When you think of female scholars, who do you think of?
This list must not be long, because —
female
It has never been the mainstream of academia.
Whether it is a university chair or an academic publication, the more you go to the top of the ivory tower, the smaller the number of women.
In fact, when a woman decides to pursue an academic career, the limitations she faces are everywhere:
"The female doctor is the third kind of human being..."
"History proves that academia is not a women's turf..."
"What is the use of reading, girls always have to marry..."
At the higher education level, voices such as these try to prevent women from stepping into the door of scientific research. And when they enter the university system, "vocations" such as childbirth and housework squeeze them out of more opportunities...
However, even if we continue to encounter depreciation and suppression, we still see more and more women participating in academic careers and merging into the academic community. For them, academic research is not only a career and a hobby, but also a way to recognize themselves and find ways to get along with the world.
So we had a naïve idea: let more female scholars be seen.
When women decide to pursue an academic career, how many obstacles do they need to overcome? Is there an academic tradition that belongs to women? In the "son-preference" academic system, how do female scholars who are wading forward find their own references? Who are their companions?
With these questions in mind, we invited female scholars from different fields and countries such as sociology, history, journalism and communication, literature, etc., some of which are well known to the public, and many more of which are still outside the spotlight. Their experiences are similar and very different. They represent different generations of female intellectuals, passionate about knowledge, and have experienced confusion and frustration. Their stories tell the story of the dissatisfaction and confusion, ambition and dreams of most modern women.
Hopefully, one day, we won't have to add the word "female" before "scholar."
/
A series of interviews with women scholars
No.1
He Guimei
■ Born in 1970. In 1989, he was admitted to the Department of Chinese of Peking University, and received his doctorate in literature in 2000, and stayed on to teach in the same year. Professor of the Department of Chinese of Peking University, the first Young Yangtze River Scholar of the Ministry of Education in 2015. His research interests include contemporary Chinese literary history, intellectual history, 20th century women's literary history, and contemporary cultural criticism.
■ He is the author of "The Era of Transition : A Study of Writers in the 1940s and 1950s", "The Imagination of Humanities - Contemporary Chinese Thought, Culture and Literary Issues", "The Knowledge Archive of the "New Enlightenment": Chinese Cultural Studies in the 1980s", "The Change of Women's Literature and Gender Politics", "Writing "Chinese Style": Contemporary Literature and the Construction of National Forms", and has published more than 100 papers.
He Guimei's book is not easy to read.
Even for a person who has received many years of academic training in the academy, He Guimei's academic ideas are always obscure and complicated. This is different from the popular perception of literary criticism or literary theory. She is therefore considered a member of the "academic school".
The difficulty comes first and foremost from the density of the language. On the comment page of Douban's "New Enlightenment" Knowledge Archive, some readers commented that her writing was "Dai Jinhua's compressed plastic version".
The greater difficulty comes from the intellectual level, in her own words, "others write an article to tell a point of view, and I think to explain a point of view, you have to put 10 points together."
In 1997, he defended his master's thesis in the Department of Chinese, Peking University. From left are Park Jung-hee, Dai Jinhua, Cao Wenxuan, Hong Zicheng, Cho Cho-mo, and He Guimei. Photos were provided by respondents.
He Guimei, 51, is a professor in the Department of Chinese at Peking University. Born in Hubei, his father was a rural intellectual, who loved Ming and Qing novels, and in that era when he was not rich, the family had a large box of books. It was an enlightening reading for her and her sisters.
Like most post-70s scholars, He Guimei's academic experience bears a distinct mark of the times. In 1989, she was admitted to the Department of Chinese of Peking University. At that time, Chinese society was experiencing a new wave of women's topic boom. He Guimei, who is in adolescence, sneaks into it with her own gender confusion.
In the women's literature research class opened by Dai Jinhua, she began to seriously think about gender issues, and in the works of a group of emerging female writers, including Lin Bai and Chen Yan, she found the identification and expression of her own gender confusion. It was also during that time that she wrote down the phrase "personal is political."
If a person takes "being a woman" for granted, then the word "power relations" almost never appears in her consciousness. A sense of "criticism" can arise only when one is aware of the constructivity of one's own gender identity and the oppressive relationships within it. This is also the reason why all those who emphasize the feminist stance have repeatedly quoted Beauvoir's famous saying, "A woman is not so much born as constructed." But because gender identity is so "natural", how to understand gender identity is as diverse as understanding an infinite variety of "individuals". Elevating the gender experience of an individual to a gender (system) rather than just an individual's problem is a truly "political" act.
The process of identifying the "political" nature of relationships between the sexes is, I think, one of the focal points of gender studies. In a way, this is the core issue of modern Chinese women's studies as I understand it, and it is also a question that I have always been concerned with when I am engaged in gender studies.
