When reading classic stories, we always unconsciously follow the protagonist's experience and the plot that unfolds from it. This way of reading can often only be developed in a "single-threaded" and "centralized" narrative structure. If we take a "decentralized" approach, from the perspective of other characters, or disrupt or distort the plot and reconstruct the narrative, will the story become richer?
Recently, a considerable number of classic literary works have opened up the feminist perspective "restatement" program. Margaret Atwood's Penelope is a well-known example of this. In addition, Natalie Haynes rewrote the Trojan War from a female perspective in A Thousand Ships, Pat Barker rewrote The Iliad from Briceys' perspective in The Silence of the Girls, and Maggie O'Farrell's Hamlet (Hamnet) focuses on Shakespeare's wife, Jeet Thayil's Names of the Women, who wrote the stories of 15 women who were contemporaries of Jesus...
In everyday cultural life, "text restatement" is not a new thing: broadly speaking, the "fandom" of online novels, the "fandoms" created by fans, and even the adaptations of novels by film and television dramas are all among the "restatements" - they either change the perspective of the narrative or adjust the plot development. The restatements based on feminist perspectives are also striking: Margaret Atwood's retelling of the Trojan War and Angela Carter's feminist rewriting of fairy tales; if "images" are also considered "texts" in a broad sense, feminist appropriation of classic paintings such as "The Grand Palace Lady" and "The Last Supper" also belongs to this category.
The restated text is already all around us, but the topic still deserves further consideration: Why are people willing to restate and read the "restated" text? What is the relationship between the restated text and the text being restated? Why is a restatement of a classic text necessary? This article will invite readers to explore these issues.
Written by | Xie Tingyu
01
How is a restatement of the text possible?
A restatement of a classic text can easily be considered a tall thing. However, even in the most common mass culture, restatements are not uncommon. For example, many comics and online novels have "Fan Wai", and the author often reproduces the content of the "main drama" based on the perspective of a certain supporting character or even a villain; and in zhihu, he often sees such a question: "How to tell an anti-routine martial arts story", "Can you write a broken fairy tale"... These questions aim to reconstruct well-known martial arts and fairy tale narratives based on specific perspectives. In a sense, we already live in a world of meaning "surrounded" by "restated texts."
However, how is a "restatement" of the text possible? Expressions such as "the author is dead" and "the text is not closed" have long been well known, and everyone is tacitly allowed to interpret the text differently. But people rarely think about it, and at the end of the day, what is the basis for the openness of the text?
From a phenomenological point of view, the openness of the text may be explained by the "fullness" and "emptiness" of the intention. In this regard, phenomenologists often use an example of a cube to illustrate that when we face a cube, we "directly see" only parts of the side of the cube, for which our intentionality is "full". However, what we actually "intend" is the entire cube—this intention contains the aspects that are directly seen and not directly seen. Our intentionality is "empty" to those that are not seen, and they are given in an "absent" way. In fact, no one can see all the sides of the cube at the same time, but one can still intend to be a "cube" as a whole. Therefore, the viewing activity is composed of a combination of fulfilling intentions and empty intentions. As we adjust the viewing angle, we get the intention of different angles.
The reading and comprehension of the text is also such an intentional activity that mixes "enrichment" and "emptiness": for example, when we read "Lu Ti Zhi Punching The Town Of Kansai", the related plots of Lu Ti Zhi and Jin Cuilian's father and daughter are "directly given", so our intention to them is "full". However, for the author's less direct ink on "Town Kansai", our intention is "empty". Based on this mixture of "emptiness" and "fulfillment", we gain an overall impression and perception of the plot. Similarly, in analyzing and evaluating the main thrust of the text, one cannot do without a mixture of "emptiness" and "fulfillment": the so-called "scribe sees Yi", the Taoist sees obscenity, the caizi sees the entanglement, the gossiper sees the secret affairs of the palace"... What is given directly is only the plot itself, and when the absent things are reconstructed in different ways, different evaluations are derived from this.
Introduction to Phenomenology, [Us] Robert Sokolawsky, translated by Zhang Jianhua/Gao Bingjiang, Shanghai Culture Publishing House, March 2021
Therefore, the restatement of the text is also a reconstruction of the "absent" thing.
