymour, ed., The Fifth Modernization: China's Human Rights Movement, 1978-79 (Stanfordville, N.Y.: Human Rights Publishing Group, 1980). Also see Schwarcz, The Chinese Enlightenment , 300-301.

23. One can conjure up half a dozen such symbols that characterize traditional Chinese culture: lotus flower, stone tortoise, engraved stone steles, jade pendant, the yin-yang circle, the ancestral tablet, and so on.

24. Yan Zisha, " Heshang jiemei," 37, quoting Su Xiaokang.

1. Liu Suola, "Lantian lühai," in Zhongguo dalu xiandai xiaoshuo xuan (The collection of modern short stories of mainland China) (Taibei: Yuanshen chubanshe, 1987), 1: 123. The story was originally published in Shanghai wenxue 6 (1985), 12-29.

2. In examining "aesthetic modernity" in this chapter, I focus on narrative fiction. Poetry, drama, the fine arts, and films are not treated here.

3. Ji Yanzhi, "Zai youyige lishi zhuanzhedian shang: Jinian 'Wu Si' yundong qishi zhounian" (At another turning point of history: In commemoration of the seventieth anniversary of the May Fourth Movement), Renmin ribao , 3 May 1989, overseas edition, 2.

4. Yang Yi, Wenhua chongtu yu shenmei xuanze (Cultural conflict and aesthetic choice) (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1988), 304.

5. Li Zhun listed eight categories from "rebellious consciousness" to "perturbations of the soul" in his essay "'Xiandai yishi' he tade canzhaoxi" ("Modern consciousness" and its referential framework), Wenyi lilun (Theories of literature and the arts) 9 (1986), 105. The essay was originally published in Guangming ribao , 21 August 1986. On consciousness of subjectivity, crisis consciousness, and critical and pluralistic consciousness, see Pan Kaixiong, '' Wenyi bao yaoqing bufen wenyi lilunjie renshi zuotan 'Wenxue yu xiandai yishi' wenti" ( The newspaper of literature and the arts invited some representatives of literary criticism for a symposium on the problem of ''Literature and modern consciousness"), in Zhongguo wenyi nianjian: 1987 (The almanac of Chinese literature and the arts: 1987) (Beijing: Wenhua yishu chubanshe, 1988), 63.

6. One such official showcase was a symposium held by Wenyi bao (Newspaper of literature and the arts) in July 1986, only months before the students' demonstration and the most serious setback of reform that ended in Hu Yaobang's ouster and the official onslaught against bourgeois liberalism in early 1987. The title of the symposium, "Literature and Modern Consciousness," however innocuous it may appear at first glimpse, should have sent signals of warnings to those writers whose wish to delink literature and ideology had failed throughout modern history. Symposia of this kind conjure up memories of censorship campaigns and perpetuate the commonly held view that there is an agonistic relationship between literature and politics in China. The naming of the symposium implied the target of censure: those writers who dared to redraw the semantic boundary of "modern consciousness" and interpolate the signifying space of the neologism mapped out earlier by the Party.

7. Pan Kaixiong, "Yi xiandai yishi fanying xiandai shenghuo" (Reflecting modern life by means of modern consciousness), Wenyi lilun 8 (1986), 11-12.

8. Wu Yuanmai, "Guanyu xiandai yishi he wenyi de sikao" (Reflections on [the relationship between] modern consciousness and literature and the arts), Wenyi lilun 10 (1986), 49. The essay was originally published in Wenyi bao , 20 September 1986.

9. Ibid., 50.

10. Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge , trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 79.

11. Su Wei, "Wenxue de 'xungen' yu 'huayu' de shanbian: Luelun xifang xiandai zhuyi wenxue sichao dui baling niandai Zhongguo wenxue de yingxiang" (The "root-searching" of literature and the change of ''discourse'': On the influence of the literary trends of Western modernism on Chinese literature of the 1980s), in Zhongguo dalu dangdai wenhua bianqian , 187, 204.

12. Sun Shaozhen, "Xinde meixue yuanze zai jueqi" (A new aesthetic principle is rising abruptly), in Xifang xiandai pai wenxue wenti lunzheng ji (The collection of essays on the controversy over the problems of Western modernist literature), ed. He Wangxian (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1984), 1: 323-33. The essay was originally published in Shikan (Poetry magazine) 3 (1981). It is worth noting that Sun Shaozhen's essay and the two other articles—Xie Mian's "Xinren de jueqi" (The rising of new talents) and Xu Jingye's "Jueqi de shiqun" (The rising constellation of poetry)—were later labeled as the "Three Risings" and turned into a major target for the campaign of "Antibourgeois Liberalism."

13. Frederick R. Karl, Modern and Modernism: The Sovereignty of the Artist 1885-1925 (New York: Atheneum, 1985), xiv.

14. Martin Jay, "Habermas and Modernism," in Habermas and Modernity , ed. Richard J. Bernstein (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985), 126.

15. Liu Xiaobo, "Yizhong xinde shenmei sichao: Cong Xu Xing, Chen Cun, Liu Suola de sanbu zuopin tanqi" (A new kind of aesthetic trend: Commenting on the three works by Xu Xing, Chen Cun, and Liu Suola), Wenxue pinglun 3 (1986), 37.

16. Xu Zidong, "Xiandai zhuyi yu Zhongguo xinshiqi wenxue" (Modernism and the new-era literature in China), Wenxue pinglun 4 (1989), 27.

17. On roundabout strategies, see Su Wei, "Wenxue de 'xungen' yu 'huayu' de shanbian," 193.

18. Ibid.

19. Li Tuo coined the term Mao wenti in early 1989 to conceptualize the dilemma in which culture elite such as Liu Zaifu and realist writers were helplessly immersed. Li would not have been able to formulate the notion of Mao wenti if the language fever had not taken root in the establishment of literary criticism around the mid-1980s. Without the awkward explorations undertaken by his peers and predecessors into the systematizing function of language, and in fact, without their earlier aborted attempts to search for aesthetic rationality through the medium of the linguistic sign, there is no telling whether Li Tuo would have ever aspired to examine the field of ideology and Maoism as a social phenomenon structured semiotically by linguistic codes.

In Li Tuo's view, the ideological constraints that prevented critics such as Liu Zaifu from departing completely from Marxian dialectics were a common bondage from which the generation of Cultural Revolution attempted to struggle free in vain. Li bid farewell to the prosaic formulation of ideology as consciousness. What he was interested in examining was not the political legitimation of Maoism achieved through the means of violent suppression, but the institutionalization, in various sectors of Chinese society, of the dominant discursive form he called the Mao Style. In short, Li Tuo interpreted Maoism as a system of linguistic signs. The hegemony of Maoism in China was established not through the brutal means of "classic authoritarianism," but materialized in a complex process whereby the Party orchestrated a total "control of public discourse[s] and representation" by resorting to a "comprehensive network'' of institutional practices such as "meetings, study groups, personnel organization, and [a] pervasive file system.'' Li Tuo was one of the first critics in contemporary China who conceptualized language as the site in which the social individual is constructed. In the works written by Li Tuo and his fellow travelers Huang Ziping and Meng Yue, we finally witness the genuine blossoming of an aesthetic rationality that made possible, for the first time in China, an analysis based on the assumption that all social practices can be understood as signification, a specific semiotic system construed by its own codes and rules. Language, to be understood as a discursive system rather than abstract categories such as "human nature," "ideology," "system rationalization," and "sociohistorical consciousness," emerged as the central category of aesthetic modernity as the decade drew to an end.

Li Tuo's reflections on language in relation to history and to representations of social relations opened the route toward a new understanding of the literary history of post-Mao China. It was the battle over language, according to Li, rather than the battle over ideology (humanism versus alienation, modernism versus realism, or bourgeois liberalism versus socialism), that constituted the determinate category that captured the profound historical experience of China's postrevolutionary literature. Having identified the Mao Style as the site of contestation where different groups strove for the (re)production of meaning, Li Tuo deciphered the history of the entire decade in terms of the struggle of Chinese writers against the hegemony of Mao Style. Those who failed in this epochal struggle (among them, writers of the wounded literature and intellectuals such as Feng Youlan and Ba Jin) reproduced the discourse of Mao while making a false claim to ideologically critique Maoism (Li Tuo, "Mao Style and Its Political Institutionalization," unpublished proposal for research, Duke University, spring 1993, 2). Pursuing this line of argument, Li Tuo proclaimed that, contrary to conventional wisdom, it was not the wounded literature but Misty poetry that truly marked the beginning of the "new-era literature." The linguistic revolution that Misty poets initiated was an authentic revolution because it "provided for the Chinese people a different system of signs while destroying the Mao Style'' (Li, "Xiandai hanyu yu dangdai wenxue" [Modern Mandarin Chinese and contemporary literature], Xindi (New earth) 1, no. 6 (1991), 40). In the same manner, Li Tuo valorized the other two literary movements that he perceived to be direct descendants of Misty poetry: the xungen school in the mid-1980s and the experimentalist fiction in the late 1980s. Instead of joining the other critics in condemning as ideologically regressive the root-searching writers' return to cultural myths, Li interpreted their backward-looking consciousness in terms of the quest for a ''cultural code totally different from the Mao Style" (41). Needless to say, the real feast of subversion was prepared and delivered by the irreverent experimentalists, whose obsession with radical linguistic games led to the total bankruptcy of the discursive system of Maoism.

By postulating the "Mao Style," Li Tuo rescued the problematic of language from the practitioners of system sciences by whom language was seen as nothing more than a formal instrument of articulation separable from the issues of agency and ideology. For Li Tuo, language constitutes the locale where the social, historical, and individual intersect. It is, in short, the site of contestation and resistance at the same time. Possibilities of inquiries into the constitutive subjectivity in language were thus opened up for those theorists who wished to examine what orthodox Marxism has traditionally repressed: the question of the subject, of language, and of their articulation with each other in relation to ideology. If "any kind of discourse represents the formation of power that suppresses and excludes... [and] controls the thinking of human beings through the process of its suppression and exclusion of other discourses" (39), then not only is resistance bound to begin with the liquidation of the authoritative discourse, but more importantly, the formation of a new subjectivity has to begin with the construction of a new discursive system. Li Tuo's materialist rereading of language as a potential means of subjugating and liberating subjectivity suggests that we look at the formation of subjectivity as a constitutive moment in language using. This view has certainly come a long way from Liu Zaifu's theory of subjectivity that presupposed the structural equilibrium and closure of the human subject. The thesis of the Mao Style was suggestive of the infinite possibilities of the reformulation of subject-positions in the breakdown of previous discursive positionality.

20. Chen Huangmei et al., eds., Zhongguo xinwenyi daxi: 1976-1982 shiliao ji (Chinese new art and literature series: Collection of historical materials between 1976-1982) (Beijing: Zhongguo wenlian chuban gongsi, 1990), 900-907.

21. All three letters—Feng Jicai's "Zhongguo wenxue xuyao 'xiandai pai': Gei Li Tuo de xin" (Chinese literature needs the "modernist school": A letter to Li Tuo), Li Tuo's "'Xiandai xiaoshuo' bu dengyu 'xiandai pai': Gei Liu Xinwu de xin" ("Modern fiction'' is not equal to ''modernist school": A letter to Liu Xinwu), and Liu Xinwu's "Xuyao lengjing de sikao: Gei Feng Jicai de xin" ([We] need calm reflection: A letter to Feng Jicai)—were originally published in Shanghai wenxue 8 (1982). See all three letters in Xifang xiandai pai wenxue wenti lunzheng ji , 2: 499-519.

22. Liu Xinwu, "Zai 'xin qi guai' mianqian: Du Xiandai xiaoshuo jiqiao chutan " (In the face of "the new, the strange, and the grotesque": Reading The preliminary inquiry into the techniques of modern fiction ), in Xifang xiandai pai wenxue wenti lunzheng ji , 2: 528. The essay was originally published in Dushu 7 (1982).

