The Limit Consciousness and Contemporary Position of Historical Research: My Opinion on Literary Studies in the 1980s

In recent years, literature in the 1980s has been a topic of continuous concern and considerable production in the research community, and the relevant results have been very fruitful. Similar to the research on the "seventeen years of literature" after the founding of New China, the research on the literature of this period also has a tendency to beautify or abstract the literature due to preset positions and attitudes. In order to avoid this tendency, the intervention of the future consciousness to achieve a dynamic balance between the sense of history and the sense of reality (or contemporary position) is proposed as a solution. This can certainly be seen as a viable solution, but the problem remains. In a situation where modernity is repeatedly questioned and the future is unpredictable and extremely unstable, futuristic consciousness is suspected of evolving into a pluralistic relativism. The study of the literature of the 1980s remains a controversial and competing discourse field.

In order to effectively overcome this tendency, it is necessary to introduce the categories of "major contradictions" and "secondary contradictions" mentioned by Mao Zedong in the "Theory of Contradictions". The correct method of dealing with history is embodied in the "Resolution of the CPC Central Committee on the Major Achievements and Historical Experience of the Party's Struggle in the Past Hundred Years," and its specific manifestation is to observe and measure the successes and failures of the political, economic, military, cultural, and other aspects of the party at that time from the perspective of the main tasks (or major contradictions) of an era and a stage. Only by grasping the main tasks of an era and a stage and analyzing and evaluating them from the perspective of the main tasks will we not be entangled in secondary details or details, will not be noisy and self-talking, and it will be difficult to reach a truly effective and broad consensus.

One

Returning to the literature of the eighties, we must first clarify the main tasks and main contradictions it faces. If it is said that the economic base determines that the superstructure still has its solid rationality, then the main mission of literature in the eighties is first of all integrated with the main tasks of that era: "In the new period of reform, opening up, and socialist modernization, the main task facing the Party is to continue to explore the correct road for China's construction of socialism, liberate and develop the social productive forces, and enable the people to get rid of poverty and become rich as soon as possible. To realize the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, we will provide institutional guarantees full of new vitality and material conditions for rapid development. (Resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on the Major Achievements and Historical Experience of the Party's Century-Old Struggle) that is to say, the main task of literature in the eighties was concentrated on "continuing to explore" the socialist road of Chinese literature. The word "continue" here most accurately and profoundly indicates the core of the main task of the literature of the eighties, namely, that it is still a continuous proposition, not a fractured relational proposition. In other words, we need to correctly look at the relationship between the literature of the eighties and the literature of the seventeen years. This correct relationship should be expressed as the abandonment, not the negation, of seventeen years of literature in the eighties. It was most evident in the turning point of the 1970s and 1980s. At that time, the return and deepening of realism was closely related to the goal of abandoning seventeen years of literature. The special mission of literature entrusted by this turning era, although it was basically completed in the early eighties, does not mean that the literature after that can be regarded as a negation of seventeen years of literature, but as "continued exploration".

This requires us to look at the literature of the eighties from a continuous and relational perspective, rather than establishing an antagonistic relationship between the literature of the eighties and the literature of the seventeen years, as many researchers have done.

Two

From the perspective of continuity, it is necessary to understand that the literature of the 1980s should not only recognize the positive significance of its "continued exploration", but also have a clear understanding of its deviation from the fractured connotation of "continuing to explore". In this regard, avant-garde literature in the mid-to-late eighties is a good point of observation. As far as the literary practice of the 1980s is concerned, literary innovation should be said to be a goal that runs through the whole process. The emergence of avant-garde literature can be seen as a watershed. Prior to this, various forms and genres of Western literature had experiments and practices, and the avant-garde could be regarded as the extreme of these various possible attempts. From a diachronic point of view, although the innovative practice of the avant-garde has promoted the emergence of a new definition of literary propositions on the one hand and has been highly praised by literary historians, on the other hand, it has also been coldly received by the market. The premise and consequences of literary innovation experiments are to stay away from the general readership, which can be described as a departure from "continued exploration" to some extent. From this point of view, the return of the avant-garde since the 1990s can be seen as a reversal of this deviation. The return of the avant-garde has given a higher degree of importance to the realist tradition. The creation of avant-garde writers after the return can therefore be regarded as the in-depth development of the main task of the continued exploration of socialist literature.