As the phenomenologist Françoise Dastur has pointed out: "Intentionality necessarily involves an expectation of something other than what is directly given, and therefore phenomenology must remain open to surprise ... Both in the past and in the future there are "phenomena" that phenomenologists can only indirectly reach and must be reconstructed in their absence. Thus, the "restatement" of the text is an uncompromising "phenomenological activity", whether for the "restater" or for the "reader" of the restatement of the text, this activity is accompanied by "anticipation" and "surprise" - which constitutes the possibility of "textual restatement" and the original driving force of the restatement of the act. Many times, publishers want to restate it because the original left unanswered questions. It is precisely because of the "absence" that there is further "enrichment" to be done, and the reader will have expectations.
The need for restatement is also reflected in the "problem-based" change. As the French philosopher Althusser pointed out, the problem type is a conceptual system that determines the questions that people can ask and the answers they get. In Shakespeare's day, neither the author nor the reader possessed a systematic and complete feminist "conceptual system" and therefore could not "interrogate" in a relevant way in the text. However, in the present, feminism has also become an indispensable "conceptual filter" for people to look at society, so it is possible and necessary to raise feminist "problems" and expect answers to Shakespeare's works. In other words, today, the intentions of many classic works can be "enriched" in a way that was unimaginable in the past, and this enrichment reveals a richer space for meaning.
In the field of mass culture, "restatement" behavior such as fandom is often related to the "self-empowerment" of the reader. By restating, the "reader" no longer submits to the author's authority in a gesture of creeping over the text, but intervenes in the process of cultural production in a positive and active way. The process of reproduction of this text is also accompanied by the reproduction of self-satisfaction and pleasure. At the same time, within a certain reader community, excellent repeaters can also accumulate cultural capital and enhance their position in the reader community.
Reader on Fan Culture, edited by Tao Dongfeng, Peking University Press, February 2009
02
What does restatement mean for the "restated person"?
If the reader and the restater can derive "surprise" and "anticipation" from the restatement, what does it mean to restate the work itself? In particular, what is the relationship between the works retelled from a feminist perspective and the original work?
In the author's opinion, it can be roughly considered that the relationship between the restated work and the original work can be divided into three types. First, the restated work may subvert and deconstruct the meaning of the original. This relationship is particularly evident in Angela Carter's retelling of fairy tales. Carter's biographer argues that her retelling of Little Red Riding Hood completely subverts the morally charged story in the original version:
The story begins with a series of ominous accounts of the evil nature of wolves ("They are as gray as famine and as evil as plagues") and short warning wolf legends, narrated in the voice of an ancient village storyteller. It outlines the natural beauty of the original primary colors (all white and blood red), immersed in a dangerous atmosphere. So Little Red Riding Hood laughed in front of the wolf and ripped off his shirt 'into the fire, just as he had burned his own clothes before', which constituted a special moment, replacing the end of Perot's original moral preaching with a picture of rage and joy. ”
The stories that Carter recounted "mostly tell the story of young girls discovering their sexual characteristics, with images of pornography and menstruation." Stylistically, her stories are sometimes filled with a "flirty and vulgar harmonious opera atmosphere". Although Carter himself explicitly opposed the "death" of her work in the framework of gender politics to explain its meaning, it is undeniable that such a desire to write is already subverting the patriarchal consciousness that permeates fairy tales.
In traditional fairy tales, women most often appear in three typical forms: the helpless princess to be saved; the vicious woman (such as stepmother and witch); and the absent birth mother. Here, women's desires are suppressed, and their identity also depends on male recognition. Carter's "restatement" can therefore be seen as a "carnival text" in the sense of Bakhtin: the carnival text is based on the times, subverting the original structure of the text in the process of parodying the classic works, liberating it from the existing order, allowing the repressed "voice" to give voice, and in Carter's work, the clear dichotomy of "male-moral-sublime" and "female-desire-dependence" under the patriarchal order is broken through the "carnival of desire", and the suppressed discourse is revealed under the restatement.
