"The Return of Criticism": Reconstructing the Action Archive of "Literature" | Li Wei

"The Return of Criticism"

Author: He Ping

Publisher: Yilin Publishing House

Publication date: December 2021

Synopsis

"The Return of Criticism" is divided into three series: "Ideological Trends", "Writers" and "Scene".

"Ideological Trends" is an exploration and reflection on Chinese literature in the era of reform and opening up, especially in the twenty years of the new century, involving literary issues such as the overall view of Chinese literature in the era of reform and opening up, literature and intergenerational, literature and new media, world literature and Chinese experience, youth writing and public life, and multi-ethnic literary communities.

"Writer" is a series of reviews of writers' works. The five writers, from Alai, born in 1959, to Qiu Huadong, who was born in 1969, all became famous in the 1990s and are "contemporaries" in a broad sense. They were once named the "New Generation" and remain the most dynamic part of Chinese literature today.

"Live" is a private literary archive. From 2017 to 2021, Flower City Concern has been doing it for five years, a total of thirty issues. This is a "return to criticism" in the practical sense, hoping to reconstruct the dialogue between the academy's criticism and literary scene, discover the new power of literature, and let the possibilities and differences of contemporary Chinese literature surface on the surface.

The Return of Criticism: Reconstructing the Action Archive of "Literature"

Li Wei

How does literary criticism face the rapidly changing literary scene? This is an important problem facing literary criticism since the new century. Since the new century, the way "literature" exists has undergone tremendous changes. On the one hand, self-media literature such as WeChat public accounts to Sina Weibo is booming, and online literature and "literature" styles such as peripheral derivatives, script killing, and new lyric styles are emerging in an endless stream; on the other hand, traditional literary journals and publications are also constantly adjusting their posture. The problem of literary classicization, the problem of literary standards, is challenged by the emergence of new literary experiences. In response, embedding new literary experiences into specific knowledge devices, and using "knowledge networks" for coordination and induction, this kind of criticism is important, but its problems are gradually emerging. Will using existing standards and frameworks to measure new literary experiences and point out their characteristics that may conform to or deviate from them strengthen the already materialized and institutionalized literary cognition? Does compressing new experiences into a knowledge device and becoming a derivative concept that can be recognized by the Academy suppress the "heterogeneity" of new literary experiences? When there is a "distinction" between the disciplined "experience" and the literary scene, we cannot help but wonder: Can the new literary experience become a new beginning for breaking through the existing knowledge device and identifying the boundaries of the existing literary standards? Can the new experience of literature be an opportunity to stimulate the vitality of literature to start again?

He Ping's "The Return of Criticism" was published by Yilin Publishing House in December 2021. This is not so much a "static" collection of literary criticism essays as an archive of literary action that faces and responds to the new experience of literature since the new century. The book reflects many new literary phenomena such as new media literature, online literature, ethnic minority literature, and intergenerational literature in a timely manner, and conducts new reflections on the internal history and individuality of literature, public relations life and private space, cities and places, times and intergenerational issues combined with the writer's works, and conducts a "literary curatorial" overview of the literary scene in the new century. In fact, "reconstructing literature and great literature, reconstructing literature and intellectual circles, and reconstructing the connection between literature and the entire vast society" is the core of the book. On the one hand, there are expressions of tension: the solemnity of literary standards and the escape of new experiences, the penetrating power of aesthetics and the creativity of the phenomenon of coarseness ... On the other hand is the establishment of an effective dialogue: based on the fieldwork that arrives at the literary scene and the practical basis of "on the spot", each article asks questions and engages in polyphonic discussions. If literary criticism is regarded as a part of literature "within" rather than "outside", if the critic is regarded as a specific "literary subject", then "The Return of Criticism" is to reconstruct the literary "literature" itself.

Dialogue: "Contemporaries of Critics" and the Literary Field of Change

In "The Return of Criticism", He Ping believes that "critics, especially young critics, must have ideals and courage to become the patrons, discoverers and supporters of the aesthetics of those who write offensively, and be the critics of the same era of writers." The call for "contemporaries" stems from a concern for the present community. The "contemporaries" do not separate literary phenomena from their own feelings, do not regard the writer's works as objects of scrutiny and discernment, and to borrow Agamben's words, "contemporaries" means to write together dipped in the darkness of the times. He Ping's attention to topics, literary spaces, or groups of writers shows a contemporary awareness of problems. The five contemporary writers highlighted in "The Return of Criticism" became famous in the 1990s, and are "contemporaries" in a broad sense and have a certain representativeness. When talking about literature and the county seat, he pays attention to Zhang Chu, Huang Xiaoyang, Chen Zaihui and so on among the contemporaries. When it comes to local narratives, he is still thinking about the era of living together: "Living in the new circumstances of the era of globalization, the places are changing day by day, and our literature is no longer in the time of Faulkner and Márquez. How does literature in this day and age describe places? ”