23. Feng Jicai, "Zhongguo wenxue xuyao 'xiandai pai,'" 505.

24. Liu Xinwu, "Xuyao lengjing de sikao," 519.

25. Feng Jicai, "Zhongguo wenxue xuyao 'xiandai pai,'" 501.

26. Li Tuo, "'Xiandai xiaoshuo' bu dengyu 'xiandai pai,'" 512, 510.

27. Tang Xuezhi, "Yijiu baer nian wenyi lilun yanjiu gaishu" (General account of studies on literary theory in 1982), in Zhongguo xinwenyi daxi , 438.

28. Chen Danchen, "Yetan xiandai pai yu Zhongguo wenxue: Zhi Feng Jicai tongzhi de xin" (Additional discussion of the modernist school and Chinese literature: A letter to Comrade Feng Jicai), in Xifang xiandai pai wenxue wenti lunzheng ji , 2: 566.

29. Arguing against Dai Houying, Geng Young proclaims that realism did not form an antagonistic relationship with modernism. He dismisses her arguments that the rise of modernism necessitated its struggle to break away from the constraints inherent in realism. See Geng Young, "Xiandai pai zenyang he xianshi zhuyi 'duikang': Zheli ye bunengbu sheji mouzhong xianshi zhuyi lilun xianxiang" (How modernists "confronted" realism: Here one cannot but speak of a certain theoretical phenomenon of realism), in Xifang xiandai pai wenxue wenti lunzheng ji , 2: 378-79.

30. Yan Zhaozhu, "Wenxue bentilun de xingqi yu kunhuo: Xinshiqi shinian wenyi lilun yanjiu saomiao" (The rise and confusion of the ontological theories of literature: A quick glance at the study of literary theories of the new era during this decade), Wenyi yanjiu 4 (1989), 199, quoting from "Xuanzhuan de wentan" (A revolving literary field), Wenxue pinglun 1 (1989).

31. For binarism between modernism and realism in terms of representational methods, see Li Tuo, "Lun 'geshi geyang de xiaoshuo'" (On "Fiction of various varieties"), in Xifang xiandai pai wenxue wenti lunzheng ji , 2: 542-43; Peng Lixun, "Cong xifang meixue he wenyi sichao kan 'Ziwo biaoxian' shuo: Shi 'xinde meixue yuanze' haishi jiudiao chongtan?" (Examining the theory of "self-expression" from the perspective of Western aesthetics and literary trends: Was it a "new aesthetic principle" or the replaying of an old tune?), in Xifang xiandai pai wenxue wenti lunzheng ji , 1: 350-66.

32. Xu Zidong, "Xiandai zhuyi yu Zhongguo xinshiqi wenxue," 28.

33. Xu Chi, "Xiandai hua yu xiandai pai" (Modernization and modernism), in Xifang xiandai pai wenxue wenti lunzheng ji , 2: 396, 399. Also see Li Zhun's rebuttal of Xu Chi's argument that modernism went hand in hand with modernization. Li Zhun, "Xiandai hua yu xiandai pai youzhe biran lianxi ma?" (Is there necessarily a connection between modernization and modernism?), in Xifang xiandai pai wenxue wenti lunzheng ji , 2: 414.

34. Xu Zidong, "Xiandai zhuyi yu Zhongguo xinshiqi wenxue," 31.

35. Xu Chi, "Xiandai hua yu xiandai pai," 399.

36. Li Tuo, "'Xiandai xiaoshuo' bu dengyu 'xiandai pai,'" 507-13.

37. Both Li Tuo and Xu Zidong raised the counterproposition of "pseudorealism." See Li Tuo, "Yetan 'wei xiandai pai' jiqi piping" (Further discussions of "pseudomodernism" and its criticism), Beijing wenxue 4 (1988), 5, 8. Also see Xu Zidong, "Xiandai zhuyi yu Zhongguo xinshiqi wenxue,'' 32. According to Xu, the appropriation of European realism in Mao's China underwent a career similar to that fared by modernism in post-Mao China: origin-tracing (i.e., Shi Jing [The book of songs] cited as the earliest Chinese origin of realism), voluntary invitation, selective borrowing of realistic methods, and homogenization.

38. Wang Bi, "Ming Xiang," in Zhouyi luelie, Wang Bi ji jiaoshi , ed. Lou Yulie (Beijing: Xinhua shuju, 1980), 2: 609.

39. Gan Yang, "Cong 'lixing de pipan' dao 'wenhua de pipan'" (From "The critique of rationality" to "The critique of culture"), in Zhongguo dangdai wenhua yishi , 574.

40. For a more detailed discussion of Taoist poetics, see the author's The Story of Stone: Intertextuality, Ancient Chinese Stone Lore, and the Stone Symbolism of "Dream of the Red Chamber," "Water Margin," and "The Journey to the West" (Durham: Duke University Press, 1992), 31-33.

41. The origin of the term wenxue benti lun is no longer traceable. It has been widely adopted by literary critics since the mid-1980s. On wenxue yuyanxue , see Huang Ziping, "Deyi mo wangyan" (Do not forget the linguistic sign once meaning is grasped), Shanghai wenxue 11 (1985), 86.

42. He Xilai, "Yijiu bawu nian Zhongguo wenxue yanjiu nianjian qianyan" (Preface to the 1985 almanac of the studies of Chinese literature), Wenyi lilun 12 (1986), 9.

43. On aesthetic synthesis, see Albrecht Wellmer, "Reason, Utopia, and the Dialectic of Enlightenment ," in Habermas and Modernity , 48.

44. Astradur Eysteinsson, The Concept of Modernism (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990), 26.

45. He Xilai, "Yijiu bawu nian," 14.

46. Bai Hua, "Guanyu fangfalun wenti de zhengming: Jinnianlai wenyi lilun wenti tantao gaishu zhier" (Regarding the debates and discussions over the problems of methodologies: Sequel to the summary of the inquiries into the problems of literary theories in recent years), Wenyi lilun 5 (1986), 47. The article was originally published in Renmin ribao , 21 April 1986.

47. Wu Yumin, "Xunqiu renwen jiazhi he kexue lixing jiehe de qidian" (In search of the point of convergence between humanist values and scientific rationality), in "Yuyan wenti yu wenxue yanjiu de tuozhan" (Exploration and development of language problems and literary studies), Wenxue pinglun 1 (1988), 62-64.

48. Pan Kaixiong and He Shaojun, "Kunnan, fenhua, zonghe" (Difficulties, differentiations, synthesis), in "Yuyan wenti yu wenxue yanjiu de tuozhan," 65. Wu Xiaoming, "Biaoxian, chuangzao, moshi" (Expression, creation, model), in "Yuyan wenti yu wenxue yanjiu de tuozhan,'' 60.

49. On the scientific model of literary studies, see Xu Ming, "Wenxue yanjiu yao jinxing siwei biange" (Literary studies have to undergo a thought reform), in "Yuyan wenti yu wenxue yanjiu de tuozhan," 68. On alienation, see Wu Xiaoming, "Biaoxian, chuangzao, moshi," 59.

50. Lin Xingzhai, "Lun xitong kexue fangfalun zai wenyi yanjiu zhong de yunyong" (On the application of system science methodology to the study of arts and literature), Wenyi lilun 2 (1986), 33. The article was originally published in Wenxue pinglun 1 (1986), 48-56.

51. He Xilai, "Yijiu bawu nian," 11. Cheng Jincheng, "Zhongguo xiandai wenxue jiazhi guannian xitong lungang" (The outline of the system of the concept of value in modern Chinese literature), Wenxue pinglun 3 (1989), 26-37.

52. Ji Hongzhen, "Wenxue piping de xitong fangfa yu jiegou yuanze," Wenyi lilun yanjiu 3 (1984). Lin Xingzhai, "Lun A Q xingge xitong," Lu Xun yanjiu 1 (1984) 46-54. Li Zehou, Meide licheng (Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 1981). Wu Gongzheng, Xiaoshuo meixue (Nanjing: Jiangsu wenyi chubanshe, 1985).

53. Li Zehou, Meide licheng , 1.

54. On social ethos, see ibid., 27. On cultural-psychological formation, see Li Zehou, Zhongguo gudai sixiang shilun , 32.

55. Chen Feilong, "Wenyi kongzhilun chutan" (A preliminary inquiry into the control theory of arts and literature), Wenyi lilun 3 (1986), 29. The article was originally published in Wenyi yanjiu 1 (1986), 20-24.

56. Chen Pingyuan, Huang Ziping, and Qian Liqun, "Lun 'Ershi shiji Zhongguo wenxue,'" Wenxue pinglun 5 (1985), reprinted in " Ershi shiji Zhongguo wenxue" sanren tan (Conversations between Chen Pingyuan, Qian Liqun, and Huang Ziping on "Twentieth-century Chinese literature") (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1988), 1-26.

57. On literary studies and "open-door consciousness," see He Xilai, "Yijiu bawu nian," 18.

58. Chen, Huang, and Qian, "Guanyu 'Ershi shiji Zhongguo wenxue' de duihua," 101, 103, quoting Chen Pingyuan, and 30, quoting Huang Ziping.

59. Ibid., 30, quoting Huang Ziping.

60. Ibid., 31 and 77. Chen, Huang, and Qian, "Lun 'Ershi shiji Zhongguo wenxue,'" 25. Chen, Huang, and Qian, "Guanyu 'Ershi shiji Zhongguo wenxue' de duihua," 32, quoting Qian Liqun.

61. Ibid.

62. Ibid., 94-95, 100. Chen Pingyuan and Huang Ziping, "Xiaoshuo xushi de liangci zhuanbian" (The two transformations of the narrative form of fiction), Beijing wenxue 9 (1988), 67. Both Huang Ziping and Chen Pingyuan speak of their revulsion to the revolutionary doctrine in relation to their projections of how they would write the literary history of modern China. Both critics deny the cause of the Revolution by questioning the logic of rupture. In Huang's view, the Revolution's emphasis on ruptures did not bring about real changes in Chinese society. It was symptomatic of a deep structural stability of Chinese society instead. Chen Pingyuan's ironic critique of the doctrine in question is particularly poignant: Rebellion is not necessarily correct, revolution is not necessarily beneficial" (68).

63. Chen Yong, "Xuyao jiaqiang jichu lilun de yanjiu" ([We] need to strengthen the studies of our foundation theories), in Zhongguo wenxue yanjiu nianjian: 1985 , ed. Editorial Committee (Beijing: Zhongguo wenlian chuban gongsi, 1986), 4.

64. Wang Yuanhua, "Guanyu muqian wenxue yanjiu zhong de liangge wenti" (With regard to the two problematics of contemporary literary studies), Wenyi lilun 8 (1986), 109. The article was originally published in Wenhui bao , 11 August 1986.

65. Li Xinfeng, "Shenru tantao fangfalun nuli fazhan wenyixue: Wuhan wenyixue fangfalun xueshu taolunhui zongshu" (Go deeply into the examination of the theories of methodology, develop diligently the science of arts and literature: A general account of the symposium on the Theories of Methodology of Arts and Literature at Wuhan), Wenyi lilun 3 (1986), 20, quoting Zhou Lequn.

66. Lin Xingzhai, "Lun xitong kexue fangfalun zai wenyi yanjiu zhong de yunyong," 30-33.

67. Li Dongmu, "Xiandai wenxue yanjiu yu xitong kexue fangfa yizhi" (The studies of modern literature and the transplantation of the scientific methods of system theory), Wenyi lilun yanjiu 3 (1985), 29.

68. See Ji Hongzhen, "Wenxue piping de xitong fangfa yu jiegou yuanze."

69. Song Yaoliang, "Wenxue xinsichao de zhuyao shenmei tezheng yu biaoxian xingtai" (The major aesthetic characteristics and the modes of manifestations of the new literary trend), Shanghai wenxue 6 (1987), 77.

70. Bai Hua, "Guanyu fangfalun wenti de zhengming," 47.

71. Lin Xingzhai, "Lun xitong kexue fangfalun zai wenyi yanjiu zhong de yunyong," 29.

72. Qian Jing, "Yuqiong qianli mu, gengshang yiceng lou: Ji Yangzhou wenyixue fangfalun wenti xueshu taolun hui" (If you desire to look far into the distance, climb up to the next story: Proceedings of the Yangzhou Conference on the Issues of Methodologies of the Studies of Literature and the Arts), Wenxue pinglun 4 (1985), 50-55.