Made by Carter: A Biography of Angela Carter, Edmund Gordon, Nanjing University Press, May 2020
Second, the "restatement" of the work may not constitute a direct subversion of the "original", but rather a distinct style by appropriating some of its elements. This approach is often reflected in the creation of feminist artists, who create many of the pictorial "texts" that have this characteristic.
For example, a painting by Mary Beth Edelson, Some Living American Women Artists/Last Supper, appropriates The Last Supper, replacing the image of Jesus Christ and his disciples with that of a female artist. The work is considered "the most iconic and representative image in the feminist art movement".
Some Living American Women Painters/The Last Supper
Another of Edelson's work, Death of Patriarchy A.I.R. Anatomy Lesson, appropriates Rembrandt's painting, Professor Dopp's Anatomy Class, which depicts female artists dissecting the "patriarchy" of corpses. The appropriation and parody of the classics give these restated works a very distinct stylized character.
The Death of Patriarchy
Finally, the restated work may also be "complementary" to the original work, highlighting the meaning of the original text more fully and completely in a differentiated expression.
03
Why is a textual restatement of the female perspective necessary?
In fact, a considerable number of classic literary works have recently been included in feminist "restatements". Margaret Atwood's The Book of Penelope is one of the most well-known works. In addition, the Guardian has listed a series of such books in related books. Natalie Haynes rewrote the Trojan War from a female perspective in A Thousand Ships, Pat Barker rewrote The Iliad from Bricey's perspective in The Silence of the Girls, and Hamlet by Maggie O'Farrell (Hamnet) focuses on Shakespeare's wife, Jeet Thayil's Names of the Women, which writes the story of 15 women who were contemporaries of Jesus.
The Chronicle of Penelope, [Canada] Margaret Atwood, translated by Wei Qingqi, Chongqing Publishing House, August 2020
Behind this "classical restatement plan", there are three main reasons for the legitimacy of the plan. On the one hand, the influence of Neo-historicism can be seen in this movement. On the question of literature, neo-historicism advocates the abolition of the purity and authority of literature, and attempts to "put literature into culture, change the purity of literature, and return to the original state of culture." "Literature is not pure because it is also the product of the ideological construction of the cultural network of a certain era, and there is an intricate relationship with power. Therefore, since the "classic" is nothing more than a construction in history, it is also common to construct it from a contemporary perspective.
Second, people's interpretations of literary classics always change with history. Even if the text is maintained as it is, the understanding and evaluation of the text cannot remain unchanged. This is abundantly reflected in the philosophical interpretation of literary works: for example, in the writings of Horkheimer and Adorno, the story of the Odyssey is a metaphor for modernity; in Hegel's eyes, Antigone reveals the reason for the disintegration of the "ethical entity" of ancient Greece; and in the interpretation of current feminist critics, Antigone highlights the new problems of gender differences, kinship, and ethical obligations. Obviously, these interpretations bear a distinct mark of the times. Beyond the original intent of the classics.
Antigone and Ismene
Finally, the more immediate appeal is that many of the ideological elements in the old texts are no longer compatible with the current cultural climate and educational needs. Reading these new, restated texts can do "social indoctrination" and promote the formation of an atmosphere of gender equality. It is from this perspective that the writer Johnny Samp evaluates the restatement of the classic:
"Literature lays the rules for what we know about the past, but they also lay the groundwork for what the future can represent. Books give us the ability to think of the world in ways that are beyond our knowledge... I think the needs of children have changed, and so should literature. From a women's perspective, the retelling version of the classic will show how things change when women are at the center of the narrative. Therefore, we need gender-neutral literature even more. This will ensure that in the future every voice is heard and that everyone can have their own voice. ”
Marshall Berman once said that Marx's sentence that "all solid things are gone" speaks to the core of the experience of modernity. Like everything else that "vanishes", the classic texts that were once sacred and pure need to be tortured and restated in the present. It is also in the reproduction of this text that the meaningful space of contemporary cultural life is formed. Thus, one must become accustomed to shaping one's consciousness and forming one's own identity in the constant and flowing stream of meaning.