——" Women's Literature and the Transformation of Gender Politics
Women's literature in the 1990s was he Guimei's academic starting point. At the age of 24, He Guimei, who was still a graduate student, received attention from the academic community with her thesis "The Myth and Fall of Gender" and officially entered the circle of literary criticism. Subsequently, she published a series of critical articles including "Gendered Literature" and "Individual Survival Experience and Women's Writing", which became part of the "boom" of women's literature at that time.
In the 1990s, Chinese society changed rapidly and culture became pluralistic. Intellectuals debate the "humanistic spirit" and "postmodernism", "new left" and "liberalism". At the fork in the road of history, He Guimei, as a young student, eagerly wants to intervene in reality with scholarship. In 1993, He Guimei joined the "Critics Weekend" of the Contemporary Literature Teaching and Research Department of Peking University at that time. The "Critics Weekend" was led by Xie Mian and Hong Zicheng, bringing together a group of doctoral students and visiting scholars, including Meng Fanhua, Chen Shunxin, sun Minle and so on.
In the 1990s, He Guimei was in Yanyuan.
Every weekend, He Guimei and her companions gather at the Jingyuan Fifth Courtyard to discuss the "ideals of contemporary literature" and to study and criticize popular literary and cultural works. In a later interview, she recalled: "On occasions like this, I began to feel an atmosphere of free discussion, free communication, and the opportunity to express my opinion. The sense of identification with the department and profession of contemporary literature is also consciously or unconsciously formed in this relaxed and casual atmosphere. ”
With the deepening of writing and thinking, He Guimei's heart gave birth to a certain sense of fatigue, "At that time, I clearly thought of a word, which was 'exhaustion'. Whether it is in terms of the way of writing, the way of publishing, or the theoretical and ideological resources that can be called by this kind of writing, I feel that I am lacking and dissatisfied, so I feel that it is difficult to sustain. I am not content to confine myself to a single perspective, to publish critical research almost 'self-deprecating' without being able to see the overall historical structure. In The Transformation of Women's Literature and Gender Politics, she puts it this way.
At the same time, while women's literary criticism has made He Guimei "out of the circle", it has also placed her in the stereotyped labels of "female scholar" and "gender research scholar". Why can female scholars only do gender research? Why can't female scholars do research projects led by so-called male scholars?
In the following nearly 10 years, she almost completely abandoned women's literary criticism, stepped out of the spotlight, and turned into the study of literary history and intellectual history. Under the influence of his mentor Hong Zicheng, He Guimei went deep into history and made historical analysis, trying to understand contemporary Chinese issues and literary issues from a more holistic perspective.
Back in women's literature in the 90s, at an academic conference after her doctorate, He Guimei presented "Women's Literature in the 90s and Publications of Women Writers". Unlike previous literary critical text analysis, this time, she placed women literary writers and texts in the circulation mechanism of social context, publication and dissemination. This also illustrates the shift in her research: gender is no longer seen as the starting point of meaning, but as the object and field of the construction of the mechanism of meaning. In the words of student Luo Yalin, "He Guimei's 'return' to the study of women's literature began to change from 'aiming at women' to 'taking women as a method'".
Since then, He Guimei has identified two different research lines: one is to study the five stages of contemporary China and contemporary literature, and the other is to understand Chinese issues in the dimensions of women's literature research and gender research.
In 2010, He Guimei published the book "New Enlightenment" Knowledge Archive: Chinese Cultural Studies in the 1980s, which was rewritten by his doctoral dissertation, which was regarded by the domestic academic community as a model of research in the 1980s. In this book, she breaks away from the new Enlightenment knowledge system of the nearly 40 years shaped in the 1980s, and re-analyzes and disassembles the knowledge devices behind the various ideological trends of the 1980s with the methodological vision of the sociology of knowledge, combined with the post-structuralist theories of Foucault and Althussé.
"The Knowledge Archive of the "New Enlightenment": Chinese Cultural Studies in the 1980s, by He Guimei, Peking University Press, March 2010.
"Obscure, I can't read..." This was the first reaction of many people after reading the book at that time. He Guimei did not care. She believes that the real value of a book lies in its penetrating nature of the problem. This year, the "New Enlightenment" Knowledge Archive was republished, and among the many research works of the 80s, the book is indeed still not outdated.
Today, He Guimei has completed the study of literary history in five periods of contemporary China. "The imagination of humanities" is the theoretical vision that runs through it. In the two books "Writing "Chinese Style" and "Opening Up Chinese Vision", on the one hand, she continues to conduct historical research on different periods, but also more clearly breaks the boundaries of disciplines and majors, and discusses the core issues of contemporary China and literature in general from the dimensions of class, ethnicity and gender.