73. Liu Zaifu was the first critic who theorized on the proposition that "literature is renxue ." See his "Lun wenxue de zhutixing" (On the subjectivity of literature), in Shengming jingshen yu wenxue daolu (The spirit of life and the path of literature) (Taibei: Fengyun shidai chuban gongsi, 1989), 83-144; "Wenxue yanjiu yingyi ren wei siwei zhongxin" (Literary studies should take human beings as its cognitive center), in Wenxue de fansi (Introspections of literature) (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1988), 40-53; and "Zhongguo xiandai wenxueshi shang dui ren de sanci faxian'' (The three discoveries of humanity in the history of modern Chinese literature), in Xunzhao yu huhuan (Searches and invocations) (Taibei: Fengyun shidai chubanshe, 1989), 33-48. Also see Liu Heng, ''Wenxue de youji zhengtixing he wenxue lilun de xitongxing" (The organic totality of literature and the systematical nature of literary theory), Wenyi bao 11 (1984), 65-68; and Wu Liang, "Fangfa de yongtu" (Applications of methodologies), Wenyi bao , 31 August 1985. On the "ontology of literature," see Liu Zaifu, "Wenxue yanjiu siwei kongjian de tuozhan" (The expansion and development of the cognitive space of literary studies), in Wenxue de fansi , 1-39.

74. Liu Zaifu, "Wenxue yanjiu siwei kongjian de tuozhan," 3.

75. Liu Zaifu, "Lun wenxue de zhutixing," 84.

76. See chapter seven, "Wang Shuo—'Pop Goes the Culture?'" for a detailed exploration of the "Wang Shuo phenomenon."

77. Liu Zaifu, "Lun wenxue de zhutixing," 88.

78. Liu, "Lun renwu xingge de erchong zuhe yuanli" (On the principle of the dual composition of fictional character), in Shengming jinshen yu wenxue daolu , 6.

79. Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse , 112.

80. On art and one-dimensional society, see Jay, Habermas and Modernity , 126.

81. Yang Yu, "Wenxue: Shique hongdong xiaoying yihou" (Literature: After losing its sensational impact), Renmin ribao , 12 February 1988, overseas edition. I do not agree with Yang Yu's assessment of the new aesthetic trends that have emerged since the mid-1980s. But his general comments on the implications of the differentiation of literature into "serious" and popular brands are poignant and worth noting.

82. Li Zehou and Liu Zaifu, "Wenxue yu yishu de qingsi: Li Zehou yu Liu Zaifu de wenxue duihua" (Emotive thoughts in literature and arts: A literary dialogue between Li Zehou and Liu Zaifu), Renmin ribao , 14 April 1988, overseas edition.

83. "'Xinxieshi xiaoshuo dalianzhan' juanshouyu" (Introduction to the volume of "The grand exhibition of new realist fiction"), Zhongshan 3 (1989), 4.

84. Wang Meng, "Dangqian wenxue gongzuo zhong de jige wenti" (Several problems in literary studies at the present), Hongqi 24 (1985), 16-19.

85. He Shaojun and Pan Kaixiong, "Zhen yu wei: Guanyu 'wei xiandai pai' taolun de duihua" (The true and the false: A dialogue on the discussions of "pseudomodernism"), Zuojia 10 (1988), 79, quoting Li Tuo.

86. Ibid.

87. Ernesto Laclau, preface to The Sublime Object of Ideology , by Slavoj Zizek (London: Verso, 1989), xiv.

88. Huang Ziping, "Guanyu 'wei xiandai pai' jiqi piping" (Regarding "pseudomodernism" and its critiques), Beijing wenxue 2 (1988), 9.

89. On the symposium, see "Mianxiang xinshiqi wenxue di'erge shinian de sikao" (Speculations on facing the second decade of the new-era literature), transcribed by Tan Xiang, Wenxue pinglun 1 (1987), 44-50.

90. He Xin, "Dangdai wenxue zhong de huangmiugan yu duoyuzhe: Du 'Wuzhuti bianzou' suixianglu" (The sentiments of absurdity and the superfluous being: Random notes on reading "Variations without a theme"), Dushu 11 (1985), 3-13.

91. Wang Ning, "Guifan yu bianti: Guanyu Zhongguo wenxue zhong de xiandai zhuyi he houxiandai zhuyi" (Norm and mutations: Regarding modernism and postmodernism in Chinese literature), Zhongshan 6 (1989), 157-58.

92. Mu Gong, "Xiang Sate gaobie: Jianping Xin xiaoshuo pai yanjiu bianxuanzhe xu" (Farewell to Sartre: With an accompanying review of the editor's preface to The study of "nouveau roman" ), Dushu 3 (1988), 65.

93. Ibid., 68.

94. "Mianxiang xinshiqi wenxue di'erge shinian de sikao," 48, quoting Zhang Yiwu.

95. Huang Ziping, "Guanyu 'wei xiandai pai,'" 5.

96. He Xin, "Dangdai wenxue zhong de huangmiugan yu duoyuzhe," 12.

97. Mu Gong, "Lun 'wei xiandai pai'" (On "pseudomodernism"), Mengya 5 (1988), 63.

98. Liu Xiaobo, "Weiji! Xinshiqi wenxue mianlin weiji" (Crisis! The newera literature is facing crisis), Wenyi lilun 12 (1986), 168-69. The essay was originally published in Shenzhen qingnian bao , 3 October 1986.

99. Ibid., 169.

100. Ibid., 173.

101. Huang Ziping, "Guanyu 'wei xiandai pai,'" 4.

102. Zhang Shouying, "'Wei xiandai pai' yu 'xiti zhongyong' boyi" (A rebuttal of "pseudomodernism" and ''Western substance, Chinese application"), Beijing wenxue 6 (1988), 53, 55, 57.

103. Xu Zidong, "Xiandai zhuyi yu Zhongguo xinshiqi wenxue," 32.

104. Li Tuo, "Yetan 'wei xiandai pai' jiqi piping," 8.

105. Ibid.

106. Xu Zidong, "Xiandai zhuyi yu Zhongguo xinshiqi wenxue," 32.

107. Chen Sihe, "Zhongguo wenxue fazhan zhong de xiandai zhuyi: Jianlun xiandai yishi yu minzu wenhua de ronghui" (The modernism in the developing Chinese literature: With an accompanying reflection on the merging of modern consciousness and national culture), Shanghai wenxue 7 (1985), 86. Ji Hongzhen, "Zhongguo jinnian xiaoshuo yu xifang xiandai zhuyi wenxue [shang]" (Recent Chinese fiction and Western modernist literature: 1), Wenyi bao , 2 January 1988, 3.

108. Yang Yi, Wenhua chongtu yu shenmei xuanze , 324.

109. Wang Ning, "Guifan yu bianti," 158.

110. Gao Xingjian, "Chidaole de xiandai zhuyi yu dangjin Zhongguo wenxue" (The late-coming modernism and contemporary Chinese literature), Wenxue piping 3 (1988), 13.

111. Xu Zidong, "Xiandai zhuyi yu Zhongguo xinshiqi wenxue," 31.

112. Ibid., 29.

113. Xu Jingye, "Jueqi de shiqun: Ping woguo shige de xiandai qingxiang" (The rising constellation of poetry: On the modernist trend of our poetry), in Xifang xiandai pai wenxue wenti lunzheng ji , 2: 599.

114. Li Tuo, "'Xiandai xiaoshuo' bu dengyu 'xiandai pai,'" 510.

115. Chen, Huang, and Qian, "Lun 'Ershi shiji Zhongguo wenxue,'" 14.

116. Ji Hongzhen, "Zhongguo jinnian xiaoshuo," 3.

117. Liu Xiaobo, "Yizhong xinde shenmei sichao," 41-42.

118. Chen, Huang, and Qian, "Lun 'Ershi shiji Zhongguo wenxue,'" 12.

119. Xu Jingye, "Jueqi de shiqun," 580.

120. Li Tuo, "Yijiu bawu" (1985), Jintian 3/4 (1991), 59-73.

121. The slogan grew out of the changing self-perception of the young poets of the post- Menglong poetry generation. They no longer perceived themselves as cultural critics and the spokespeople of sociopolitical conscience—a historical role that Bei Dao's generation fulfilled. They denied the conventional definition of the poet's persona as the cultural hero. For them, writing poetry was nothing more than a pure linguistic experimentation. The sentiment of antiheroism reflected in the slogan smacked of an Oedipal rebellion.

122. Li Jiefei and Zhang Ling, "Youhuan yishi yu rende reqing" ("Anxiety consciousness" and human passions), Shanghai wenxue 9 (1986), 93.

123. Li Jie and Huang Ziping, "Wenxueshi kuangjia ji qita" (The framework of literary history and other subjects), Beijing wenxue 7 (1988), 75. Li Jie considers 1985 the beginning of modern Chinese literature in terms of its correspondence to modern world literature.

124. Li Jiefei and Zhang Ling, "Youhuan yishi yu rende reqing," 93, emphasis mine.

125. Ibid.

126. Xu Zidong, "Xiandai zhuyi yu Zhongguo xinshiqi wenxue," 33.

127. Li Jie, "Lun Zhongguo dangdai xinchao xiaoshuo" (On the new wave fiction in contemporary China), Zhongshan 5 (1988), 120.

128. Liu Xiaobo, "Yizhong xinde shenmei sichao," 41.

129. Ibid., 42.

130. Ibid., 40. Liu Xiaobo condemned Li Zehou because of the latter's advocacy of Confucian ethics and the aesthetics of tianren heyi . For Liu, beauty resides not in harmony but in conflicts. The cultivation and endorsement of aesthetic and moral equilibrium leads to eclecticism and reveals a premodern state of mind that can only be characterized as "the extreme condition of slavedom." To reconstruct Chinese national character, Liu insists that we negate thoroughly the three primary theoretical paradigms underlying traditional culture: the Confucian democratic model of minben (for the people), the model personality of Confucius and Yanhui, and the concept of tianren heyi . See Liu Xiaobo's chapter on "tianren heyi" in his Xuanze de pipan , 135-234.

131. On the semiotic and aesthetic moment in aesthetic modernity, see Albrecht Wellmer, The Persistence of Modernity: Essays on Aesthetics, Ethics, and Postmodernism , trans. David Midgley (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991), 55.

132. Xu Zidong, "Xiandai zhuyi yu Zhongguo xinshiqi wenxue," 30. Emphasis is mine.

133. Liu Suola, "Ni biewu xuanze," in Ni biewu xuanze (Beijing: Zuojia chubanshe, 1986), 84. The story was originally published in Renmin wenxue 3 (1985), 4-29.

134. Liu Suola, "Lantian Lühai," 137.

135. Ibid., 175.

136. Huang Ziping, Xingcunzhe de wenxue (The literature of those who survived) (Taibei: Yuanliu chuban shiye gufen youxian gongsi, 1991), 40.

137. Xu Xing, "Wuzhuti bianzou" in vol. 1 of Zhongguo dalu xiandai xiaoshuo xuan , 64 and 37. The story was originally published in Renmin wenxue 7 (1985), 29-41.

138. Liu Suola, "Ni biewu xuanze," 12.

139. Wang Lin, "Shi juhao haishi wenhao?" 135.

140. Huang Ziping, Xingcunzhe de wenxue , 40. Liu Suola, "Ni biewu xuanze," 63.

141. Ibid., 57 and 12.

142. Ibid., 16.

143. A Cheng, "The Tree Stump," in Spring Bamboo: A Collection of Contemporary Chinese Short Stories , ed. and trans. Jeanne Tai (New York: Random House, 1989), 241. The story was originally published in Renmin wenxue 10 (1984), 229-43.

144. Liu Xiaobo, "Weiji!" 169 and 173.

145. Liu Suola, "Lantian lühai," 177.

146. For a detailed discussion of transcendental subjectivity and modernity, see J. M. Bernstein, The Philosophy of the Novel: Lukács, Marxism, and the Dialectics of Form (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), especially the chapter on "Transcendental Dialectic: Irony as Form, 185-227.

147. A Cheng, "Qiwang," in A Cheng xiaoshuo xuan (Collected stories of A Cheng) (Hong Kong: Tuqi youxian gongsi, 1985), 57. The story was originally published in Shanghai wenxue 7 (1984), 15-35.

