A post-95 Wang Xiaobo reading history

Zongcheng

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Today, we commemorate Wang Xiaobo not only because he is an important writer, but also because the questions he asks are not outdated, and the ability to reason, tolerate and independent think is still lacking in contemporary society. The significance of Wang Xiaobo is that at a certain moment when many people are young, he will open a window and provide us with another way of looking at the world.

I started reading Wang Xiaobo in high school. In the era when Zhou Guoping, Bi Shumin, and Yu Qiuyu led the composition material, Wang Xiaobo's words were like a clear stream, which gave me different feelings. His writing has the wind and bone of Lu Xun, but it is less lu xun's depth and more cynical. He was the "Yellow Book" that his classmates privately circulated, and the spring dreams of many boys began with Wang Er and Chen Qingyang. Unlike the construction of the sublime in academia, for us after the 1995 epidemic, Wang Xiaobo's works were actually sexual enlightenment books at the beginning.

▌ Sexual enlightenment and intellectual rebellion

Wang Xiaobo was a marginal writer before his death, but after his death, he became a totem for a generation of literary and artistic youth. In Xici Hutong, there is a special discussion version of "Wang Xiaobo's Lackeys Grand Alliance". It was the era when Tianya.com and Renren were not yet in decline, and my reading career began at that time. Wang Xiaobo, Qian Zhongshu, Ah Cheng, Yu Hua, etc., were the writers that their classmates loved to circulate at that time.

Compared with the lyrical body of sad spring and autumn, they represent a rational and humorous taste, which is a fresh and rich ideological resource for small-town youth. Afterwards, I found that it was not so much that the intellectual resources were original as "intermediaries." Wang Xiaobo will gladly admit that he is an apprentice of Russell, Dewey, Hayek, Orwell, Calvino, Yousenal, etc., who have praised these writers in many articles, and he is also good at using the ideological resources of Russell and others to intervene in China's public affairs.

One of Wang Xiaobo's most famous books is The Golden Age, and my reading of him began with that book. At first, I thought of it as a "little yellow book", and when I heard my classmates say that the description of sex was better than "Norwegian Forest", I went to join in the fun, and I was quickly attracted by the cynical, hippie rogue and small sad tone of the novel, such as this sentence: "Revolution means that some people will inexplicably become victims." "For teenagers, this is a head-on slaughter, something that textbooks rarely talk about.

It is said that Wang Xiaobo cannot circumvent sex, and the entire novella of "Golden Age" is a story that revolves around sex. Many scholars like to sublime Wang Xiaobo, but I think Wang Xiaobo is precisely a person who deconstructs the sublime, dragging people down from the history books and moral rhetoric and returning to the most primitive appearance. He wants to write about the body, about desire, about the seven meats and eight vegetarians that orthodoxy can't see, and bring out the most real sorrow and romance that belongs to ordinary people.

Wang Xiaobo does not look at sex in isolation, but combines sex with culture and politics. When moralists see sex as a flood beast, Wang Xiaobo pointed out that sexual freedom is not terrible. The imprisonment of sexual desire, especially female desire, implies the patriarchal fear of women's autonomy. Facing up to sexual desire and sound sex education is a more appropriate approach than stigmatizing sexual desire. Wang Xiaobo is keenly aware that facing up to sex helps society gain some vitality under confinement. In the creation of novels, the reason why he writes about sex is not out of kitsch, but only to present the real state of existence.

Further, Wang Xiaobo writes about sex, which in the end is a secret resistance to totalitarianism. From the tyranny of ancient monarchs to the fascism of the 20th century, Wang Xiaobo took a clear stand against totalitarianism, he wrote about sex, wrote about human desires, in fact, he was rebelling against the oppressive discourse shaped by totalitarian politics, suppressing human desire is the basis of absolutism, and the integration of extreme morality and asceticism jointly maintains a strict environment. Wang Xiaobo's writing is a satire and dissolution of control, but unlike Lu Xun who shoulders the dark floodgates, he sees happiness in despair, and confronts despair in a humorous, cynical way (the predecessor of today's magic). If Lu Xun is a swordsman in the dark, Wang Xiaobo is more like a comedian in the night. If you want to find a coordinate for Wang Xiaobo, he is very similar to the Chinese variant of George Orwell and Calvino.

▌ Read Wang Xiaobo's world

Back to a more everyday level. Wang Xiaobo's writing about sex, writing about tube buildings, and those unit dormitories and state-owned enterprises that permeate the atmosphere of collectivism seem to be far away from the post-90s, but for a young person born in a small city in Guangdong, it is actually not strange.

