"The Return of Criticism" | He Ping
| December 2021 | RMB68.00
Literary live archives of the famous critic He Ping
Redraw the map of contemporary Chinese literature in the form of fieldwork
Discover new literary forces and focus on cutting-edge literary issues
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Return to the literary scene
Reconstruct the dialogue between the Academy's criticism and literary public life
He Ping was not a college critic in the usual sense. In the past five or six years, he has presided over the "Flower City Concern" column, convened the "Shanghai-Nanjing Twin Cities Literary Workshop", and edited the "Live Literature Series" and the "Literary Community Book Series", which realistically affected the current literary production and ecology, in order to fulfill its ideal of reconstructing the dialogue and publicity of literary criticism. Based on the integrity of long-term literary history and the concept of great literature, "The Return of Criticism" explores and redraws a panoramic map of contemporary Chinese literature in the form of fieldwork, and is a native archive of the literary scene. Not only that, in He Ping's view, critics take root in the literary scene and participate in literary production and the construction of literary history, which is an important tradition of modern Chinese literary criticism. Adhering to this tradition, "The Return of Criticism" presents a unique personal critical style in its philosophy, posture, practice, paradigm and style.
The whole book is divided into three series: "Thought Trends", "Writers" and "Scene". "Thought Trend" is He Ping's exploration and reflection on the overall Chinese literature in the era of reform and opening up, especially in the twenty years of the new century; "Writer" is a series of writer case studies, he takes five writers such as Ah Lai, Chi Zijian, Li Er, Ai Wei, qiu Huadong and other writers as a sample to reflect on the aesthetic creation of contemporary Chinese writers; "Scene" is a private literary archive, which includes the general evaluation of the thirty issues of the "Flower City Concern" column hosted by the author from 2017 to 2021.
With the aesthetic sensitivity and independent judgment of critics, He Ping sorted out and debated the rich literary scene, extracted new literary fashions and aesthetic experiences, and paid attention to important literary issues in the era of reform and opening up, especially in the new century: local and world literature, media revolution, the impact of AI technology on literature, literary intergenerational and youth writing, the historical logic of Chinese literature in the era of reform and opening up, multi-ethnic literature and literary community, emerging literary styles and social changes, etc., starting from the issues of the era of literature. Realizing the return of literary criticism to contemporary Chinese literature and the reality of China it is related to highlights the effectiveness and sense of reality of literary criticism with attitude, temperature and feelings.
"Literary Curation": Make literary publications look like art galleries
He Ping
The establishment of a modern periodical system and a remuneration system is an important prerequisite for modern Chinese literature to become possible. A history of modern Chinese literature is, to some extent, a history of modern literary periodicals, and vice versa. At the end of the twentieth century, after experiencing the resumption and founding of the 1970s and the extreme prosperity of the 1980s, literary periodicals fell into the dilemma of readership loss and sharp decline in circulation in the context of literary marketization, so that some people even shouted that "literary periodicals must be defended" at that time.
Indeed, literary journals are part of the entire literary ecology, and talking about the future and destiny of literary journals is naturally based on the entire literary ecology in these two decades. About the current Chinese literary ecology: After nearly two decades of baptism of online new media, national writing has become a "literary" fact that occurs around us every moment. The masses divide the literary territory that was once monopolized by a small number of literary people, and those popular literature that we once thought was not literature, or that it was only of low rank and style, took root and grew among ordinary readers without abandoning itself, and then forced professional readers to face, recognize and name, and the boundaries of literature were repeatedly expanded. Based on the literary activity of the communicative field, online literature certainly cannot be the kind of private meditation literature that we originally said, centered on the publication of literary journals. Its difference is reflected in the new "author-reader" relationship around the communication of "fan culture" attributes such as immediacy reading, liking, commenting and tiping, to fully developed forums, Tieba and offline activities with their own mobilization mechanism. This new "author-reader" relationship breaks through the traditional relatively closed literary production and consumption, and literary journals are an important intermediary for maintaining traditional literary production and consumption.
"The Return of Criticism" book shadow
In many descriptions, we see only the crisis of literary publications around the new century. In fact, the crisis of the survival of literary periodicals that occurred at the end of the twentieth century was not only a conscious revolution in the transformation of literary periodicals, with the goal of making traditional literary periodicals a dynamic literary new media. The impetus for the revolution of literary journals, of course, came in part from online media. "The emergence of the Internet shows that people's way of speaking and reading is quietly changing, and its enlightenment to literary publications is multifaceted." "Literary publications are a product of the age of writing. This era is not over, and the era of digital graphics has arrived. The way people use and accept it is facing a new shock. Literature and literary publications in the traditional sense must also face this situation. Not only does it not lose the reasonable core of literary publications, but at the same time, the way literary publications are expressed (including the writer's way of writing) must be effectively adjusted. This is a change in editorial policy, but also an adjustment in business strategy. "The main body of literary activity lies in literary publications, which are themselves a subjective act. It is not just a compilation of literary works, nor is it just how many good works are published, the key is that it is a comprehensive text, a cultural media. It should more effectively intervene in creation and criticism, intervene in the current situation of literature, intervene in the whole process of literary activities, and can effectively guide this status quo and process. ”
This re-identification of the "mediated" nature of literary journals is of great significance. Unlike the narrow "literary periodicals", the influence of "literary media" is more public. "Hibiscus", "Writer", "Budding", and "Science Fiction World" are literary publications that established "media" at the turn of the century earlier. In recent years, the "Sinan Literary Anthology" and the revised edition of "Novel Circle" in Shanghai are also literary journals that have been prominent in the sense of "media".