148. Mu Gong, "Xiang Sate gaobie," 65.

149. All five chapters of Mo Yan's The Red Sorghum Clan were published in 1986 in quick sequence: "Hong gaoliang" (The red sorghum) appeared in Renmin wenxue 3; "Gaoliang jiu" (Sorghum wine) in Jiefangjun wenyi 7; "Goudao" (Dog ways) in Shiyue 4; "Gaoliang bin'' (Sorghum funeral) in Beijing wenyi 8; and ''Qisi" (Strange death) in Kunlun 6.

150. Mo Yan, Honggaoliang jiazu (Taibei: Hongfan shudian, 1988), 493. Emphasis is mine.

151. Teng Yun, "Luanhua jianyu mi renyan" (Chaotic blossoms casting a spell on our eyes), Renmin wenxue 4 (1986), 124.

152. Fang Keqiang, "A Q he Bingzai: Yuanshi xintai de chongsu" (Ah Q and Bing Zai: The reconstruction of primitive mentality), Wenyi lilun yanjiu 5 (1986), 10-11.

153. The powerful and agitated overflow of consciousness in the early experimental works by Wang Meng and Zong Pu corresponded to the sudden release of the creative self and to the dramatic expansion of subjectivity at the turn of the 1980s. The technique, however, soon lost its appeal. Song Yaoliang designated novellas and short stories written in a transformed mode of stream of consciousness as the "fiction of mental mood" ( xintai xiaoshuo ). See Song Yaoliang, "Yishiliu wenxue dongfanghua guocheng" (The Orientalization of the literature of stream of consciousness), Wenxue pinglun 1 (1986), 35. The making of the "fiction of mental mood" serves to indicate that the formal revolution of modernism always risks being corrupted by traditional aesthetics. This resistance can be defined as the attempt of old and middle-aged Chinese writers to revitalize the aesthetics of the harmonious blending of scene and mood ( qing and jing ) to stabilize, and sometimes to hold in check, the torrential flow of consciousness by bringing it back into a clearly outlined thematic framework and subjecting it to the cultural constraint of a collective consciousness. Although beginning as a revival of Chinese aesthetics, the process of sinicizing stream of consciousness not only introduces the return of the traditional appreciation of the static beauty of harmony as opposed to the dynamic irregularities characteristic of contradiction, but it also indicates the resurgence of traditional ethos that downplays the role of the individual and suppresses the subjective voice. On the one hand, the remaking of the Chinese mode of stream of consciousness indicates the change of the fictional subject from a superficially paradoxical self not yet endowed with a profound reflexive capacity to a self of psychic depth that has outgrown the torrential mode of thinking. On the other hand, however, the new mode of philosophical introspection signals the co-option of subjectivity by traditional epistemology.

154. See Leo Lee, "Beyond Realism: Thoughts on Modernist Experiments in Contemporary Chinese Writing," in Worlds Apart: Recent Chinese Writing and Its Audiences , ed. Howard Goldblatt (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1990), 69. Also see his "The Politics of Technique," 163-73.

155. Wang Meng and Wang Gan, "Wenxue zhege mofang: Duiha lu" (The magic cube of literature: An interview), Wenxue pinglun 3 (1989), quoting Wang Gan, 43.

156. Wang Meng, "Yiti qianjiao," Shouhuo (Harvest) 4 (1988), 91, 102.

157. Ibid., 94.

158. A comparative study of modernism in Taiwan in the sixties and the Shanghai modernism in the thirties, especially with regard to the genre of poetry, is worth undertaking in another project. For discussions of the modernist movement in Taiwan, see Yvonne Sung-Sheng Chang, Modernism and Its Nativist Resistance (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993).

159. See Yan Jiaqi's preface to Xin'ganjuepai xiaoshuo xuan (The collection of neo-impressionist fiction) (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1985), 1-38.

160. Wang Ning, "Guifan yu bianti," 157.

1. The concept of the subject ( zhuti ) is not an indigenous Chinese concept. Inasmuch as it is deeply implicated in the concept of modernity, it was imported from the West when Chinese intellectuals started exploring the issue of modernity and modernization. I do not intend to trace the discursive origin of zhuti in modern and contemporary China in this essay. Nonetheless, a working definition of subjectivity may be in order here, even though most readers probably have an intuitive understanding of the term. In the Western philosophical tradition, what we understand today as "the subject" is the Cartesian Subject conceived as a specific and autonomous reality. This entity is "granted an exorbitant privilege in that there is in the end no Being nor being except in relation to him, for him and through him." See Michel Henry, "The Critique of the Subject,'' in Who Comes after the Subject? , ed. Eduardo Cadava, Peter Connor, and Jean-Luc Nancy (New York: Routledge, 1991), 157. The essential predicates of the Cartesian Subject—"identity to self, positionality, property, personality, ego, consciousness, will, intentionality, freedom, humanity, etc."—are all ''ordered around being present ( étant-present ), presence to self." See Jacques Derrida, "'Eating Well,' or the Calculation of the Subject: An Interview with Jacques Derrida," in Who Comes after the Subject? , 109. According to David Kolb, modern subjectivity exists "as a subject when it imposes order. To impose a self-originated order on other things is an act of will. Modern subjectivity's self-affirmation expresses its power to control the conditions of representation." See Kolb, The Critique of Pure Modernity: Hegel, Heidegger, and After (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 141. As a result, the postmodern crisis and critique of the subject is at the same time the crisis and critique of representation. Hegel defines the philosophical subject as "that which is capable of maintaining within itself its own contradiction." The subject always succeeds in reappropriating to itself the exteriority of its own predicate. In other words, the contradiction would be ''its own . . . that alienation or extraneousness would be ownmost, and that subjectivity . . . consists in reappropriating this proper being-outside-of-itself." See Nancy, introduction to Who Comes after the Subject? , 6.

2. I am referring specifically to the special issue of Discours social/Social Discourse on the "Non-Cartesian Subject," volume 6, nos. 1-2 (1994), in which an abridged version of this chapter was published. The editors Darko Suvin and Kojin Karatani were interested in the implicit "dialogue between 'non-Cartesian' cultures such as China and Japan with the 'First World.'" In their "Call for Papers," they phrased the problem of the non-Cartesian Subject as ''What forms of Subject are possible outside the individualist (Tocqueville) Self, and how does such a single but externalized and interacting Subject relate to various existing or potential collective Subjects?" (emphasis mine). Western intellectuals' revolt against the Cartesian subject took various forms. Starting from the poststructuralist "decentered subject," they initiated one debate after another on the status of the subject, debates that covered many disciplines: Lacan on psychoanalysis, Derrida on philosophy, Althusser on politics, and not in the least, literary criticism. To reverse the conceptual drive underlying the Cartesian Subject, many poststructuralist theorists denied the subject any possibilities of human agency. The proposition about the demise of the subject gave rise to counterarguments such as those by Paul Smith, who theorized about the return of the subject to its role as an active historical agent. See Smith, Discerning the Subject (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988). The special issue of Discours social represents one such attempt to reinvigorate the Western tradition of the subject by inquiring into other forms of the subject in non-Western cultural traditions.

3. Wang Ruoshui, "Wei rendao zhuyi bianhu," 233.

4. Bei Dao, the cover of Jintian (Today), 3/4 (1991).

5. David Kolb, The Critique of Pure Modernity , 154. Kolb compares the logic of our age with the metaphysical tradition of the past in which one can speak of some higher being or principle of reason that both guaranteed and supported the availability of other beings. Our age witnesses the disappearance of such higher beings. Nothing is there to command the availability of things. "In the world of total availability no one being grounds all the rest." They are just "in plain view." "The meaning of reality is pure available presence."

6. Nan Fan and Huang Ziping, "Xiaoshuo, shenmei qinggan yu shidai" (Narrative fiction, aesthetic sentiments, and [our] time), Beijing wenxue (Beijing literature) 11 (1988), 71-74. In this dialogue with Nan Fan, Huang Ziping problematizes the total and naive acceptance of pluralism by Chinese writers and critics. According to him, "the term 'pluralism' has been turned into the most efficacious charm that covered up our laziness and cowardice—whenever we come across a cultural phenomenon that is difficult to adumbrate, we simply put the matter in a nutshell by saying, 'This is pluralism'" (72). Here Huang Ziping is aware of the omnipresence of pluralism as another form of hegemony.

7. Tang Xiaobing, "The Function of New Theory: What Does It Mean to Talk about Post-Modernism in China?" Public Culture 4, no. 1 (1991), 89-108. Tang applauds the arrival of postmodernism in China as an aesthetic intervention in politics and social life. The postmodernist "obsession with intertextuality and the floating signifier leads to a happy rediscovery of the deconstructive force of the Chinese language" (106). But is the authoritarian Mao Style the only thing deconstructed by a "Chinese postmodernism?'' To that list, one might add the cultural subjecthood of China, or in Gates' terms, the core identity of the colonized. Perhaps the "deconstructive force" of postmodernism is not so innocent politically as Tang assumes.

8. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. "Critical Fanonism," Critical Inquiry 17, no. 3 (1991), 459. Gates points out the problematic nature of the natives' advocacy for pluralism in the postcolonial age. He sees in the invasion by Western pluralistic cultural logic the beginning of the dissolution of the individuality of the colonized. "The colonized is never characterized in an individual manner; he is entitled only to drown in an anonymous collectivity."

9. With the exception of Can Xue, all the experimentalists are male writers.

10. Liu Zaifu's "Lun wenxue de zhutixing" was originally published in Wenxue pinglun (Literary review) 6 (1985) and 1 (1986). "Wenxue yanjiu yingyi ren wei siwei zhongxin" was originally published in Wenhui bao , 8 July 1985. Xingge zuhe lun was originally published in Shanghai by Shanghai wenyi chubanshe, 1986.

11. Critiques of Liu Zaifu usually bypass the implications of Marxist humanism and socialist alienation in his work. Only a few critics such as He Xilai and Song Yaoliang mention in passing the relationship between Liu Zaifu's formulation of subjectivity with the problematic of Marxist humanism. He Xilai's statement drives home the gist of the matter most explicitly: we "cannot simply draw an equation between Liu's 'subjectivity of literature' and Hu Feng's 'subjective fighting spirit. . . . The presentation of the problematic of 'subjectivity of literature' . . . is a philosophical reformulation of [Marxist] humanism in the realm of literature." See He Xilai, "Guanyu wenxue zhutixing wenti de tantao" (The inquiry of the questions regarding subjectivity), Renmin ribao , 11 August 1986, overseas edition. Also see Song Yaoliang, Shinian wenxue zhuchao (The main literary currents of the decade) (Shanghai: Shanghai wenyi chubanshe, 1988), 273. And see Liu Kang, "Subjectivity, Marxism, and Culture Theory in China," Social Text 31/32, 114-40. Although Liu Kang promises to trace Liu Zaifu's "appropriations of Marxist categories in reconstituting subjectivity in Chinese culture," he bypasses the theoretical category of Marxian humanism but dwells at great length on the Hu Feng connection ("subjective fighting spirit''). The relevance of the debate over socialist alienation to Liu Zaifu's theory seems to have totally escaped his attention.

12. One should also be reminded that although most indigenous Chinese critics characterize the literary history of the 1980s in terms of the dual track of human-centeredness ( renben ) versus text-centeredness ( wenben ), certain literary phenomena of the 1980s are hardly reducible to such a clear-cut competitive dichotomy. Xungen literature, for instance, marks the emergence of a third category—the cultural unconscious—that merges into an uneven admixture of a burgeoning textual reflexivity and an overflow of ontological self-consciousness. To further complicate the picture, a fourth category, the hyperspace of Nature, which looms large in the literature, transcends the futile differentiation between the conscious and unconscious. A simplistic binary scheme will even fall short of framing Liu Zaifu. The same Liu Zaifu who foregrounds the liberation of humanity as the most effective means of resistance against the tyranny of political ideology also recognizes perceptively that the "cultural [ideological] tyranny of the Gang of Four is one and the same as the 'tyranny of literary style'" ( wenti zhuanzheng ). See Liu, "Lun bashi niandai wenxue piping de wenti geming" (On the formal revolution of the literary criticism of the 1980s), Wenxue pinglun 1 (1989), 10. In acknowledging the ''hidden constraints" that linguistic signs place upon cognitive activities, he anticipates Li Tuo's later slogan of "the Mao Style" and thus breaks down the prescribed binary conflict between the science of humanity ( renxue ) and the science of signs and textuality ( wenxue ). For the discussion of renben versus wenben , see Fei Zhenzhong and Wang Gan, '''Renben' yu 'wenben': Yige xinde wenxue piping fanchou sikao" ("Human-centeredness" and "text-centeredness": Contemplation on a new category of literary criticism), Zhongshan 2 (1988), 186-93, 116. Also see Song Yaoliang, Shinian wenxue zhuchao , 230.