Small cities, those people who come and go, the circle is very small, there are many elders, who were colleagues of communes or state-run units at that time, and that atmosphere is very similar to what Wang Xiaobo wrote. However, we are not so intellectuals here, nor do we have the painful memories of the "anti-rightist movement" that are personally experienced. Our childhood years, in the twilight of collectivism, the rise of the market economy, the later twists and turns, at that time (2000-2008) could not think of, lying flat, inner volume of these words, at that time, there was no such thing, so it was in a relatively calm and mixed with depression and rebellious emotions, to read Wang Xiaobo.

For a while, my classmates and I frantically read Wang Xiaobo's works, which were like a torrential rainstorm that made people feel intellectually happy.

At the time, Wang Xiaobo also attracted me to his sense of humor. For example, "The Silent Majority" says of "silence": "Around me, there are many people of my personality who say nothing in public, but witty in private. Wang Xiaobo keenly found that many Chinese people do not care about politics, but like to care privately, and that political enthusiasm is suppressed, but as long as there is a hint, it will be ignited into a raging fire.

Many people praise Wang Xiaobo's ideas, but in fact, as many critics have said, Wang Xiaobo's more revolutionary is language. Wang Xiaobo's ideas are mostly imported, and he advocates common sense and sinicizes the ideas of Russell, Hayek, Orwell and others. But his tempering of the vernacular is very noteworthy, Wang Xiaobo is not a writer who shows off rhetoric, he does not work in the southern Dynasty Qi Liang body's fat powder ornate, his Chinese is simple, clean, rarely strange words, but can provide poetry and philosophy in simple language.

For example, he wrote about sex: "When Chen Qingyang came to me, he rode the white wind. The wind came in from underneath the clothes and flowed through the whole body, as if caressing and lips. ("The Golden Age") "He wrote about life: "I can't go to work, go to the gray crowd, and go all the way to think about right and wrong." Live to be a pig and die, and I don't know which is more terrible. ("Red Breeze Night Run")".

His language has a good sense of rhythm, musicality, coincidence, does not look gorgeous, but is more difficult to write than flowery words. Han Han and Shuang Xuetao, who came out later, learned his language to some extent. This is a frank, sober, unabashed text, and there is a wind bone in these words, and this alone is better than many contemporaries.

▌ Why do we still need Wang Xiaobo?

After graduating from high school, I slowly walked through the stage of obsessing with Wang Xiaobo. First, at the literary level, seeing writers who write better than him, such as Yousenal, whom he himself highly respects, feels that Wang Xiaobo writes well, but not to the point of being a first-class writer in his heart, which is a private perception. The second is that in terms of life experience, perhaps aware of the limitations of liberalism in the local landing, in explaining some issues, such as labor and gender issues, it is easy to become a "correct" but difficult to specifically land rhetoric, and more complex thinking about liberalism has arisen, and then the liberal-oriented Wang Xiaobo has also adjusted his views.

Most of his essays, as seen today, are common sense and insightful, but they always feel that the point is not deep enough, and when explaining more complex problems, it is necessary to seek out other works. Therefore, I stepped out of the worship of Wang Xiaobo, but still admired him, after all, in China, there are still very few writers like Wang Xiaobo, and he is precious because of scarcity.

After growing up, I continued to think about Wang Xiaobo's sexual depictions and sexual concepts. Wang Xiaobo's concept of sex is obviously enlightened, but subject to the writer's own gender perspective and historical limitations, in his novels, the portrayal of women is relatively not as full as that of male intellectuals, and his depiction of sex is still mainly male psychology, lacking some more delicate captures at the female level. In this regard, woolf, Youssenaar, Zhang Ailing's gender and sexual depictions will be more intuitive.

However, Wang Xiaobo is still pioneering. Compared with "The Golden Age", his more noteworthy works are "Red Breeze Night Run" and "East Palace West Palace". The former rewrites the legendary story, the portrayal of intellectuals and desires, and the relationship between power is very exciting, and the latter is a queer film, written by Wang Xiaobo and directed by Zhang Yuan, presenting gay, bisexual, SM and other mainstream topics that mainstream avoid talking about, but can be seen as a visual interpretation of Judith Butler's "gender exercise" theory.

Foucault once said: "Pleasure is attained by using a power to inquire, supervise, peep, anticipate, discover, touch, and expose; on the other hand, when pleasure is excited, it circumvents this power, evades, fools, or distorts it: power also allows the pleasure of its pursuit to infringe upon itself."

In China, Wang Xiaobo is a rare writer who is particularly sensitive to the operation mechanism of power, he links Leviathan's rule with daily behavior, and in the capture of lust and power relations, the snooping of people's daily repression and rebellion, abuse and masochism, Wang Xiaobo explores the real code of power operation. On the other hand, his queer writing also gives more marginalized people the opportunity to make their voices heard.

Looking back now, whether in literature or thought, Wang Xiaobo had his obvious limitations, but at that time, in an era of sentimentality, preaching, and the flood of correctness, Wang Xiaobo was an outlier.

