In the original concept, the "Humanistic Reading Thought Map" was just an attempt to collect publishing suggestions - the industry needed to understand what shining works the academic community had found, and the academic community also hoped that the publishing industry would pay attention to the jade they found. So in the last month of 2021, Book Review Weekly gathered the strength of the entire editorial department to ask the following three questions to the humanities and creators who are in contact with us:
Questions you will continue to think about in 2021;
Which work you are following in 2021 that has not attracted sufficient attention or has not been introduced for publication;
What kind of original Chinese works do you expect to see?
In the end, we get far beyond the level of "recommendations". As the New Year approached, the editorial board withdrew a total of 74 responses, with a total word count of more than 50,000 words. The words with both emotional and speculative density weave a reading thought map that presents the connection between tradition and modernity, the future and the present, and their reading and inquiry in the dimension of their own lives or research record 2021, although meandering and turbulent, but still full of desire for sincere love and the need to reshape the connection between people.
This article is the answers of Ma Ling, Dai Weina and Zhang Li to the above three questions by three writers and scholars.
Past Articles:
74 Humanities Scholars, Leaving Answers to the Future about Reading | 2021 Beijing News Humanistic Reading Thought Map
Wang Renbo: We need to discover the logic of action, not just the written rules | 2021 Beijing News Humanistic Reading Thought Map
Sun Lili: The focus of picture book reading is to "educate parents and liberate children" 丨 2021 Beijing News Humanistic Reading Thought Map
Zhu Ziqiang: "Growing up" writing is the "lifeblood" of the development of Chinese children's literature and art 丨 2021 Beijing News Humanistic Reading Thought Map
Weighty social science research is scarce 丨 2021 Beijing News Humanistic Reading Thought Map
"Non-fiction" reflects the character of facing reality and the courage to respond to reality 丨 2021 Beijing News Humanistic Reading Thought Map
Sun Ge: We need to cultivate a sense of form to recognize the contours of the problem
Questions to keep thinking about
Ma Ling is a professor and book reviewer at Fudan University
Maling: We have lost moderation, boundaries, moderation. Due to the rapid development of media and platforms, the boundaries between public and private, large and small, light and heavy, and even the boundaries of time and space have all been squeezed and deformed and even smoothed out in one fell swoop. The passive confrontational posture of the younger generation is not a benign solution to the problem. We need a philosophy of happiness, a more humane institutional arrangement.
Dai Weina is an associate researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
Dai Weina: During the year, feminism has played a unique, timely and important role in the discussion of various social issues. We see feminism unleashing its interdisciplinary potential— crossing boundaries, making fluid new descriptions of issues, presenting a continuous force for social change in the pursuit of justice ,"decentralized," or even rewriting.
Academics and public opinion have paid undiminished attention to the fields of "gender violence", "family labor" and "intimate relationship", at the same time, more gender perspective observations that are synchronized with the current hot spots have emerged this year, such as: the mobility of the elderly and gender issues in family pensions; gender education for adolescents; gender and populism; gender and geopolitics under the epidemic; and the construction of gender equality systems in colleges and universities. Together, these rich issues construct a "gendered" picture of modernity.
The fiercest, deepest and most accurate criticism of feminism has always come from within feminism. Feminism has always had many different camps and views that diverged. According to my observation, this year there has been a trend of understanding and increasingly bridging between different camps, and feminist theoretical subjects, practical main forces and public opinion main forces have begun to gradually dissolve misunderstandings and establish an immediate and fragile alliance relationship.
Zhang Li is a professor at the College of Liberal Arts of Beijing Normal University
Zhang Li: Women's lives in the epidemic era are issues that I have been paying attention to for the past two years, for example, how should we understand the lives of the female elders who watch our children and do housework for us in the epidemic era? In the past, we always recognized and understood the value of women from a social perspective, and it seems that only participation in social activities can reflect the value of women - if we regard family life as part of social life, then how do we measure the value of these elderly women who silently take care of the third generation in family life, and even the value of housewives? They are actually ignored by us.
In the field of literature, can writers see these women and give them deep attention and writing? That's my interest. Giving favor to the humble and silent crowd has always been a fine tradition of modern Chinese women's literary writing, and this tradition needs to be inherited and carried forward today.
Books to watch
Ma Ling: Hidden Valley Road is an investigative report that enters the world of schizophrenics. This "most ill psychotic family in America," six of the twelve children, became an excellent sample for medical research teams, and almost all of the major breakthroughs in psychiatric research in the past half century were related to them.
With great empathy, the author frees the mentally ill from the fate of being demonized and masked. The mother Mimi and the youngest daughter Lindsay in the book are truly remarkable, fighting fate and caring for others like Greek heroes. This is a book of unparalleled courage, and for the reader, so for the reader.
Hidden Valley Road, by Robert Cork, translated by Huang Qi, edition: Xinsi Culture | CITIC Publishing Group October 2021
Dai Weina: "Essays" and "Humanities" these two sets of Mook books, academic and literary talent fly together. What is rare and valuable is that in these essays with extremely high academic gold content, we can often see the lively writing of humanistic scholars who jump out of the shackles of the eight journals and take off the true disposition of the robe of high morality and respect. Academic articles can even be allowed to be written beautifully and freely. In addition, the nine-hundred-page Complete Works of Copper Seats is like a huge mine, a truly heterogeneous writing rarely seen in the Chinese-speaking world. The old Beijing culture in "Beijing Smoke Tree" is also quite rare and enjoyable.
Cover of Essay magazine
Zhang Li: Recently, I was reading the British scholar Ann Oakley's The Invisible Woman: The Sociology of Family Affairs, a survey written by the author after interviewing 40 housewives, traditional sociological research that treats housework as an aspect of the role attributes of women in the family; and this book studies "housework" as "work". The author places women in the main position of sociological research to pay attention, and the research perspective and research methods are very worthy of reference.
To some extent, through this understanding perspective and research method, the author has "reversed" our understanding of housework, which has deep academic value. Honestly, I enjoyed reading the answers of the housewives in the survey reports, such as how they understood their housework, how they understood their family life and marital relationships, and so on. These answers are interesting, both personal and universal. Although the book was written fifty years ago, it still has relevance today.
The Invisible Woman, by Ann Oakley, translated by Wang Li, edition: Nanjing University Press, Watchmen, September 2020
Looking forward to the original work
Ma Ling: For many years, we have been followers of foreign book models, from theme to form. Many original works are just Chinese versions of foreign models, especially in the fields of culture and history. In recent years, the younger generation of authors has been the first to come out of a long apprenticeship period, and the performance of the literary world can also be remarkable. With the overall publishing policy of the mainland tilting toward domestic works, there is hope that a number of works with real Chinese themes, Chinese genres and Chinese aesthetics will emerge.
Dai Weina: Taiwan has "Fang Siqi's First Love Paradise", South Korea has "Kim Ji-young in 82 Years", japan has "Home on the Slope", and I look forward to the emergence of such representative feminist literary original works.
Zhang Li: The status of women in China has undergone very important changes, but today, there are not many literary works that truly vividly show the image of women in our time, which is regrettable. I am very much looking forward to the publication of local original works that are both deeply thoughtful, but also feminine and literary.
Author 丨Ma Ling, Dai Weina, Zhang Li
Edited by Xu Yuedong, Zhang Jin, And Chongming
Proofreading 丨 Xue Jingning