13. Liu Zaifu, "Lun wenxue de zhutixing," 83, 93.

14. Ibid., 105.

15. On the process of aesthetic reception, see ibid., 117-18. On Youhuan yishi , see ibid., 112-13.

16. Liu Zaifu, "Lun bashi niandai wenxue piping de zhuti geming," 13. Emphasis is mine.

17. See Liu Zaifu, Xingge zuhe lun , for an elaborate account of his dialectic of complementary bipolarity.

18. One can detect a theoretical correspondence between Li Zehou's forth-right explication of tianren heyi and his implicit endorsement of the classical formula through his explication of the wuwo theory. However, although Liu stresses the aesthetic value of such a formula, he seems to be more occupied with transforming the substantive rationality underlying the concept of "unity of Heaven and (hu)man" into the instrumental rationality based on the Marxist humanization of nature.

19. See Lawrence E. Cahoone's critique of Adorno and Horkheimer and the Western theory of subjectivity. It is the subjectivist conception of the self that allows them to link the assertion and development of the self to the renunciation of nature and myth. Adorno and Horkheimer read the subjectivist concept of self and nature into all of Western history as the goal and principle of that history. Lawrence E. Cahoone, The Dilemma of Modernity: Philosophy, Culture, and Anti-Culture (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988).

20. Liu Zaifu, "Lun wenxue de zhutixing," 108-12, 140-41.

21. Ibid., 127, 112.

22. Ibid., 91.

23. Sylviane Agacinski, "Another Experience of the Question, or Experiencing the Question Other-Wise," in Who Comes after the Subject? , 9. In Western tradition, subjectivity consists in reappropriating the being-outside-of-itself. The subject proposed by Hegel is "that which is capable of maintaining within itself its own contradiction." Thus there is a common understanding that "the logic of the subjectum is a grammar of the subject that re-appropriates to itself, in advance and absolutely, the exteriority and the strangeness of its predicate" (Nancy, introduction to Who Comes after the Subject? , 6).

24. Liu Kang, "Subjectivity, Marxism, and Culture Theory," 9.

25. Smith, Discerning the Subject , 46.

26. On Chinese magic realism, see Lu Gao, "Mohuande haishi xianshide? Du 'Xizang, xizai pishengkou shang de hun'" (Magic or realistic? "Tibet, souls tied to the knot of the leather rope"), Xizang wenxue 1 (1985). On the two slogans, see Yu Bin, "Minzuhua wenti yu Zhongguo dangdai wenxue de fazhan" (The problem of nationalization and the development of contemporary Chinese literature), Wenxue pinglun 6 (1990), 52. Literature about Chinese literature and world literature was abundant during the second half of the 1980s. See Zouxiang shijie wenxue (Marching toward world literature), ed. Zeng Xiaoyi (Hunan: Hunan renmin chubanshe, 1985); Meng Yue, '' Zouxiang shijie wenxue: Yige jiannan de jincheng" ( Marching toward world literature: A difficult journey), Dushu 8 (1986), 50-57; and Zheng Wanlong, ''Zhongguo wenxue yao zouxiang shijie: Cong genzhi yu 'wenhua yanceng' tanqi" (Chinese literature wants to march toward the world: Commenting on the planting of roots and "cultural sediments"), Zuojia (Writers) 1 (1986), 70-74.

27. Liu Zaifu, "Lun bashi niandai wenxue piping de wenti geming," 7.

28. Yu Xiaoxing, transcriber, "Haiwai Zhongguo zuojia taolunhui jiyao" (Records of the forum of Chinese writers overseas), Jintian 2 (1990), 99, quoting Li Tuo. For a detailed discussion of Li's thesis of Mao wenti , see chapter four, "Mapping Aesthetic Modernity," note 19.

29. Yu Xiaoxing, "Haiwai Zhongguo zuojia taolunhui jiyao," 94-96, quoting Li Tuo.

30. See Jing Wang, postscript of "The Mirage of 'Chinese Postmodernism,'" Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 1, no. 2 (1993), 379-82, where an earlier version of this chapter was published.

31. Wu Huanlian, "Cong xuanze shengming dao xuanze Zhongguo: Tan 'Zhanwang ershiyi shiji'" (From choosing life to choosing China: Notes on "A comprehensive survey of the twenty-first century"), Dushu 3 (1989), 18-19.

32. "Tradition versus modernity" is a problematic raised in Gan, "Bashi niandai," 32.

33. This term was coined in Liu Zaifu and Lin Gang's Chuantong yu Zhongguo ren , 255-79.

34. The agenda of those who are remapping the "Greater China" changed over the years. Depending upon whom you are talking to—the Taiwanese, the mainland Chinese, Hong Kongers, or the Chinese diaspora—the agenda of the Greater China may be defined in economic, cultural, or political terms. Originally, "Greater China" summarized the vibrancy of the economic interactions in the economically, culturally, and linguistically compatible area of the triangle of the People's Republic of China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong and Macao. In the 1990s, the Taiwanese are now less enthusiastic about the proposition of Greater China in favor of "marching toward the South[east Asia]." Yet for the mainland Chinese, the agenda points to the ultimate political vision of a reunified China proper and the China periphery. The continual expansion of the mental map of Greater China conceived by mainland intellectuals in the 1990s is thus not surprising. To echo overseas Chinese philosopher Tu Weiming's proposition of "Cultural China," recently some of them started touting an even more ambitious slogan: "A Greater China Cultural Sphere.'' According to this mapping, China is situated at the center of the sphere. The first layer of the sphere is made up of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao; the second layer, the Chinese diaspora; the third, other countries in East Asia and Southeast Asia. See Zhang Fa, Zhang Yiwu, and Wang Yichuan, ''Cong 'xiandaixing' dao 'Zhonghuaxing': Xinzhishixing de tanxun" (From "modernity" to "Chineseness": In search of a new pattern of knowledge), Wenhua yanjiu 2 (1994), 16.

35. See Tang Xiaobing, "Orientalism and the Question of Unversality: The Language of Contemporary Chinese Literary Theory," Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 1, no. 2 (1993), 389-413. In this essay, Tang tries to account for the "signifying absence" of the Chinese response to Said's Orientalism . Although there is not much indication that Tang actually laments such an absence, there is little doubt that he reflects a general tendency shared by many scholars (comparativists in particular) in China studies: an uncritical adoption of the problematics ("Orientalism" is one, "postmodernism" is another, and "subaltern studies" is in the danger of becoming another) defined by Western academics as the overriding categories with which critics or historians examine or even rewrite the history of China.

36. See Tani Barlow, "Colonialism's Career in Postwar China Studies," Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 1, no. 1 (1993), 224-67. In this essay, Barlow traces the postwar sinologists' evasion of the problematic of colonialism in their treatment of the Chinese history of the Treaty-port era.

37. Gan, "Bashi niandai," 33. Emphasis is mine.

38. Liu Zaifu, "Gaobie zhushen: Zhongguo dangdai wenxue lilun 'shijimo' de zhengzha" (Bidding farewell to all gods: The "fin-de-siècle" struggle in contemporary Chinese literary theory"), Ershiyi shiji (Twenty-first century) 5 (June 1991), 125-34. In this essay Liu complains that contemporary Chinese literary theorists formulate their problematics under the shadow of foreign theorists. "The squabbles in Chinese theoretical circles are very often in fact foreigners' squabbles . . . rather than authentic academic debates among Chinese theorists themselves" (126-27).

39. Hu Ang [Huang Ziping], "Yu 'taren' gongwu: Weiji shike de xiezuo zhiyi," (Dancing with the Other: Writings at the moment of crisis—note 1), Jintian 1 (1992), 209.

40. Ibid., 208.

41. Zhang Xudong, "Lun Zhongguo dangdai piping huayu de zhuti neirong yu zhenli neirong" (On the thematic content and truth content of contemporary Chinese critical discourse), Jintian 3/4 (1991), 5.

42. Ibid., 3. The emphasis is mine.

43. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, "Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing Historiography," in Selected Subaltern Studies , ed. Ranajit Guha and Gayatri Spivak (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 12-13. Spivak interprets the attempt of retrieving subaltern consciousness in terms of the "charting of what in post-structuralist language would be called the subaltern subject-effect" (12).

44. The quote is from Lin Weiping, "Xinshiqi wenxue yixitan: Fang zuojia Li Tuo," (A conversation session on the literature of the new era: An interview with writer Li Tuo), Shanghai wenxue 10 (1986), 96, quoting Li Tuo.

45. The list of imported foreign works that exerted considerable influence over Chinese readers and writers is indeed a long one. They include Camus's The Stranger and The Plague , Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye , Heller's Catch -22, Beckett's Waiting for Godot , Eliot's "The Waste Land," García Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude , Borges's short stories, Sartre's The Flies and Nausea , Kafka's The Castle and "The Metamorphosis," Baudelaire's poetry, and many Russian novels. See Cao Wenxuan, Zhongguo bashi niandai wenxue xianxiang yanjiu (The study of the trends of Chinese literature of the 1980s) (Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 1988), 12-13, 15-16.

46. Cao Wenxuan, Zhongguo bashi niandai , 240.

47. A Cheng's "Qiwang" and Han Shaogong's "Ba-ba-ba" (Da-da-da) (1985) are considered the most representative works in the xungen genre. As theorists, both played an important role in initiating the intense theoretical debate over the slogan in the mid-1980s. Han Shaogong's "Wenxue de 'gen'" (The ''roots'' of literature), Zuojia 4 (1985), 2-5, served as the manifesto of the xungen movement, and A Cheng's "Wenhua zhiyuezhe renlei" (Culture constrains humankind), Wenyi bao , 6 July 1985, laid the foundation for the argument of cultural conservationists that "searching for roots" signifies the glorification of cultural tradition.

The discrepancy between what the xungen theories propagate and what the narrative fiction actually delivers is intriguing. Whereas most theorists insist on cultivating their literary sensibility by nurturing themselves in tradition, what is reflected in the fiction gives the lie to such uncritical solidarity with tradition. As the critic Li Jie points out, most xungen writers' attitude toward tradition and cultural constraints is highly ambiguous. One can even speak of the collective critique in such works of China's homogeneous traditional culture. Li Tuo's observation is helpful in accounting for such a contradiction. He redefines the terms of contradiction between the theory and practice of the xungen genre as follows: "[There is] not a single work in the xungen genre [that] does not harbor the contradiction between its critique of traditional culture and its recovery of certain aesthetic traditions. This contradiction confused many people." So the pattern of conflict is seen less in terms of tradition versus antitradition, and more in terms of cultural values versus aesthetic values. See Lin Weiping, "Xinshiqi wenxue yixitan," 96, quoting Li Tuo. Also see Li Jie, "Lun Zhongguo dangdai xinchao xiaoshuo," 117-18.

48. On the relationship of xungen literature to xiandai pai , see Yu Bin, "Minzuhua wenti yu Zhongguo dangdai wenxue de fazhan," 53-54. Yu attributes the appearance of the xungen heat wave to the depression of Chinese modernism in the mid-1980s. He further reminds us (quoting another author) that "today's xungen converts were exactly those who advocated the imitation of Western modernists yesterday" (53).

49. Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut, French Philosophy of the Sixties: An Essay on Antihumanism , trans. Mary H. S. Cattani (Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1985), 118.