In view of the degradation of critics' ability to consciously participate in the literary scene, He Ping proposed the concept of "literary curation", curators are liaisons, facilitators and sharers, rather than arbitrary literary evangelists, and it is only critics who can discover new growth points in contemporary Chinese literature. It is from the perspective of equality that He Ping pointed out that the new changes in the media in the new century have led to the formation of "pan-literary" and "sub-literary" characteristics of "cultural media" in traditional literary media, which has fully stimulated the exploratory and growth literary potential of prose... When he thinks about online literature, especially capitalized online literature, he sees that "'reinventing online literature' is an era from the era when capital and readers are kings to the era when 'big gods' are kings." The 'big god' is not just an economic 'asking price', but the 'big god' has a literary public interest in online literature, fulfills the literary ideals of online literature in communication with readers, and influences readers, and the 'big god' can become an imitator of a certain literary style, style and wind bone, and can also provide new possibilities for modern literary traditions..."

Thus, facing the changing literary field, "The Return of Criticism" practices the concept of "contemporary critics", conducts equal and polyphonic "dialogue" with the concept of "curation", on the one hand, promotes new phenomena and new experiences to become new literary growth points with a professional vision, on the other hand, re-examines the internal and external of literature and the constant and change of history in new phenomena and new experiences. In the preface to the book, He Ping pointed out that the current decorative literary communication, literary activities, literary conferences, etc., are "pretend dialogues" and pushed forward to "reconstruct the dialogue of literary criticism". Neither pandering nor accusation is true "dialogue", meaningless description or blunt conceptualization is not the outer membrane of "dialogue", this kind of dialogue reconstruction of literary criticism is essentially a "dialogue" that is jointly achieved in the face of the publicity of the whole society and the relevant problems of national aesthetics of the "contemporary".

Action: Giving "literature" a new meaning

When many discourses in recent years emphasize literature as a "verb", "The Return of Criticism" reflects on the issue of "literary" with a full understanding of the changes in the literary scene, cross-border and cross-circle critical vision, and participates in the practical "literature" with the literary experience of "contemporaneous", giving a new meaning to "literature".

In addition to the rapid response to new media literature and online literature, He Ping pays attention to all kinds of marginal and heterogeneous literature, and reflects on the so-called "literary" boundary in an all-round way. In 2017, the "Flower City Concern" cooperated with "Flower City" magazine, and the 30 issues included 30 topics. These topics are He Ping's attempts at boundary colonization for "literature". "The Possibility of Directing and Fiction", "Rock and Folk", "The Fieldwork of Prose", "Machine-Made Literature", "The Expansion of Literature into Other Artistic Disciplines"... These "literatures" redefine the concepts we take for granted and modify literary theory in reverse. For example, regarding literary subjects, He Ping pointed out that "it is cyberspace that has contributed to the advent of the literary era of 'multi-subject overlap' and made it a reality"; through the parody of "creating the 'post-85s'", He Ping tries to reproduce "lonely literary islands" that cannot be accommodated by continuous literary history; by restoring the relationship between music, song and literature, He Ping not only wants to continue the tradition of song and poetry, but also points out that "rock poetry and folk songs, perhaps noise, even noise, But their practical significance is not only the re-recognition and identification of their own literature, but more importantly, the simplicity and naivety of their spiritual position can alleviate the lack of literature today"... From reaffirming multiple literary subjects to identifying the pluralistic modes of existence of literature, from reconnecting the relationship between literature and music, film and television to reconstructing the relationship between literature and the space of cities, villages, fields, etc., the "literature" reconstructed by He Ping is not a rigid concept and a rigid law, but an "unfinished" that coexists with the complexity and richness of the times - "the literature of an era is written by countless different subjects, unevenly overlapping or clamoring", the literary subject is so, the literary object should be the same, let all " The faint presence "is illuminated...

Around this view of literature, the comments on the five important contemporary writers vaguely permeate the efforts of focusing on contemporary Chinese literature. The writings of several writers, such as Chi Zijian, Li Er, Ai Wei, and Qiu Huadong, have been incorporated into the extension line of contemporary Chinese literature in the new century and have become the most dynamic part of them. He Ping's criticism of them is actually a rethinking and re-narrative of the entire Chinese contemporary literature on the New Century Extension Line. What is contemporary? What is literature? It was never self-evident and needed to be co-created by "contemporaries" writers and critics.

"Come, let's go to the world together", "Let's go down the mountain together", such sentences in "The Return of Criticism" express literary breakthroughs and boundaries. The "literature" in "The Return of Criticism" is no longer a filter for self-purification, and "literary criticism" has become a "participation" with thought and temperature. He Ping believes that the reason why Chinese literature has been able to continuously advance since the reform and opening up is precisely because a group of people are not satisfied with the existing literary conventions, challenge them, and offend literary conventions. Keep turning yourself on and sharpening yourself. The return of criticism is also He Ping's practice of this spirit, and it is the symbol of the re-departure of contemporary Chinese literature.

(Li Wei, Doctor of Literature, Professor of College of Literature, Nanjing Normal University, Doctoral Supervisor.) ）

Editor: Deng Jiefeng

Second instance: Liu Ya

Third trial: Chen Tao, Wang Yang