In the past few years, although frequently participating in cutting-edge discussions in professional circles, He Guimei has not made many public appearances in general. One was the "Chinese Literature 1949-1989" new book sharing meeting by tutor Hong Zicheng, and the other was the "Gender View of Our Times" survey report seminar. The latter also allows readers to re-see He Guimei, who has not been publicly heard on gender issues for a long time.
The "Gender View of Our Time" exchange meeting, from left to right, was Luo Haoling, Lu Min, Zhang Li, He Guimei, and Yang Qingxiang.
In May this year, we had an interview with He Guimei. In the nearly four-hour dialogue, we talked about how she, as a female scholar, understands her gender identity, and also talks about her academic research process of more than thirty years. For the current surging tide of women's topics, He Guimei traced and reflected on the two feminist trends in China's contemporary history. She argues that whether it's the '90s or today, there has always been a "theoretical amnesia" in the focus on women's topics.
Interview with He Guimei
New world, old language
PART 1.
Women Scholars, Gender Studies
With theoretical amnesia
1.1
Being a woman
The personal is political
Beijing News: The study of women's literature in the 1990s was one of the earliest starting points for your academic research. In the introduction to Women's Literature and the Transformation of Gender Politics, you mention that you "clean up and express your gender identity through the discussion of the works of these women writers known as 'personalized writing'" at the same time." The 90s was also a time when women's topics were in full swing, and in the middle of it, it was the study of women's literature, what influence did this period have on you?
He Guimei: I started graduate school in 1994. During graduate school, the Fourth World Women's Conference was held in Beijing, which also spawned a social boom in women's topics in China. Many Western feminist theories were published at that time.
As a schoolgirl, I certainly have a lot of gender confusion, especially if the confusion encountered by young women would have been considered a private issue before. Under such a boom, on the one hand, I learned a lot of theoretical knowledge, and Professor Dai Jinhua opened a course on women's literature at Peking University, so I also read the works of female writers who emerged at that time, such as novels by Chen Yan and Lin Bai. It was also at that time that I felt for the first time that the problems I had encountered in my life could be articulated and that they were social issues of a public nature.
I was studying women's fiction in the 90s and began to officially enter the contemporary literary circle. This circle is mainly biased towards literary criticism, so as soon as a new writer comes out, everyone will hold a discussion and write some critical articles around these new writers and new works. At that time, there were many opportunities to ask for manuscripts, but after I wrote three or four articles, I didn't want to continue.
Women's Literature and the Change of Gender Politics, he Guimei, Peking University Press, March 2014.
When I am confronted with the questions posed by these new writers, I often feel that those questions are not real problems. But my theoretical foundation and judgment and analysis ability at that time could not penetrate that problem. Therefore, after completing my master's thesis, I basically stopped writing critical articles on women's literature.
I began to focus a lot of my energy on the field of literary history. But that's not to say I'm abandoning gender studies, it's that I don't want to talk about the same kind of issues. This is also related to the identification of me at that time. I've always resented the argument that if you're a woman, you can only do gender-related research.
Beijing News: This is also a problem faced by many female scholars.
He Guimei: As a female scholar, I have always believed that female identity itself is a label. In fact, each of us is particularly rich and has multiple identities, for example, I am both a woman and a contemporary Chinese, as well as a researcher of literature. All the male scholars talk about, I should be able to participate in. But my feeling at the time was that if I specifically accepted the female label that others gave me, it meant that I didn't seem to be able to talk about the concerns of male academics.
So I've always wanted my research landscape to be unconstrained by the status of female scholars. Of course, when faced with specific problems, my life experience as a woman, the driving force of emotions, and the way I judge problems will certainly be different from male scholars. This is a natural consequence, after all, gender identity is a social identity, which restricts the perspective and way in which each individual's male or female view of things.
We just mentioned a bias that says you're female and you can only do gender-related issues. There is another prejudice that you are a woman, so the historical research or literary history research you do should be different from that of male researchers. What do people say differently? That is to say, you should be sensual, soft, and lyrical. But my research is particularly rational, why can't female scholars be rational?
In this respect, I reject all the claims of gender essentialism. In terms of the ability to think and the breadth of thinking that a person can achieve, gender identity itself should not be a limitation.
Beijing News: You also mentioned in past articles that "the identity and experience of 'being a woman' itself determines my constant connection with gender studies." Can you elaborate on that?
He Guimei: This actually involves why I pay attention to women and gender issues. We all know that gender identity is a socially constructed identity and one of the most important dimensions that make up the self. Its effects permeate almost every aspect of life.