Since the beginning of the new century, the changes in literary new media represented by newly created literary publications or MOOK, such as "Tiannan", "Solo Choir", "Dafang", "Literary and Art Style Appreciation", "Literary and Art Wind Elephant", "Carp", "MinimalIst", "Xinrui", "Super Good Looking", "Kyushu Fantasy", etc., or MOOK, have had a great impact on literature. Different from traditional literary periodicals, these new literary media no longer adhere to the traditional pattern of poetry, prose, novels, and literary criticism divided into units according to literary categories, but reconstruct the relationship between literature and the era in which it is located and the reader public under the influence of the "cross-border" and "cross-border" concepts of "big literature" and "pan literature". And the literary APP "one· one" "nut novel", the electronic magazine "Minimum", as well as Douban, Jianshu, NetEase "Human World", Tencent "Everyone" and the literary theme of the WeChat public account "Riot Literature and Art", "Zhiwei MOOK", "Mr. Po", "Noon Story", "Enclave", "Future Literature", "Bisimos's Discourse", "Elephant Reckless", "Niche", "Black and Blue" and other new media that are different from large commercial online platforms, emerge in an endless stream, and some of these literary new media are in the Internet age." The product of "writing for all" is thematic nature and fandom, and their relationship with traditional literary journals is worth studying.
It should be pointed out in particular that the significance of the three publications of "Literary and Art Style Appreciation", "Carp" and "Solo Choir" does not stop there. Although we have publications such as "Sprout", "West Lake", "Youth Literature", "Young Writers", and "Youth", and journals such as Harvest and People's Literature also take it as their mission to discover new literary talents, these publications are not led by young people themselves in the strict sense, so they cannot fully practice their literary and artistic views. The editors-in-chief of the three publications of "Literary and Art Wind Appreciation", "Carp" and "Solo Choir" are Di An, Zhang Yueran and Han Han, three influential post-80s writers. It was only when these publications appeared that the independence of the "youth" was realized. Comparing the "fandom" of "Carp", the "thought" of "Solo Choir" and the open aesthetic of "Literary and Art Style Appreciation", it can be found that all three publications are trying to expand the literary reading and writing life of the young generation in China, who are not replacing each other, but are good at their own strengths. "Carp" is a theme book with a strong sense of problems, each issue takes the spiritual problems of a contemporary youth as the starting point of the journal's thinking, and literature and the spiritual reality of young people constitute an intertextual and unique text. In a way, from 2008 to the present, the dozen themes of "Carp" are a long spiritual history of Chinese youth. For them, journals are not publications that only publish literary works in the traditional sense, but platforms and spaces that cross the boundaries of literature and art and 384 live, literature and other artistic styles, and coexist with each other. Diane named the "Literary and Art Style Appreciation" "Literary and Art Zhi". From a simple "literary journal" to a comprehensive "literary and artistic journal", this should be enlightening for the transformation and transformation of China's huge literary journals at present.
At the beginning of 2016, when discussing the "Flower City Concern" column with Zhu Yanling, the editor-in-chief of "Flower City", we were thinking, what should "Flower City Concern" do to the current Chinese literature? How do I do it? Since the 1980s, the way the column host runs the journal has been adopted by many publications, such as "Oriental Chronicle", "Everyone", "Furong", "Flower City", "Mountain Flower" and so on. In fact, the column host has brought a different atmosphere to these magazines than that of simple literary editors. Critics have realistically influenced literary publications, and what impressed me the most was the "Shanghai Literature" and "Zhong Shan" at a certain stage, and the personal positions of critics such as Chen Sihe, Cai Xiang, Ding Fan, and Wang Gan influenced the interests of the journal and the scale of selection. From the general direction, I also positioned "Flower City Concern" in the column hosted by critics.
The special significance of the column "Flower City Concern" to me is that "hosting" is criticism - through hosting to express the Zang denial of current Chinese literature, but also to highlight their aesthetic judgment and literary view as a critic. According to this, each topic has a specific target of criticism for the currentity and sense of presence of contemporary Chinese literature, and the possibility and future of Chinese literature are the criteria for selecting writers. Under such targets and standards, heterogeneous texts that deviate from aesthetic conventions naturally receive more "attention", and the possibility and future also make the "bias" of the column reserve room for discussion and questioning.