50. Xu Zidong, "Xiandai zhuyi yu Zhongguo xinshiqi wenxue," 33.

51. Ibid., 34.

52. Ji Hongzhen, "'Wenhua xungen' yu dangdai wenxue" ("Culture/root-searching" and contemporary literature), Wenyi yanjiu (Inquiry of literature and art) 2 (1989), 70, quoting Liu Xiaobo's argument in "Weiji! Xinshiqi wenxue mianlin weiji.''

53. Li Qingxi, "Xungen: Huidao shiwu benshen" (Root-searching: Returning to the phenomenon itself), Wenxue pinglun 4 (1988), 16.

54. Gu Hua, "Cong gulao wenhua dao wenxue de 'gen'" (From ancient culture to literary "roots"), Zuojia 2 (1986), 76.

55. "The reacquaintance with traditional culture is in essence a reacquaintance with the human subject itself." See Li Qingxi, "Xungen," 15, quoting Ji Hongzhen.

56. Ibid., 17, 19, emphasis mine.

57. Cao Wenxuan's depiction of A Cheng and Han Shaogong's ideological agenda—that of rejuvenating the Han culture—seems questionable ( Zhongguo bashi niandai , 243-44). Hu Xiaobo shares the view that the xungen writers are reactionary. Both fail to see the discrepancy between xungen theories and its practice. Han Shaogong's idiot antihero in "Ba-ba-ba" is considered the contemporary version of Lu Xun's Ah Q: the caricature of a corrupt and bankrupt tradition, or one might say, the consummate image of an ailing national character. Critic Zhu Wei speaks of the gaps between A Cheng's "original intention" to manifest the "harmony of Heaven and (hu)man"—a beloved tradition in Chinese cultural philosophy—in ''Shuwang" (The tree king) and his actual presentation of the intensifying confrontation between heaven and man. See Zhu Wei, "Jiejin A Cheng" (Approaching A Cheng), Zhongshan 3 (1991), 167.

58. Li Tuo, "Yijiu bawu," 71.

59. Most critics in China have come to the conclusion that the new cultural consciousness of xungen writers includes both "historical and national consciousness" and "modern consciousness" ( xiandai yishi ). See Cao Wenxuan, Zhongguo bashi niandai , 248; Yu Bin, "Minzuhua wenti yu Zhongguo dangdai wenxue de fazhan," 53; Chen Sihe, "Dangdai wenxue zhong de wenhua xungen yishi" (The "root-searching" cultural consciousness of contemporary literature), Wenxue pinglun 6 (1986), 27; also see Chen Sihe, "Zhongguo wenxue fazhan zhong de xiandai zhuyi," 86; Li Qingxi, "Xungen," 15, quoting A Cheng; Song Yaoliang, "Wenxue xinsichao de zhuyao shenmei tezheng yu biaoxian xingtai," 76.

60. On cultural reconstruction, see Ji Hongzhen, "'Wenhua xungen' yu dangdai wenxue," 70. On the vainglorious stance popularized by the proponents of the xungen theorists—that "Chinese literature is marching toward the world"—see Li Rui, "'Houtu' ziyu" (The soliloquy of ''solid earth"), Shanghai wenxue 10 (1988), 70. Li Rui is one of the few writers who problematizes that stance: "I did not know if Chinese literature ought to or would march toward the world. Neither did I know if the world is truly in need of Chinese literature as anxiously as what Chinese people wishfully thought it should be."

61. Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955).

62. Here I disagree with Li Qingxi's interpretation of the metaphysical lessons rendered by Wang Yisheng's philosophy of life and Fukui's choice to remain the last fisherman on the Ge river. He perceives the two heroes as the incarnations of the " free personality that transcends reality." In another footnote where he explains the meaning of "self-transcendence," he adopts the critical vocabulary of phenomenology by saying that what the xungen writers deliver is the "return to the original state of life"—a prehistorical and precultural point of departure that is immanent, pure, and blissful. See Li Qingxi, "Xungen," 20.

63. Zheng Wanlong, "Wode gen" (My roots), Shanghai wenxue 5 (1985), 44.

64. Wang Xiaoming, "Bu xiangxinde he bu yuanyi xiangxinde: Guanyu sanwei 'xungen' pai zuojia de chuangzuo" (What I do not believe and what I am unwilling to believe: Regarding the works of three "root-searching" authors), Wenxue pinglun 4 (1989), 31.

65. Zhang Chengzhi, "Wode qiao" (My bridge), Shiyue 3 (1983), 240. Emphasis is mine.

66. Wang Xiaoming, "Bu xiangxinde he bu yuanyi xiangxinde," 24-28.

67. Ibid., 25. Gong Ping, "Zhiqing ticai de xinzhuti" (The new themes of the topos of "re-educated youths"), Zhongshan 2 (1988), 206.

68. Han Shaogong, "Wenxue de 'gen,'" 5. Song Yaoliang, Shinian wenxue zhuchao, 15.

69. Ibid., 289. A Cheng's Biandi fengliu series (Flowing with the wind wherever it goes) and Jia Pingwa's Shangzhou series (The Shang district)—published in the mid-1980s—fall into this narrative category.

70. Zhang Yiwu, "Disan shijie wenhua zhong de xushi" (The discourse of the Third-World culture), Zhongshan 3 (1990), 156.

71. Li Qingxi, "Xungen," 22-23.

72. Li Qingxi in particular indicates that the narrative mode of xungen literature contains the aesthetics of phenomenology, (ibid., 22).

73. Ji Hongzhen, "'Wenhua xungen' yu dangdai wenxue," 72.

74. You Yi [Meng Yue], "Yetan bashi niandai wenxue de 'xihua'" (Revisiting the problem of the "westernization" of the literature of the 1980s), Jintian 3/4 (1991), 35.

75. Li Jie, "Lun Zhongguo dangdai xinchao xiaoshuo," 117.

76. Yu Xiaoxing, "Haiwai Zhongguo zuojia taolunhui jiyao," 96, quoting Li Tuo.

77. Li Hangyu, "Liyili women de 'gen'" (Sorting out our "roots"), Zuojia 9 (1985), 78.

78. On the collective unconscious, see Fei Zhenzhong and Wang Gan, "'Renben' yu 'wenben,'" 189. On the consciousness of a communal moral character, see Li Qingxi, "Xungen," 21.

79. Zheng Yi, "Yuancun" (The village afar), in Yuancun (Taibei: Haifeng chubanshe, 1990), 25-161. Jia Pingwa, Shangzhou (Beijing: Beijing "Shiyue" wenyi chubanshe, 1987). The story was originally published in Wenxuejia 5 (1984). Han Shaogong, "Bababa," Renmin wenxue 6 (1985), 83-102.

80. Han Shaogong, "Wenxue de 'gen,'" 4. The emphasis is mine.

81. Li Qingxi, "Xungen," 17.

82. Cahoone, The Dilemma of Modernity, xiii.

83. Li Tuo, Zhang Ling, and Wang Bin, "Yuyan de fanpan," 78.

84. Smith, Discerning the Subject, 35.

85. Li Tuo, Zhang Ling, and Wang Bin, "Yuyan de fanpan," 75, 76, 80.

86. Li Zehou and Liu Zaifu, "Wenxue yu yishu de qingsi," 2.

87. Liu Xinwu's complaints and condemnations of the younger writers' experiment with language are typical of the opinions of the older generation of critics. See Liu's "Zhongguo zuojia yu dangdai shijie" (Chinese writers and the contemporary world), Renmin ribao, 11 March 1988, overseas edition.

88. Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen, "The Freudian Subject, from Politics to Ethics," in Who Comes after the Subject?, 64.

89. On the postmodern subject, see Zhang Yiwu, "Lixiang zhuyi de zhongjie: Shiyan xiaoshuo de wenhua tiaozhan" (The end of idealism: The cultural challenge of experimentalist fiction), Beijing wenxue 4 (1989), 11. On the premodern subject, see Zhang Xudong, "Ge Fei yu dangdai wenxue huayu de jige muti" (Ge Fei and some motifs of contemporary literary discourse), Jintian 2 (1990), 83.

90. Wang Furen provides an insightful analysis of the tendency of Chinese literati to prioritize theory over literature and art in his essay "Zhongguo jinxiandai wenhua he wenxue fazhan de nixiangxing tezheng" (Modern and contemporary Chinese culture and the characteristics of the inverse reaction of cultural developments), Wenxue pinglun 2 (1989), 14.

91. Zhang Yiwu, "Lixiang zhuyi de zhongjie," 11.

92. Wang Ning, "Guifan yu bianti," 160-61.

93. See Tang Xiaobing, "The Function of New Theory," especially 106-8.

94. Zhang Xudong, "Ge Fei yu dangdai wenxue huayu de jige muti," 83.

95. Zhang Xudong, "Lun Zhongguo dangdai piping huayu de zhuti neirong yu zhenli neirong," 3.

96. Meng Yue, "Su Tong de 'jiashi' yu 'lishi' xiezuo" (The writing of Su Tong's "Family chronicle" and "History"), Jintian 2 (1990), 84.

97. Yu Hua talks about his computation of fictive temporality in his own analysis of the temporal scheme of "Ciwen xiangei shaonu Yangliu" (This kiss was dedicated to Willow). He experiments with different arrangements of temporal logic—split time, overlapped time, and temporal disorder (mapped out mathematically as 1 2 3 4 / 1 2 3 4 / 1 2 3 / 1 2)—in the story to vindicate his fictional logic: "The meaning of time consists in its capability of restructuring the world instantaneously." See Yu Hua, "Xuwei de zuopin" (Hypocritical work), preface to Shishi ru yan (Worldly affairs are like clouds) (Taibei: Yuanliu chuban gongsi, 1991), 19-20.

98. On the claim that the experimentalists have scattered history to the winds, see Zhang Yiwu, "Lixiang zhuyi de zhongjie," 6-7. Also see his "Xiaoshuo shiyan: Yiyi de xiaojie" (The experiments of fiction: The deconstruction of meaning), Beijing wenxue 2 (1988), 77.

99. Li Jie, "Lun Zhongguo dangdai xinchao xiaoshuo," 138.

100. Ibid.

101. Zhao Mei, "Xianfeng xiaoshuo de zizu yu fufan" (The self-sufficiency and superficial drift of the avant-garde fiction), Wenxue pinglun 1 (1989), 33.

102. "There has been a mutation in the object unaccompanied as yet by any equivalent mutation in the subject." See Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1991), 38.

103. Zhang Yiwu, "Xiaoshuo shiyan," 77. Yu Hua attributes all his efforts of writing fiction to his wish to "get closer to authenticity." See Yu's "Xuwei de zuopin," 5.

104. Li Jie, "Lun Zhongguo dangdai xinchao xiaoshuo," 129.

105. Wu Liang, "Qidai yu huiyin: Xianfeng xiaoshuo de yige zhujie" (Anticipations and responses: A footnote on the avant-garde fiction), Zuojia 9 (1989), 62.

106. I disagree with Wu Liang's proclamation that "experimental fiction is a chain of serendipitous literary events that are independent of each other" (ibid., 59). Hong Feng's stories, for instance, find so many intertextual markers in Ma Yuan and Yu Hua that they almost guarantee the working hypothesis of conscious imitation. "Bensang" (The funeral), a story told in a prosaic monotone, can justify its affiliation with the new genre much less on discursive than on thematic terms (namely the death of the father). Hong Feng, "Bensang," Zuojia 9 (1986), 2-21.

107. On dilapidated spectacle of history, see Chen Xiaoming, "Lishi tuibai de yuyan" (The language of degenerated history), Zhongshan 3 (1991), 146-47.

108. Yu Hua, "Xuwei de zuopin," 5.

109. Ibid., 7.

110. Zheng Yi, "Xunzhao minzu zhi hun" (In search of the soul of the nation), in Yuancun, 7.

111. Ibid.

112. Zhao Yiheng, "Yuanyshi he dangdai Zhongguo xianfeng xiaoshuo" (The metaconsciousness and contemporary Chinese avant-garde fiction), Jintian 1 (1990), 81.

113. Mao Zedong, "Zhongguo geming he Zhongguo gongchandang" (The Chinese Revolution and the Chinese Communist Party), in Mao Zedong xuanji (Selected writings of Mao Zedong), ed. The CCP publication Committee for the Selected Writings of Mao (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1967), 589-94.