Along this line of thought, we can examine the literary innovations of the eighties very well. That is to say, it is necessary to examine literary innovation in the context of the main task of "continuing to explore" the socialist road of Chinese literature. The propositions involved, in addition to the issue of deepening realism mentioned earlier, are also scarred reflection literature, obscure poetry controversy, controversy about "pseudo-modernism", controversy on subjectivity, literary inward turning, root-seeking literature, and later "avant-garde". At that time, the controversy about "pseudo-modernism" actually highlighted the exploration proposition of socialist literature; but people at the time were more inclined to think that the Chinese traces of "modernism" were too obvious to be considered really modern. Since then, the emergence of the avant-garde extreme experimental text can be seen as the inevitable result of this logic. We certainly understand the ideological overtones behind the experiments of the avant-garde form, but we should also understand that the avant-garde did not offer or bring much new possibility in terms of the renewal of literary ideas. In the context of world literature, avant-garde text experiments actually existed as early as the 18th century in Lawrence Stern's Amorous Travels and The Biography of Xiang Di (and even Fielding's Tom Jones). Avant-garde literature attempts to restore its fictional essence by subverting the principles of literary plausibility and the principle of imitation, which is of course its historical merit, but if it is linked to the literary practice of the nineties, it can be seen more clearly that what avant-garde literature has historically accomplished is also the point that it experiments in extreme forms, realizes the interruption of the proposition of continuity in the expression of content, and clears the way for the complete pandering of commercial ideology. The transitional and transcendent nature of the literature of the eighties can be seen here. The literary innovations of the 1980s actually served the process of urbanization and globalization. Lu Yao's "Ordinary World" in Which Sun Shaoping's work trip to the Huangyuan region can be seen as a symbol of the combination of individualism and urbanization since the 1980s. It is necessary for us to carry out an in-depth study of the literature of the eighties from this perspective, and not simply beautify or simply deny.

Three

It also meant that the literature of the eighties could not be essentialized. From the perspective of literary innovation, literature in the eighties was a dynamic development process. It has gone through a process of returning to a seventeen-year literary tradition, to abandoning seventeen years of literature, embracing modernization, and then entering globalization. From this point of view, it is difficult to say which period is more representative of the literature of the eighties. The literature of the eighties, in terms of the level of its relationship and the context of the diachronic period, its main feature lies in the coupling of transition and transcendence.

Its transitional performance is that the writers and critics of the eighties all looked at their own creations from the perspective of literary innovation, and innovation was not old and continuous, or even reversed, but the spirit of constant change and constant change, and it was a conscious consciousness of viewing change as a position, which should be said to be the premise shared by the literary circles at that time. But for which direction to innovate, or which kind of innovation to focus on, there are many opinions and opinions. This made the literary innovation at that time have a transitional character, in Lu Xun's words, the role of "intermediate": they looked at literary innovation from the perspective of process. This transitional nature has some positive consequences, that is, almost all possible experiments in Chinese and foreign literature, mainly Western literature, have been tried. This attempt and experiment is vividly presented in avant-garde literature. The return of realism since the 1990s should be said to be a result of literary innovation in the 1980s. At this time, realism was neither revolutionary realism nor critical realism, nor magic realism and psychological realism, but a new synthesis of modernism and postmodernism, which can be said to be "open realism", which actually responded to the proposition of "realism - broad road" put forward by Qin Zhaoyang in the 1950s and 1960s. From this point of view, the literary innovations of the eighties should be examined in the context of the continuation, synthesis and deepening of realism.

To say that it is transcendent is both a conclusion drawn from today's perspective and a by-product of the transitional consciousness of the writers and critics of the eighties. The transitional nature made the writers and critics of the eighties constantly new, and it was this spirit of "change" and "newness" that made their literary practice show a transcendent tendency towards their own era. Transcendence, for them, is both a symbol of freedom and at the same time a reverie, and its symbolism is often greater than its actual effect. Our study of the literature of the eighties today should be noted for this. This transcendence is expressed in many literary trends of thought, such as scar literature, reflective literature, reform literature, root-seeking literature, obscure poetry, and third-generation poetry, and can be grasped from both content and form levels. In terms of content, it is manifested as avoidance, neglect and abandonment of the difficulties of material life at that time. The writers and critics and protagonists of the eighties generally displayed a lofty posture of spiritual nobility in the absence of materials, and their wishful optimism about the ideological enlightenment and ideological emancipation movement. Formally, it tends to think that literature can become an aesthetic and independent entity apart from politics, and "inward turning" and "subjectivity" became important slogans for the self-consciousness of literary forms at that time. They start from the perspective of the future, and carry out their literary innovation practice within the promises that the times can give. Thus the limitations of the times do not constitute in them a limit, but a transcendent confidence: they are legislating for the future of literature.

In the same way, this transcendence needs to be examined in a transitional perspective. If transitionality indicates the instability, constant change, and multiplicity of possibilities in the literature of the eighties, transcendence indicates an abstraction, self-sufficiency, and an imagination of order. The coupling relationship between the two aspects makes the literature of the 1980s as a whole present a rich and complex and multi-dimensional image, and the internal tension between them is extremely tense. Although our study of the literature of the eighties cannot really restore its richness and complexity, we must have a sense of the limits of this aspect: any imagination and study of the one-dimensionality of the literature of the eighties may be a simplification, although such a simplification is not necessary.

(The author is a professor in the Department of Chinese, Xiamen University)