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.