As we grow up, we experience countless sensitive, subtle, and inexplicable moments. It wasn't until later that I realized that these moments were actually a game of gender identity with women. It usually happens when we do something that doesn't conform to that identity, or when we feel some kind of restriction that that identity places on us. In moments like these, once we accept that we are a woman, it often means accepting something that we are unwilling to accept, or that is being asked for.
Stills from the TV series My Genius Girlfriend (Season 2).
As a scholar, my original impulse is to understand and answer these puzzles. I believe that for a man, he must also have some subtle moments or confusion about his own gender identity. But the problem is that the existing gender order often consciously or unconsciously places men in a more important position. They are not as restricted as women and are therefore less particularly concerned about gender issues.
So when I came into the theory of feminism, I felt that gender identity and its identity process were a process that we could analyze, interpret, and identify. For me personally, it's a really big relief. Later, I liked the saying "The individual is political". This may also be a process of gender awakening, realizing that the problems we encounter are not private problems, but the practice of some social structure in the individual.
Beijing News: When you came into contact with these feminist theories in your youth, and then looked back at the situation of women in life, did you feel angry?
He Guimei: There must have been at that time, but I almost forgot about it now. In fact, the reason why we feel angry is because we can't explain such a sensual, concrete experience of inequality, and what I feel most is that academics are really good, because it can explain to us that we should not be trapped in an irrational victim of anger, and turn these emotional life experiences into a force for moving forward, and not only limited to gender issues, but also allow us to have sympathy, empathy and concern for the wider social situation.
1.2
Three upsurges in women's topics in contemporary China:
There is inheritance, and there is also theoretical amnesia
Beijing News: Just now we mentioned that in the 1990s, Chinese society experienced a boom in women's topics. But around 2000, how did this boom suddenly disappear?
He Guimei: My explanation is as follows: First, the female fever at that time was mainly topical, and the cause was the World Conference on Women held in 1995. The full participation of the media and the strong support of the government have spawned a group of female writers and scholars. But the formation of the whole boom is not mainly a spontaneous process, lacking the impetus of spontaneity, so when the topic is no longer a hot topic, there are fewer people to pay attention to.
Another reason is that even in the midst of the boom, discussions around women's topics are personal and uneven, and there is not much real reflection or feminine thinking. For the male critics and scholars of the time, as well as for the female scholars and writers who did not yet have gender positions, this boom did not lead to a substantial change in them.
So the real results may have pushed young scholars like us who are in adolescence into this topic field, and also inspired some scholars to try to promote women's issues in China into a truly valuable research area.
In fact, the boom in the mid-90s was also because there was indeed a group of female writers who wrote about gender issues in new ways. For example, Lin Bai and Chen Yan all appeared in the public eye in this process. But there are not many works that can really continue to promote the depth of the topic. Coupled with the fact that the operation of the market accounts for a large proportion, it has finally changed from a female fever to a "body writing" style to look at women, and then has been absorbed by the capital market.
Beijing News: In recent years, we have also seen a new wave of enthusiasm for women's topics. For example, theoretical excavations on Marxist feminism (discussion of reproduction fields such as "housework"), reflections on patriarchy and gender systems, disputes over gender politics such as marriage and the family (recent discussion on bride price), and issues of class differentiation within women (e.g., survival problems and emotional problems of rural women). How do you see these diverse topics of women today?
He Guimei: I think the biggest difference from that time is that the recent upsurge of women's topics has been spontaneously promoted by women, and everyone hopes to make a rational discussion of women's encounters in the field of life, work and family. Among them, the most important participating groups are mostly post-80s and post-90s.
Why is this generation particularly concerned about gender issues? There are also some social reasons for this that can be analyzed. The first reason is that most of the post-80s and post-90s are only children, growing up in nuclear families, and their gender identity is not so obvious during their growth. For them, it is a natural thing to demand gender equality. This is the premise.
At the same time, this generation is dissatisfied, of course, because they enter society and feel the repression of female identity and the conflict between female identity and self-expectation. At the same time, when they look back at their mother's generation, they will have greater dissatisfaction. Because their mothers lived in a time of substantial gender inequality. Many people were brought up by their mothers, who were absent for a long time.
I remember when I was lecturing on 20th-century women's fiction at Peking University, a female classmate wrote an article about why she was concerned about gender. She said because she didn't want to live like her mom. Growing up, dad was basically not involved. Her mother was also a high-achieving student when she was young, but later became a housewife. When I saw the movie "Hello, Lee Huan Ying" this year, I felt that it was the narrative of this generation.
Stills from the movie "Hello, Lee Huan Ying".
In addition, some boys I met also wrote that they grew up in a widowed parenting environment. They have deep feelings for their mothers, but they have many grievances about their fathers who were absent during their upbringing. He did gender research out of righteous indignation.