As for "literary curation," I thought of it when I read Hans Ulrich Obrist's A Brief History of Curating. In 2006, when he interviewed Anne Danonkourl, director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, he asked Anne Danonkourt "how to define the role of curator" in the phrase "the curator is a flyover", and Anne Danonkourl said: "The curator should be the liaison between art and the public." Of course, many artists are their own liaisons, especially now, artists don't need or want curators, preferring to communicate directly with the public. In my opinion, this is good. I think of curators as facilitators. You could also say that curators are obsessed with art and willing to share this obsession with others. However, they must always be vigilant and avoid imposing their own perceptions and opinions on others. It's hard to do because you can only be yourself, you can only see art with your own eyes. In short, curators help the public approach art, experience the joy of art, feel the power of art, the subversion of art, and other things. "Like artists, in China today, the communication and communication between writers and the reader public is no longer entirely dependent on the intermediary of traditional literary journals. More communicative online platforms, such as Douban and Jianshu, which are based on websites that realize personal writing, blogs, microblogs, WeChat public accounts, etc. challenge traditional literary journals from all aspects, and even if traditional literary journals become "literary media", communication is not sufficient.
"Literary Curation" draws inspiration from art displays and events. Unlike traditional literary editors, literary curators are liaisons, facilitators, and sharers, not arbitrary literary evangelists. In fact, every act of literary publication, including the medium, is similar to a kind of "curation". Similar to the public spaces of art exhibitions such as museums and art galleries, literary publications are the "overpass" of people coming and going, and the art activities of museums and art galleries have curators, and critics are most likely to become literary curators. In this way, the "Flower City Concern" column is imagined as a public art museum with a curator role in it, which is consistent with my expectation that the critics would intervene in literary production and move forward to the editorial stage.
The easiest thing to think of as a "literary curator" as an act of publication editors is that literature is nourished from other artistic disciplines and also activates other arts, such as the directors' novels, plays, film poetry, lyrics, and so on. Literature actively intervenes in other arts, extending from the paper of literary publications to the outside of paper, which is the colonization and proliferation of literature itself.
A curator, although he may curate this today and that tomorrow, a good curator should be a good critic first, and there should be the basic tastes, positions and aesthetic judgments of the critic throughout each curatorial exhibition, even if the expression and presentation of each exhibition are different. This basic taste, stance and aesthetic judgment determines whether each "literary curation" of "Flower City Concern" is cutting-edge. And it is this frontier that establishes the relationship between curators, or critics and literary times, highlighting the different timeliness and sense of presence of literary publications and book publishing, such as "From "New Story Compilation" to "Fan Writing" in the 5th issue of 2018, which is based on keenly capturing that some parts of our literary era are being presented in the way of "fan writing", and these literary phenomena that occur on the Internet have realistically affected the literary creation of the younger generation, but have not attracted enough attention from us. Whether it's anime and cosplay that appeal to the genre with fun, or fan-written writing ("CP wen" that has become a genre), such productions on new media platforms have a more varied and rich form. At least in my perception, most researchers do not think that this can be regarded as a literary phenomenon, at most a "recreational" phenomenon.
It is worth noting that cutting-edge is not equal to only newness, but also a kind of rediscovery from the perspective of literary history, such as the "science fiction" special topic in the 6th issue of 2017, in addition to grasping the world realistically, it can be absurd or magical to grasp our world, and today, "science fiction" is not a worldview and way to grasp our world for the future? For example, the question raised in the "Multi-Ethnic Writing" topic of the first issue of 2018 is how the works of other ethnic writers who have not been translated into Chinese can enter the narrative of contemporary Chinese literary history.
Observing the history of contemporary Chinese literary periodicals from the perspective of "literary curation", such as the "Pioneer Writers Special Number" of "Harvest" in the 1980s, the "New Realistic Novel" of Zhong Shan, the "Poetry Newspaper", "Shenzhen Youth Daily" of "Chinese Poetry 1986' Modern Poetry Group Exhibition", the 1990s "Realist Shockwave", "Network Quartet", "Furong" of "Reshaping the 70s", the "New Concept Essay Competition" of "Sprout" in the new century, the "Non-fiction Writing" of "People's Literature", etc. should all be successful." Literary Curatorial Exhibition". In this sense, the so-called "literary curation" is to hope that literary journals will become the most dynamic literary space in the entire rich scene of literary production, literary ecology and literary life. However, the fact is that there are so many literary journals in Chinese literature at present, only a few have completed the transition from "literary periodicals" to "literary media", and very few can consciously carry out "literary curation", so the result is that the contemporary literature part centered on literary journals has increasingly become a conservative and rigid "literature of a minority" that talks to itself.
-About the Author-
He Ping, born in 1968, is a professor and doctoral supervisor of the College of Literature of Nanjing Normal University, and the chief expert of major projects of the National Social Science Foundation. He is the author of "Essays", "Selected Literary Criticism of He Ping", "The Life of the Unknown", etc. The editor-in-chief is "Literary Community Book Series" and "Live Literature Series". In 2017, he launched the "Shanghai-Nanjing Twin Cities Literature Workshop"; in the same year, he began to host the "Flower City Concern" column of "Flower City" magazine.
Illustration: Yilin Publishing House
EDIT: Anran
Review: Du Xiaoye
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