114. Zhang Xudong, "On Some Motifs in the Chinese 'Cultural Fever,'" 154.

1. Jameson's lectures on postmodernism at Beida were published in the collection Houxiandai zhuyi yu wenhua lilun (Postmodernism and culture theories), trans. Tang Xiaobing (Xi'an: Shanxi Normal University Press, 1986) and reprinted in Taibei, 1989.

2. On young mainland critics' rush to theory, see Zhang Yingjin, "Reenvisioning the Institution of Modern Chinese Literature Studies: Strategies of Positionality and Self-Reflexivity," Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 1, no. 3 (1993), 816-32. I use "fathers" advisedly. Although feminism was occasionally introduced by women critics in mainland China, it never entered the mainstream critical discourse of an elite dominated by men.

3. The gradual articulation of this position—one that stresses the ideology of the alternative postmodern and modern—brought to the fore the issue of cultural locality and subjectivity. The posing of this problematic is especially significant in the 1990s as Chinese mass culture becomes more and more susceptible to the homogenizing process of globalization. In fact, one could argue that it is the imminent invasion into the Chinese market of American exports such as ABC's Dynasty that made the intellectuals' agenda of the Chinese alternative—an imaginary localism—meaningful and compellingly persuasive. Zhu Wei's analysis of Chinese intellectuals' complex toward Occidentalism is insightful: "Our attitude toward the West, just like what Han Shaogong showed in his short story 'Da-da-da,' is characterized by this complex: on the one hand, [we] call [them] 'Dad, dad, dad' in the most subservient tone, and then [we] turn around and defiantly curse [them]—'Fuck your mother'—behind their back." See Chen Xiaoming, Dai Jinhua, Zhang Yiwu, and Zhu Wei, "Dongfang zhuyi yu houzhimin wenhua" (Orientalism and postcolonial culture), Zhongshan 1 (1994), 130.

4. Liao Tianliang et al. "Renge de kun'e yu jingshen de zixing" (The dilemma of personality and the self-examination of the mind), Renmin ribao, 5 November 1988, overseas edition. Liao and Li argue that although the Chinese often speak of the Confucian dictum "I examine myself three times a day," such self-introspection is more often motivated by certain "practical and emotional ends" than by the rational examination of the self. An incomplete self-examination can hardly yield the crisis consciousness that would lead China to a qualitative break from its own past. It is worth noting that in 1988, a pervasive mood of cultural depression was acutely felt by the Chinese residents in the cities. The term "crisis'' ( weiji ) recurred in critical essays of all kinds. He Bochuan's Shan'ao shang de Zhongguo (China in the hollow of the mountain) (Guizhou: Renmin chubanshe, 1988) became a bestseller immediately after its publication—the first book written on the subject of contemporary China in crisis.

5. Generally speaking, the latter half of the 1980s witnessed a disturbing mood of restlessness. The possibility of reinvigorating Marxism had outlived its historical moment, the ideological debate between traditionalists and modernists had turned into a stalemate, and the contradiction between theory and practice (of which the revival of the 1982 slogan "socialism with Chinese characteristics" was a reminder), had revealed itself as an insurmountable barrier to marching toward the future. Amidst the general dystopian climate, China reexperienced class conflicts between intellectuals, urban workers, and those who had benefited the most financially from the modernization programs, namely, residents of special economic zones and the peasants who lived in the vicinity of cities and coastal areas. Intellectuals now spoke condescendingly of the gaps between peasants' regressive orientation and the epoch's emphasis on enlightenment.

6. Zhou Yan, "Women neng zouchu 'wenhua digu' ma?" (Can we walk out of our cultural depression?), Dushu 12 (1988), 5-6.

7. The Chinese shalong (salon) mushroomed in big urban centers circa 1985. It provided a space for young and middle-aged intellectuals to exchange their views on a variety of academic subjects such as the economic, legal, and political reforms. It was reported that one of Zhao Ziyang's think-tanks—the Beijing Youth Association of Economic Studies—was actively involved in the sponsoring and hosting of such gatherings. "Xueshu shalong" (Academic salons) Renmin ribao , 14 August 1986, overseas edition.

8. Guy S. Alitto, The Last Confucian: Liang Shu-ming and the Chinese Dilemma of Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 116, quoting from Liang Qichao's Ouyou xinying lu jielu (Reflections on a European journey).

9. Gao Ertai, "Yihua jiqi lishi kaocha," 184. It is worth noting that literary critics were also preoccupied with locating the Chinese origin of the concept of alienation in premodern literary texts. Some of them proclaimed that in the Chinese tradition, the concept originated in Pu Songling's story of "Cuzhi" in Liaozhai zhiyi (Strange tales of a studio). See Huang Ziping's "Guanyu 'wei xiandai pai' jiqi piping," 5.

10. Gan, "Bashi niandai," 37.

11. Li Qingxi, "Xungen," 15.

12. Zhang Yiwu, "Disan shijie wenhua zhong de xushi," 152.

13. Li Qingxi, "Xungen," 22. According to Li, the root-searching movement is not merely an uncritical return to tradition. The cultural revival contains an "anticultural" drive. One of the popular themes in this literature, Li argues, is the description of the antagonism between cultural traditions and the human condition. Not all critics agree with Li's viewpoint. Wang Xiaoming discredits the concept of root-searching as "regressive" and "primitive." Seen from his perspective, the xungen mentality represents a retroactive stance and its return-to-culture approach is identified as ''antievolutional'' (32). See Wang Xiaoming, "Bu xiangxinde he bu yuanyi xiangxinde," 24-35. Other critics such as Chen Sihe interpret the "return" in aesthetic terms. The search for roots is thus viewed as a reinterpretation and reevaluation of "the national cultural archive." See Chen, "Dangdai wenxue zhong de wenhua xungen yishi," 27.

14. Zou Ping, "Zoujin lenggu: Xinshiqi wenxue de weilaishi" (Walking into the cold valley: The history of the future of our literature in the new era), Shanghai wenxue 10 (1988), 73.

15. Ji Hongzhen, "Shenhua de shuailuo yu fuxing" (The decline and revival of myth), Wenxue pinglun 4 (1989), 109. The emphasis is mine.

16. Li Qingxi, "Xungen," 23.

17. Alitto, The Last Confucian , 82-83.

18. Preface to "'Xinxieshi xiaoshuo dalianzhan' juanshouyu," 4.

19. Strictly speaking, the emergence of the so-called New Theory in contemporary China during the late 1980s was less a reality than an earnest wish made by critics themselves. The anticipation of new critical paradigms was brought about by a small handful of essays that discussed the question of language and attempted a systematic analysis of literature as text and as narrative. Underlying the search for the new paradigm was the rebellion of the new critics against the concept of literature as representation and against the theory of the subject—whether that of society, of history, of culture, or of the author. Few essays, however, accomplished what they promised to deliver. Part of the problem could be attributed to the reliance by the critics upon and their inadequate absorption of the new theories from abroad, the introduction of which was fragmentary at best. There was also anxiety among the critics to keep up the quick pace with which the avant-garde writers conjured up one new vision after another. For a general discussion of the dilemma of the New Theorists, see Xin Xiaozheng and Guo Yinxing, "Xinlilun de chujing" (The situation of the New Theory), Dangdai zuojia pinglun (Review of contemporary writers) 6 (1988), 4-10.

20. Liu Zaifu, "Lun bashi niandai wenxue piping de wenti geming," 16. It is worth noting that Liu later changed this position and mourned the inability of Chinese critics to walk out of the "shadows of the foreign other." See his "Gaobie zhushen."

21. Liu Zaifu, "Lun bashi niandai wenxue piping de wenti geming," 21.

22. The discovery of language as the new locus for critical studies seems to begin with Li Tuo's call for the Chinese writers' liberation from the Mao Style. See Li Tuo, Zhang Ling, and Wang Bin, "Yuyan de fanpan," 79. For a detailed discussion of the subjectivity of language, see chapter four, "Mapping Aesthetic Modernity." The term "the subjectivity of language" recurred in various critical writings throughout the latter half of the 1980s.

23. Louis Althusser, Réponse à John Lewis (Paris: Maspéro, 1973), 91-98.

24. Perhaps it is precisely because of the very tenacity of Yu Hua's resistance to the return of a master narrative that his works try to grasp time and again the deep structure of the self-cornered narrator who is unwilling to discourse himself out of the dilemma. This discursive self-imprisonment repeats itself in Yu's works and forms a tyranny of its own kind. Li Tuo, the critic who discovered and promoted Yu Hua, sensed a "certain danger" in his young protégé and predicted that the latter "would not travel as far as Ge Fei and Ye Zhaoyan in terms of the experimental nature of their works." See Li Tuo, Zhang Ling, and Wang Bin, "1987-1988: Beizhuang de nuli" (1987-1988: Efforts of the sublime), Dushu 1 (1989), 57.

25. The date at the end of the story suggests that Ge Fei finished the tale on May 17, 1990. See Ge Fei, "Hushao" (Whistling), Bafang 12 (1990), 196.

26. Ge Fei, "Xiaozhuan" (Author's autobiographical sketch), in Mizhou (Beijing: Zuojia chubanshe, 1989).

27. Three of Ge Fei's stories—"Xianjing" (The trap), "Hese niaoqun" (A flock of tawny birds), and "Meiyou ren kanjian cao shengzhang" (Nobody saw the grass growing)—in the collection Mizhou overlap and from a network of self-referentiality.

28. Ge Fei, "Zhuiyi Wuyou xiansheng," in Mizhou , 6.

29. Jean-François Lyotard, "Appendix," trans. Régis Rurand, in The Postmodern Condition , 80.

30. Fang Xuanling et al. "Ruan Ji" in "Lie zhuan 19," (Collected biographies 19), in Jin shu (The chronicles of Jin dynasty) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1974) 49, 1362.

31. Fang Xuanling et al., "Ji Kang," in Jin Shu , 1370.

32. Ge Fei, "Hushao," 196.

33. For a detailed analysis of the culture of whistling, see Douglass Alan White, unpublished Harvard undergraduate thesis entitled "Ch'eng-kung Sui's 'Poetic Essay on Whistling.'"

34. Ge Fei, "Hese niaoqun," 42-43; "Meiyou ren kanjian cao shengzhang," 66-70; "Bangke" (Shells), in Mizhou , 231.

35. Ge Fei, "Hushao," 186.

36. Ibid., 188.

37. The Chinese attitude toward whistling can be summarized in two stanzas from the Xiao fu (Rhapsody on whistling): "He [the recluse] finds constraining the narrow road of the world/He gazes up at the concourse of heaven, and treads the high vastness; He transcends the common, and forgets his body/Then, filled with noble emotion, he gives a long drawn out whistle." See Chenggong Sui, "Xiao fu," in Wen xuan , ed. Xiao Tong (Taibei: Shimen tushu youxian gongsi, 1976; a reprint of the 1809 edition of Hu Kejia), 18/26b, 266. These two stanzas were translated by Douglass Alan White (see note 33).

38. Ge Fei, "Hushao," 195.

39. Ibid.

40. Jameson, foreword to The Postmodern Condition , xviii.

41. Ge Fei, "Yelang zhi xing" (The journey to Yelang), Zhongshan 6 (1989), 124.

42. The ontological thrust underlying the "pure conversations" was generated by the reinterpretation of the Great Books— Yi Jing, Lun Yu, Lao Zi , and Zhuang Zi . The new interpretive model for the classics integrates the Confucian and Daoist philosophical frameworks.

The term qingyi wo was coined by Lao Siguang in his interpretation of the significance of the caixing school within the Wei-Jin xuanxue tradition. See Lao, Zhongguo zhexue shi (Taibei: Sanmin shuju, 1981), 2: 145-57. Lao argues that caixing is opposed to xinxing ; the former is identical to the aesthetic persona of the individual, and the latter, to the moral persona. Lao also argues that the Chinese debate over the definition of the self seems to vacillate between these two interpretations at the expense of the third thesis—that of the cognitive self.