If Wang Shuo represents a kind of "leper literature" that is a double melting of the psychology of the children of the courtyard and the culture of the citizens, Wang Xiaobo symbolizes the position of a non-governmental intellectual with the posture of an dissident. He saw culture as a zone of ambiguity between the state and the market, emphasizing the importance of intellectuals and even independent thinkers intervening in social issues and acting as third-party supervisors.

Unlike his contemporaries, who believed in cynicism and indulged in material enjoyment, Wang Xiaobo's thought had a strong spiritual orientation and practical motivation, calling for intellect and speculation, advocating logical training, and guarding against the words of "oppression in the name of absolute truth". Li Jing, Wang Xiaobo's former friend, noted: "Unlike his contemporaries, Wang Xiaoboning can use the word 'wisdom' instead of 'enlightenment'. This shows that Wang Xiaobo is not equal to an Enlightenment in the general sense, and he advocates a relationship between intellectuals and ordinary people more than condescending intellectual preaching.

In China, Wang Xiaobo is special in that he is a grounded liberal intellectual, and his legacy lies not in providing truth, but in deconstructing and reorganizing truth. Wang Xiaobo, a writer who pays attention to logic and advocates reason, looks back on the fanatical era, and reminds readers to be wary of the only view of truth, the unmistakable discourse, and to return to the scale of reason, common sense and tolerance.

In my opinion, Wang Xiaobo is not the best novelist in that category, but his novel interest, I think, inspired China's earliest forum literature, how to use lightness to narrate heavy issues, let the novel use a seemingly cynical, hysterical tone to talk about public politics, deconstruct seemingly grand, correct, but actually suspicious slogans and historical narratives.

Wang Xiaobo's practice is of great enlightening significance, his value is to exist as a thinker, a skeptic, and he is also an innovator of vernacular novel narrative, he found how serious novels in the Internet age can participate in public issues.

Today, we commemorate Wang Xiaobo not only because he was an important writer, but also because the questions he raised were not outdated, and the ability to reason, tolerate and think independently is still lacking in contemporary society. The significance of Wang Xiaobo is that at a certain moment when many people are young, he will open a window and provide us with another way of looking at the world.

Laughing like Wang Er, running freely like a red breeze in the night, wandering on the bricks and tiles of the Wanshou Temple and daming palace, imagining a maverick pig, asking whether the dream of utopia is possible in "Future World", Wang Xiaobo practices free stylistic shuttle, he is like a sword fairy flying with a royal sword, walking freely through the labyrinth of words, thereby breaking the shackles of language, body, and the only view of truth. In the end, what Wang Xiaobo aspires to pursue is not only a kind of "public reason", nor is it just the charm of free individuals for the Christine idol and utopian myth, but also how to improve our self-life, how to embrace a more independent self-life in the contemplation of fun, reason, philosophy and history.

In the face of heaviness, orientals are accustomed to bitterness and hatred, and hippies such as Wang Er, put into a ridiculous laugh. This is Wang Xiaobo's philosophy of rebellion, and it is also the methodology he left to the intellectuals of the world, no matter in any desperate situation, we must defend our right to laugh, because nothing makes the Mephistopheles who are eager to make us feel pain more than laughter.

This is Wang Xiaobo's enlightenment to me after the 1995-Year Plan for more than ten years, and today, when the wave of commemorating Wang Xiaobo is layered, what I am confused about is, if Wang Xiaobo lived to this day, what kind of treatment would he receive? Will he continue to be treated as a brave and lovely intellectual, or will he cause unnecessary trouble because of his expression, or even encounter criticism?

How should the audience view such a dissident today, and whether it allows the existence of an intellectual who is "looking for trouble"? Thinking about these questions is more important than simply commemorating Wang Xiaobo.

Today there is no shortage of writers with pure skills, but there are fewer and fewer characters like Wang Xiaobo, and literature once boldly intervened in different issues, and now literature is becoming more and more "literature". Therefore, to commemorate Wang Xiaobo today is also to think about the relationship between literature and public issues.

In the end, back to my private memory as a post-Ninth Five-Year Plan, Wang Xiaobo's writing is not only a retrospective of the old days, but also represents a fresh vitality. This kind of sad and joyful taste is like the widely circulated words of "The Golden Age":

"I was twenty-one years old that day, in the golden age of my life. I have a lot of extravagant hopes. I want to love, I want to eat, and I want to turn into a half-light and half-dark cloud in the sky in an instant. Later, I learned that life is a slow process of being hammered, people grow old day by day, and their extravagance disappears day by day, and finally they become like a cow that has been hammered. But I didn't foresee this on my twenty-first birthday. I felt like I was going to be fierce forever and couldn't hammer anything. ”