"Today we are in a multi-dimensional reality, and the dilemma is that we may lack the ability to travel freely through different dimensions of reality, an ability to reveal and perceive the overall reality." Recently, at the seminar on "The History and Potential of Realism" and "Variations of Realism" at East China Normal University, Professor Wu Xiaodong of Peking University proposed that realism also needs to have the dimension of looking at the human vision, and the challenge for writers and critics is how to construct a general framework for describing and thinking about today's historical reality.
Zhu Kangxin, associate professor and critic of East China Normal University, has attracted widespread attention after the publication of "Variations of Realism: Literary Criticism and Cultural Analysis in Contemporary Perspectives", and "realism" has also been discussed in multiple dimensions in the workshop. Professor He Guimei of Peking University believes that in the era of new media, "reality" is difficult to really establish a conscious concept of our relationship with experience, and the core problem becomes how we can create a "sense of reality" that can be written and experienced, shared and communicated. She argues that Variations of Realism exemplifies a new critique that unleashes the potential of literature and constructs the intelligibility of the times. The critical theories from Jameson, Foucault, Roland Barthes to Spielwak run through the book, enabling the whole book to deeply grasp the overall problem; from Zhao Shuli's rural writing to the critical transformation of the new media era, case analysis outlines the outline of literary history.
Sharing the implications of the title, Zhu Kang combines Roland Barthes semiotic realism with Jameson's judgment of the relationship between modernism and realism, and summarizes the critical approach as "counterpoint variation reading." Sayyid once used the "counterpoint reading method" to read the writing and resistance of Conrad's novels to imperialism, while Zhu Kang proposed that the "counterpoint variation reading method" also contains the dual relationship between space and time. In this way, the study of Chinese literature not only completes the task of reflecting and reproducing in the counterpoint relationship with the West, but also gives rise to the possibility of constructing reality in a variation.
For example, when the book reviews the writer Wang Anyi's novel "Examination Worker", it is not just a single interpretation of the text, but combines the writer's writing context and the aesthetic concept of the novel to explore the texture of cultural analysis. In the article, Wang Anyi analyzed the spiritual world of Hugo's "Notre Dame de Paris" in a "Novel Studies" class for students of fudan university's Chinese department— a public tribute to Hugo's novel and a secret declaration of her own novel: she was writing "Long Hate Song" at that time. When we follow Wang Anyi's guidance and Hugo's narration, in the chapter "Bird's Eye View of Paris", "In 1482, from the top of the bell tower of Notre Dame de Paris", we can see not only the panoramic view of Paris, but also the beginning of "Long Hate Song": "Standing on a commanding height to see Shanghai, the alleys of Shanghai are a spectacular scene." ”
Therefore, "Notre Dame de Paris" and "Long Hate Song" have a close intertextual relationship, for which Wang Anyi did not shy away from it in his later creative talks - "Long Hate Song" is really a little bit of learning Hugo to write Paris. I really like "Notre Dame de Paris", especially the section from the tower to see Paris, it is not long, but it is very well written, so magnificent, so romantic..."
Zhu Kang keenly captured—just as Wang Anyi's teaching on Notre Dame de Paris contained an explanation of her novel "Long Hate Song", and Wang Anyi's speech on "Les Misérables" had a foreshadowing of another of her novels—this is "Kao Gong Ji". Therefore, it is entirely possible to use the sentence pattern of Wang An's remembrance of "Les Misérables" to narrate the synopsis of the story of "Kao Gong Ji": a person, that is, Chen Shuyu's cultivation process, the place of his cultivation is in the turbulent Chinese society. Shanghai is part of Chinese society, so he had to – come, no, he didn't have to "come" like Jean Valjean – born in Shanghai, his real place of cultivation. The reason why Shanghai can be used as such a cultivation ground is because this Shanghai is really a strange place, on the one hand, it is on the cusp of history,...... On the other hand, it is also in the chai rice oil and salt common road. The former was the background of Chen Shuyu's cultivation, and the latter was the occasion of Chen Shuyu's cultivation. At the same time, it is precisely these two aspects that determine the content and form of Wang Anyi's novel: from the former, the correct history is formed, and from the latter, the barnyard history grows. ”
Sun Xiaozhong of East China Normal University connects the "variation" of the musical terminology to the context of the Chinese national dynasty literary and art theory of "changing wind and becoming elegant", and reads the classical interpretation basis of Zhu Kang's analysis of the "Record of Examination Workers" and the highly historical research method of word analysis. Ni Wei of Fudan University describes the reading experience as "excited and dizzy", arguing that "Variations of Realism" is characterized by a dive and rise between text, history and theory. The question of whether realism can maintain its intensity in the present moment in variations, and how to restore realism's action and rebuild its connection with society?
Luo Gang of East China Normal University extends from the discussion of Zhao Shuli in the book, places it in the historical context of Chinese vernacular realism, analyzes the significance of the argument of the late Ming thinker Li Zhuowu and the Donglin Party to the history of ideas, and the contextual relationship between the mediation of Lu Xun and the vernacular novel represented by Zhao Shuli, showing the historical thickness of Chinese vernacular realism. Zhang Pingjin of Tongji University extended the three issues of realism, experience and aesthetics from the discussion of this book, reminding attention to the realistic function of contemporary literature and the continuity of historical experience, and there is still a temporal aesthetic orientation in addition to the aesthetics of spatialization.
In the view of Lu Taiguang of the China Academy of Arts, Zhu Kang's research has given a global theoretical vision to the study of contemporary Chinese literary history, and inspired us that at a time when the power of literature to intervene in reality is weakened, we still need a strong ism to activate the initiative of literature and restore the ability to face contradictions and resolve contradictions.
Chen Qi of East China Normal University carefully read Zhu Kang's book "Sentinel Under Neon Lights" to grasp the important clues of the theoretical concept of "space" in the chapters, and used the movies "Sentinel under Neon Lights" and "The Story of Liubao" as examples to explore the extension of the revolutionary context. Wang Qin of the University of Tokyo praised the book's theoretical vision and methodology, arguing that the "variation of realism" is the author's profound grasp of reality in the context of transnational capitalism, and embodies the borrowing and transformation of Jameson's allegorical criticism, which can reawaken the intensity of literature.
Mao Jian of East China Normal University pointed out that Foucault's knowledge archaeology constitutes the ideological starting point of this book, and through the Jefferson intermediary, Foucault's knowledge type pre-modern, modern and post-modern. Mao Jian discovered the high-frequency reproduction of the words "form" and "love" in Zhu Kang's works, and further raised the question of "whether socialist texts can enter the indoor space" through the analysis of "Between Us Husbands and Wives" in the book.
It is reported that the event was jointly sponsored by the Research Center for Critical Theory of East China Normal University, the Research Center for Modern Chinese Literature Materials and the International Chinese Language Institute.
Author: Xu Yang
Image source: Organizer
Editor: Xu Luming