43. Wai-lim Yip, ed. and trans., Chinese Poetry: Major Modes and Genres (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 169, quoting Kuo Xiang's (d. 312) commentary on Zhuang Zi's concept of change.

44. Ge Fei, "Meiyou ren kanjian cao shengzhang," 68-69.

45. Ge Fei, "Yelang zhi xing," 125.

46. Ye Fang, "Women haineng you shenme?" (What else can we have?), Wenxue pinglun 3 (1988), 21.

47. Yu Hua, "Xianshi yizhong" (One kind of reality), in Shibasui chumen yuanxing (Traveling far from home at eighteen) (Beijing: Zuojia chubanshe, 1989), 256.

48. Miriam Cooke in Asian and African Languages and Literature at Duke University has discussed with me on several occasions the phenomenon of postmodernism in the context of Third-World literature. I would like to acknowledge her contribution to my analysis of this particular story.

49. I am here quoting from Marilyn Young's discussion notes on my original paper submitted to the "After Orientalism" symposium.

50. I would like to attribute this particular statement to Zhang Xudong of the Literature Program at Duke.

51. The first two references are to Ge Fei, "Mizhou," in Mizhou , 104, 108.

52. The Fourteenth Party Congress in Beijing in October 19, 1992, endorsed the economical reform under the banner of free market economy. Not only citizens who swarmed to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange to buy shares, but even administrators at the Central Party School seem to be enraptured by the profit motive.

1. Ye Lihua, "Wenxue," 18.

2. This reading is suggested by David Der-Wei Wang. "Instead of emplotting the cultural transformation of the past decade as one from the stage of innocence to the stage of cynicism, one might want to speculate that the Chinese writers of the 80s were never as innocent as they seemed" (reader's report, 3). I argue that Wang Shuo marked the beginning of the post-new-era that witnesses the commercialization of literature. It is the changing mode of production and the changing socioeconomic culture—the focus of my discussion of Wang Shuo's emergence—rather than the transformation of themes from "innocence" to "cynicism" that distinguishes Wang Shuo from the experimentalists.

3. Zhang Boli, "Wang Shuo: Rebel without a Cause," China Watch 1, no. 1 (1993), 8.

4. Joe Klein, "Why China Does It Better," Newsweek , 12 April 1993, 23.

5. Zhou Guanwu, "Xiaofei shi fazhan shengchan de dongli," Renmin ribao , 7 June 1992, 2.

6. Li Qingxi is dubious about the new proposition. According to him, the transformation from the new era into the post-new-era took place only in the cultural, not in the literary realm. He does not think that the literary configuration of the 1990s was markedly different from that of the 1980s. He believes that the coining of houxinshiqi merely reflects the crisis mentality that plagued the literary establishment. Critics were compelled to react to the decline of the literary market by making new theoretical proposals and stirring up controversial public opinions. See Li Qingxi, "Baiwu liaolai de 'houpiping': Yetan 'houxinshiqi wenxue'" (A bored "postcriticism": On the literature of the "post-newera"), Wenyi lilun 2 (1993), 129-30.

7. The fervent discussion of the new term "post-new-era" took place in the latter half of 1992. Leading literary journals such as Wenyi bao, Zuojia pinglun , and Wenhui bao published one article after another on the subject.

8. Guo Dong, Benshiji zuihou yihang jiaoyin: Dangdai qingnian wenhua redian xunzong (The last footsteps of this century: In search of the cultural heat waves of contemporary youth culture) (Tianjin: Tianjin Academy of the Social Sciences Publishing Co., 1993), 141. This ditty was translated by Victor Mair.

9. According to scholars, the trading consciousness of Chinese people emerged in 1984 when fourteen coastal cities were first opened up for trade. The ensuing surplus and mismanagement of business firms and corporations invited governmental intervention in 1985. The second tide occurred in 1988. Statistics have it that the total number of firms reached 370,000 by 1989. In the immediate wake of the Tian'anmen crackdown, the Party once more tightened regulations in business laws in response to the people's indictment of official corruption voiced during the demonstrations. The third tide occurred shortly after Deng's southern excursion talks in February 1992. See Guo Dong and Tian Feng, eds., Cong xuanyun dao mikuang: Dangdai Zhongguo shida kuangchao toushi (From bewilderment to craziness: A penetrating look at the ten maniac trends in contemporary China) (Tianjin: Tianjin Academy of the Social Sciences Publishing Co., 1993), 2-8.

10. Cao Qian, "Jiaoshi cuxiao dui ertong buli" (Teachers promoting goods did harm to our children), Renmin ribao, 20 June 1992, 5.

11. Joe Klein dubbed the PLA "China's Mitsubishi." See Klein, "Why China Does It Better," 23.

12. Both Wang Xiaoming and Sun Ganlu (one of the experimentalists) are dismayed at the crisis that confronts arts and literature in the 1990s. See their commentaries in the symposium report "Yansu wenyi wang hechu qu?" (Where are serious arts and literature going?), Wenyi lilun 3 (1993), 96, 101.

13. Wang Ning, "Zhishi fenzi: Cong lifazhe dao jieshizhe" (Intellectuals: From the legislator to the interpreter), Dushu 12 (1992), 114-18. Also see "Yansu wenyi wang hechu qu?" 99, quoting Xu Jilin.

14. "Yansu wenyi wang hechu qu?" 99, quoting Xu Jilin.

15. The Task-Force Section of the Bureau of the Arts and Literature in the Department of Propaganda, ed., "Guanyu shehui zhuyi shichang jingji tiaojianxia wenyi lingyu mianling de xinwenti" (Regarding the new problems that confront the realm of the arts and literature under the economic conditions of socialist market), Wenyi lilun 3 (1993), 30. For a good example of how some intellectuals not only welcomed but also called for the intervention of the Party in regulating the literary market, see Wang Zeke, "Shangpin jingji he zhishi fenzi" (Commodity economy and intellectuals), Dushu 9 (1992), 145-48. Other critics such as Bao Jiawan echoed another typical concern of the old and middle-aged writers about the social efficacy of literature. See Bao Jiawan, "Shehui zhuyi shichang jingji yu wenyi chuangzuo" (The socialist market economy and the creation of the arts and literature), Wenyi lilun 3 (1993), 35-37.

16. "Guanyu shehui zhuyi shichang," 30.

17. For a detailed description of the cultural market in post-Mao China, see Guo Dong and Tian Feng, Cong xuanyun dao mikuang, 226-27.

18. Chen Juntao made such a statement in "Chunwenxue bingwei xiaowang" (Pure literature has by no means disappeared), Wenyi lilun 3 (1993), 95.

19. Wang Ning argued that literary criticism in China should undergo a process of academicization. See his "Zhongguo jiushi niandai wenxue yanjiu zhong de ruogan lilun keti" (Several theoretical topics in the studies of Chinese literature of the 1990s), Wenyi lilun 1 (1993), 176. The proposal can be traced back to 1992, when a group of scholars at Beijing University initiated the discussion at a symposium on "The Current Situation and the Future of Contemporary Chinese Theoretical Criticism." It was pointed out that one of the central tasks of returning critics to the academy is to ensure that literary criticism maintain its own autonomy independent of the dictates of the market. See Bai Hua, "'Xueyuanshi piping' de tishi" (The proposal of "academic criticism"), Dushu 10 (1992), 153. I cannot agree more with Bai's proposal. I would extend it by saying that it is in the academy, not in society nor in politics, that Chinese intellectuals should find their niche. It is high time for the Chinese literary and cultural elite to turn themselves into professional intellectuals. Commercial culture and the culture of professional expertise can coexist in an industrial society as long as one comes to terms with the division of cultural labor and the compartmentalization of the cultural market.

20. Zhang Yiwu, "Houxinshiqi wenxue: Xinde wenhua kongjian" (The post-new-era literature: A new cultural space), Wenyi lilun 1 (1993), 184.

21. Critics such as Zhang Yiwu insist on defining the new epochal expressions in terms of the cultural producers' "return" to traditional discourse. He further argues that the "return" symptom in the ideological realm went side by side with the return to older forms of narration. See "'Renmin jiyi' yu wenhua de mingyun" (''The memory of people'' and the fate of culture), Zhongshan 1 (1992), 171.

22. Guo Dong and Tian Feng, Cong xuanyun dao mikuang, 111.

23. The official media coverage of environmentalism stepped up after Qu Geping, the chief of Chinese National Environmental Bureau, returned from the UN-sponsored World Convention of Environmental Protection and Development held in Brazil in June 1992. See Xu Zhenglong, "Fazhan jingji bixu jiangu huanbao" (Economic development must go hand in hand with environmental protection), Renmin ribao, 24 June 1992, 3. Many editorials and articles on the same topic appeared in newspapers around the same time.

24. Zhang Yiwu, "Houxinshiqi wenxue," 183.

25. Critics such as Wu Bingjie reiterate this puritanical wish. See his "Shenghuo de biange yu chuangzuo de tiaozheng: Yijiu jiuyi nian zhongduanpian xiaoshuo chuangzuo manping" (The change of life and the adjustment made by creative writings: Random comments on the novellas and short stories published in 1991), Renmin ribao, 12 March 1992, 5. According to Wu, the works published in 1991 were generally concerned with the perfection of human spirit, emotions, and mind.

26. Zhang Yi, ed., Kankan Wang Shuo (Wang Shuo talking up a storm) (Beijing: Huaxia chubanshe, 1993), 12.

27. Ibid., 10.

28. Mu Gong, "Wang Shuo: Zhishi fenzi wenhua de bishizhe" (Wang Shuo: The spurner of intellectual culture), Zhongshan 1 (1991), 152.

29. Ibid.

30. Sheryl WuDunn, "The Word from China's Kerouac: The Communists Are Uncool," The New York Times Book Review, 10 January 1993, 3, 23.

31. Wang Shuo, Wo shi Wang Shuo (I am Wang Shuo) (Beijing: Guoji wenhua chuban gongsi, 1992), 34.

32. It is conventional wisdom promoted by most critics that Wang Shuo promotes "extreme individualism." See Zhang Dexiang and Jin Huimin, Wang Shuo pipan (Critiquing Wang Shuo) (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 1993), 34.

33. Wang Shuo, Wande jiushi xintiao (What I am playing with is your heart beat), Wenxue siji (Four seasons of literature) 1 (1988), 189.

34. Ibid., 177.

35. Zhang Dexiang and Jin Huimin, Wang Shuo pipan, 20.

36. Wang Shuo, Wande jiushi xintiao, 194.

37. Ibid., 212.

38. Wang Shuo, "Wanzhu" (The masters of mischief), Shouhuo (Harvest) 6 (1987), 34.

39. Yan Jingming, "Wanzhu yu dushi de chongtu: Wang Shuo xiaoshuo de jiazhi xuanze" (The masters of mischief and their conflicts with the city: The choice of values in Wang Shuo's fiction), Wenxue pinglun 6 (1989), 90.

40. Wang Shuo, "Wanzhu," 33.

41. Zhang Dexiang and Jin Huimin, Wang Shuo pipan, 39.

42. Wang Shuo, Wande jiushi xintiao, 211.

43. The theme of the angel versus the devil is played out in many of Wang Shuo's earlier works such as "Kongzhong xiaojie" (Air stewardess), "Fuchu haimian" (Emerging from the sea), and ''Yiban shi huoyan, yiban shi haishui" (Half in flame, half in the sea). The heroine in "One Half" pays with her life for falling in love with the hooligan hero.

44. Zhang Yi, Kankan Wang Shuo, 113.

45. Ji Hongzhen, "Jingshen liulangzhe de zhili youxi: Wang Shuo Wande jiushi xintiao suojie" (The intellectual game of spiritual wanderers: Decoding What I am playing with is your heart beat ), Beijing wenxue 7 (1989), 36.

46. Zhang Dexiang and Jin Huimin, Wang Shuo pipan, 114.

47. Ji Hongzhen, "Jingshen liulangzhe de zhili youxi," 34.

48. Wang Shuo, "Wode xiaoshuo" (My novels), Renmin wenxue 3 (1989), 108.

49. Andrew Ross, No Respect: Intellectuals and Popular Culture (New York: Routledge, 1989), 5.

50. C. Wright Mills, White Collar: The American Middle Classes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1953), 159.