I think the upsurge in women's topics in recent years is also a product of the changes in China's social structure in the past 40 years, and there is a social need for internal strength. At the same time, the space it can expand is also relatively broad, and it can evolve into various forms.
Beijing News: From a longer historical perspective, is there a continuation or rupture in today's wave of feminism compared with previous waves?
He Guimei: Contemporary China has experienced two feminist currents. Once, we just mentioned the 1990s. The other was the women's liberation movement of the 50s and 70s.
If we can call the women's topic fever in recent years a new wave of feminist thought, its relationship with the 1990s can basically be described as "theoretical amnesia". For the young people involved in this wave of discussions, many may not know that there was a similar boom in the 1990s. So they are actually shirtless, starting from their own life experiences to talk about gender topics, and lack theoretical retrospection and further exploration.
Interestingly, this feminist movement has somehow revived the vision and topic of the women's liberation movement in the 50s and 70s. The Mao Zedong era was a socialist state structure under the guidance of Marxist theory, and it has always attached great importance to women's issues.
Beijing News: But at that time, women's liberation was discussed in the class dimension.
He Guimei : Yes, so at that time it was called a women's liberation movement, without using the term feminist movement or feminist movement. Women's liberation movements are not the same as feminist movements. It is necessary to distinguish between these two concepts.
The feminist movement is a form of social movement in Western society, and the Chinese women's liberation movement, although the earliest theoretical resources came from the West, but its unfolding form in 20th century China was different. The women's liberation movement is closely related to the entire Marxist theory, the national liberation movement, and the practice of socialism in China. We must admit that this practice itself attaches great importance to women's issues and has always regarded them as an integral part of the revolution and social movement as a whole.
Of course, it also has its problems, that is, it does not put special emphasis on the uniqueness of women's issues. Instead, it calls on both men and women to be the same, setting up a genderless subject image.
Therefore, the most successful aspect of women's liberation in the Mao Zedong era was that it solved the problem of women's social rights in China in one fell swoop. It is dealing with the problems of patriarchy, female class, female internal class distinction, and women and ethnic groups, and the vision is very broad.
Stills from the movie "Spring Seedlings" (1975).
The discussions we are talking about housework, the dispute over bride price, and the situation of rural women that we are talking about today were actually the main ways of discussing gender issues in those days. At that time, when gender issues were discussed, it envisioned that the main body was rural women, not intellectual women, which was a huge shift in class. It wasn't until the 1980s that we started talking about intellectual women.
On the other hand, in the women's liberation movement of the first 30 years, there was very little room for women to speak for themselves, and there was not much room for women to criticize the shackles of gender identity from the perspective of cultural concepts.
The most typical is Ding Ling. Ding Ling is of course revolutionary, and she is also a revolutionary who believes in Marxism. At the same time, she will also argue about the unequal treatment of women, such as her "March 8th Festival" has feelings, but this will be criticized as separating women's problems from the party's problems.
The entire Chinese Communist Party's policy of emancipating women had a major adjustment in 1943. Previously, the focus was basically on new women, that is, middle-class intellectual women, educated urban women. After 1943, the focus shifted to rural women. In terms of cultural expression as a whole, the image of socialist women's liberation is mainly the image of working women.
Talking about women's issues today, I think it is necessary to synthesize these two historical legacies and to explore more objectively the feminist heritage of the eighties and nineties and the legacy of the women's liberation movement of the first 30 years. They all have their own characteristics, their own strengths, and their own problems.
1.3
From gender blindness to class blindness,
Women's topics, not single gender topics
Beijing News: I remember that you used a particularly good metaphor in "Women's Literature and Gender Politics Change" to describe these two currents of thought — from the "gender blindness" of the women's liberation movement in the Mao Zedong period to the "class blindness" of the women's boom in the 1980s and 1990s.
He Guimei: This is also because literature is a particularly middle-class field, so in the 1980s and 1990s, the authors of women's literature were all intellectual women and mainly expressed intellectual women, so when talking about women's issues, they covered up a lot of class dimensions. The kind of personal writing of the '90s, the "individual" it calls "the individual" is not the universal individual, but the individual within the middle class.
This wave of the 21st century, including the institutional problems of housework and patriarchy just mentioned, is only one voice among many voices. Mainly limited to academies and intellectuals.
If we look at the topic of women presented in the field of mass culture, we will find that the focus of attention is different from that of the literary world, and the most interesting is the palace fight drama. For example, the big female protagonists such as "The Biography of Zhen Huan" and "Yanxi Raiders", their settings are first in the harem, and then they discuss how women should ascend to the throne. Essentially a narrative of middle-class women.
Stills from the TV series "The Biography of Zhen Huan" (2011).
The historical legacy of the Chinese women's liberation movement is also emphasized because it is a good balance for talking about gender issues. If we refer to the way neighboring countries such as Japan, South Korea, etc. talk about gender issues, they also had feminist movements in the 1980s, but the result was to turn women's problems into a special group problem and a single gender problem, rather than a problem that society as a whole needs to face and solve.
At the same time, we should also note that the main body of this discussion is more middle-class women. For rural women in China, as well as more ordinary women in the city, they are subject to greater gender constraints, more inequalities that permeate and are deposited in daily life and daily concepts. Many times, they may take these constraints for granted.
Academia in particular needs the ability to be reflexive, but how strong this reflexivity is, whether it has greater social effectiveness, and whether the vision is limited to the single field of gender, all of which require us to make more efforts.
Beijing News: From last year to this year, there was also a hot topic about the discussion of full-time housewives. It also involves the long-standing dilemma that women face – family or career, children or themselves. Previously, Teacher Zhang Guimei's remarks about women not being housewives have also caused a lot of controversy. What do you think?
He Guimei: Zhang Guimei can become a hot spot, I think it is a very interesting phenomenon. She has been a hot figure on women and gender issues for nearly 10 years. The mainstream social concept is to let women go to school first and let them become independent members of society, and as a result, many female students go to find a good husband after graduation and go home to be a full-time wife. Zhang Guimei is concerned because her dissatisfaction with her female students reflects the fate of such a middle-class woman, that is, what if you are educated, you are not going to return to your family in the end.
The Marriage Act was amended once in the early 1990s. Zheng Yefu published the book "The Theory of Cost" at that time. The cost theory means that for the development of the whole country and the nation, there must be some people as victims and bear the price. At that time, the women's reaction was great, and the criticism of him was also very strong. There is a vice president of a large university who openly supports full-time women, and he is also scolded very badly. So the discussion of getting women home has always been there.
All women's issues or gender issues face some fundamental origin issues. For example, fertility issues, family model issues, gender identity issues, child socialization issues, gender inequality in the workplace, etc. So when we discuss women's issues, I tend not to talk about them in general, but to first distinguish between different fields and different levels, such as talking about childbirth, talking about family issues, talking about work and society, and talking about culture. Because a woman's entire life process from childhood to old age, the focus problems encountered at each stage are different. At the same time, all of these issues constitute the overall department of women's issues. Therefore, on the one hand, it is necessary to distinguish between different problem areas, and at the same time, it is necessary to have a general understanding of the structural origin problems caused by gender identity.
Beijing News: From your observation, are there any new feminist theoretical resources emerging?
He Guimei: I have always paid more attention to this piece, and I will buy new books that can be bought on the market. In terms of my cognition, theoretically, in terms of the depth and breadth of gender topics, I myself prefer the socialist feminist gender theory that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s. In recent years, students have paid close attention to the problem of misogyny raised by Japanese scholar Chizuru Ueno, and the discussion of gender society by many Chinese scholars, and feel that these discussions will be relatively in-depth in the field of social science research.
Beijing News: What is the reason why this theoretical resource has not been broken through for a long time?
He Guimei: This is not just a pause in feminist theory. I think that the problem of theoretical ability is actually a holistic problem of imagination. The 1960s and 1970s were the most imaginative period of Western society. At that time, people believed in liberation and were willing to promote social issues through the practice of action and thought. After the 1980s, the whole society entered an era that lacked imagination, which can also be called the neoliberal era. From a theoretical point of view, in the 1960s and 1970s, a group of intellectuals such as Foucault, Beauvoir, and Sayyid appeared. However, since the 1980s, Western Marxist theory has not made a breakthrough in renewal, but has encountered many theoretical dilemmas. Chinese society has gone through a similar process from the women's liberation movement in the 1950s and 1960s to the raising of women's issues in the 1980s.
In the past 30 years, whether in China or globally, I don't think there has been a strong original breakthrough in theoretical imagination. In terms of women's issues, it cannot be said that there is no advancement, such as the emergence of Butler and others, but these theories are philosophical and academic, lacking social practice and social motivation, and ultimately limited to discussion within the academy.
So back to that question, about the social imagination and the theoretical imagination. For example, in the 19th century, we all believed in the pursuit of a more equal society, so the labor movement and the women's movement continued to advance. This is also related to a new form of social organization shaped by the entire industrial revolution.
But for nearly 30 years, we have not had such a belief and appeal. On the one hand, the practice of socialism has entered the end stage of the Cold War, and on the other hand, industrial society has entered a postmodern society. Man is increasingly living in a systematic, high-intensity, techno-controlled state.
Beijing News: Whether it is this Mao Zedong era women's liberation movement or the women's fever of the 90s, they all have their own strengths and weaknesses. What are the issues we need to pay special attention to today's wave of feminist thought?
He Guimei: First of all, we must understand the practical history of women's liberation in the front. Many of our current discussions are amnesiac, that is, they do not pay attention to or understand the previous practices and theoretical accumulations. But if we do not understand history and do not know what the people in front of us have done, it is difficult to judge the social reasons for gender problems, and we cannot continue to advance on the basis of our predecessors, let alone learn the lessons of our predecessors and make new breakthroughs in the vision of modernity.
Another point is the need for a humanistic imagination. That is to say, when we talk about the problem of some individual or special group, how can we put it into a larger perspective and a larger social structure. The critical and productive nature of this topic is not limited to the scope of factors such as colleges, media, discourse power, and class, but can form a general social consensus, form effective judgments, and generate demands and forces to change reality.
PART 2.
Theory of New Enlightenment and Modernization
With the humane imagination
2.1
What constituted many currents of thought at that time,
It is a paradigm of "modernization theory"
Beijing News: Let's talk about the book "New Enlightenment" Knowledge Archives, which was republished this year. You systematically sorted out the social trends, literary views, and values at that time, and also had a strong sense of reflection. Looking back at the study today, how would you rate its position in many of your studies and its position in the 80s?
He Guimei: Overall, the "New Enlightenment" Knowledge Archive is my first mature academic work, and it is also the process of gradually maturing my research style and ideological vision. The book was born out of my doctoral dissertation, and at the time I was working on "The 80s and the May Fourth Tradition." The choice of this topic coincided with the controversy between the Chinese intellectual circles over the "New Left" and the "Liberals." I was personally involved as a literature student, and my thinking was greatly impacted.
But at the time, I didn't have a deep accumulation of the 80s, and I studied it very hard, and I wasn't very satisfied with it after I finished it. I spent 10 years doing other work and went back to re-studying the '80s from the perspective of the sociology of knowledge. It wasn't until 2010 that the book was officially published. When it is republished this year, I still feel that the book is not outdated, and it may not be out of date for a while.
Academics often describe the literature and culture of the 1980s as a realistic object, lacking a historical perspective. One is interviews with historical parties. The other is in the knowledge system of the 1980s, the literature of the 80s is divided into scar literature, reflective literature, etc., and then some writers' works are studied in the historical aspect; there is also a more old-school literary history material collation.
The book "New Enlightenment" Knowledge Archive has an interdisciplinary and interdisciplinary perspective. My mentor is Teacher Hong Zicheng, his academic purity is very high, I have received his academic training, and all discussions on issues must be based on historical data. In the 10 years of my research, A great deal of experience has been combing through and interpreting various historical texts. I think my grasp of these 6 trends of thought and related historical materials in the 1980s is relatively comprehensive and rigorous.
Beijing News: In your introduction to the "New Enlightenment" Knowledge Archive, you involve many methodological considerations, and you also mention that the main method of investigation of this book is "sociology of knowledge". The sociology of knowledge emphasizes the operational relationship between knowledge and power. Can you tell us why such a research framework was chosen?
He Guimei: The sociology of knowledge is mainly the theory of Mannheim. Mannheim tells the story of a peasant's son: if a peasant's son lives in a village all his life, his vision is confined to this village, and the village shapes his worldview. But when he gets to the city, he realizes that his original values are limited and nested in the environment of the village. At the same time, he realized that he could have a greater view of what the world was like outside the village.
This story is about a fundamental idea of the sociology of knowledge—that every theory and knowledge has its own perspective. This is also what I am concerned about and emphasized, that any theoretical interpretation must be an interpretation from a specific perspective, not a universal interpretation, and even if the theory has universal explanatory power, it must be subject to the vision provided by the researcher's environment and the era in which he lives.
Another important feature of the sociology of knowledge is the emphasis on understanding "specific ideologies", that is, individual, empirical special expressions from the perspective of "overall ideology" and "overall social structure". "Particular ideology" means that what individuals do, think, and think is limited by circumstances, and we can explain these particularities in a larger overall social structure.
Ideology and Utopia, by Carl Mannheim, translated by Li Ming/Li Shuchong, The Commercial Press, February 2002.
Therefore, when we re-examine Chinese culture in the 1980s, the advantage of the sociology of knowledge is that on the one hand, it emphasizes that any knowledge has its own perspective, and emphasizes the relationship between the knowledge produced in the 1980s and the social context at that time. At the same time, it also requires us to reposition the intellectual devices and historical connotations behind those literary and cultural trends with a new transcendent overall perspective.
Beijing News: When discussing the cultural trends of the 80s, you also proposed that there is a common modernization paradigm behind these trends. How to understand the impact of the "modernization theory" paradigm on the intellectual circles of the time?
He Guimei: The theory of modernization is actually a set of narratives invented by the American social science intellectual elite in the 1960s. After the Second World War, many newly established countries after decolonization appeared around the world. For these countries, on the one hand, they can take the American road, the so-called capitalist road of the democratic countries, and on the other hand, they can take the Soviet-style socialist road. The theoretical narrative of modernization was actually developed in the context of how these countries were competing in the Cold War pattern.
The struggle for power and military power is not only a struggle for knowledge, but also a struggle for knowledge. At that time, the United States gathered university intellectuals, including Harvard University, to jointly put forward the theory of modernization.
If you go back to the Chinese intellectual circles in the 1980s, the humanistic, modernist, root-seeking, cultural fever and other literary trends proposed in this book all involve the overall vision of Chinese society behind them when they stimulate people's feelings. And the resource of this set of ideas is the theory of modernization. For example, humanitarian thought is about the understanding of human beings, emphasizing that human nature is natural and should be opposed to political nature. This statement is consistent with the description of the individual by the theory of modernization.
Of course, the acceptance of the theoretical narrative of modernization in Chinese society at that time was not a simple transplant, but a process of reproduction around the historical situation and specific ideological resources at that time. I also emphasize in the book that it is actually accepted as a paradigm of "modernization theory". In fact, the global ideology that the 80s could offer was the theory of modernization.
2.2
When the human condition of existence undergoes a fundamental change,
In particular, we need the "humanistic imagination"
Beijing News: Nostalgia for the 1980s and 1990s is a prominent phenomenon in the current culture, which reflects everyone's yearning for the appearance and spiritual temperament of the times at that time. In your opinion, when we mention the 80s today, what is the most important legacy it has left for the present?
He Guimei: In fact, the current intellectual paradigms, forms of knowledge and values dominated by Chinese intellectual circles were all formed in the 1980s. However, Chinese society has changed a lot, and if we continue to use the same set of knowledge systems, values and worldviews of the 80s, we will not be able to respond to the problems of the 21st century at all.
We need to restore the 1980s to specific historical contexts, global patterns and social structures. In this way, we will see that the relationship between the 80s and the first 30 years was not completely broken. Without the accumulation of the first three decades, including the shaping of the economic system and revolutionary consciousness, the 1980s would not have happened. Looking back now, although people at that time came from the gray "Cultural Revolution" period and were very dissatisfied with the excessive socialist literature and culture, in fact, the organizational form of the entire literary field was still socialist. The way people imagine the new capitalist world system is also an unconscious or subconscious projection and reconstruction of socialism.
The significance of the 80s in today's world is, of course, not only intellectual, because the knowledge produced in the 80s is limited. What is more important is the spiritual and emotional temperament of the 80s that breaks through the rigid reality pattern and explores the new world.
My favorite word in the '80s was "enlightenment," and my book was also called "new enlightenment." This is because the mirror image of the 1980s was the May Fourth period, when people wanted to continue the May Fourth tradition and re-enlighten.
But what exactly is the substantive connotation of "enlightenment"? Enlightenment itself is a matter of spiritual temperament. Its original intention is that we should know ourselves and get rid of our underage state. In the Western Renaissance, if people wanted to achieve the spiritual temperament of enlightenment, they had to pursue a specific set of knowledge, that is, humanistic knowledge. This is exactly what was received in the 80s.
Today we re-understand the new enlightenment of the 80s, which involves two main levels. First, we need to have the courage to know ourselves, which is the ultimate goal of enlightenment.
Second, how we know ourselves. Here I would like to mention Foucault. In Foucault's view, when we say that we know ourselves, we do not mean that man can be free from any restrictions, nor does freedom mean that he is free of any restrictions. Enlightenment means the ontology of self-criticism, that is, to first know how we became us, why we became like this, why we think so much, talk like this, do things. Foucault then goes on to say that we are going to do an archaeology of the discourse of the genealogy of knowledge, to clarify how we have become who we are today. Then, shake up the things that we can change. That is to say, on the premise of acknowledging the existing historical conditions, we must change those places that are accidental and can be reopened. So the freedom he speaks of is not freedom in the abstract, but in the context of the existence of new possibilities.
Foucault
Beijing News: This reminds me of the "humanistic imagination" you mentioned in the book.
He Guimei: Yes, this is a point that I especially want to make. The concept was originally inspired by Mills's Sociological Imagination.
What Mills calls "sociological imagination" is primarily aimed at the mainstream, institutionalized social sciences, which focus too much on data statistics and lack the ability to reflect and criticize. He argues that the meaning of the sociological imagination is to communicate the personal distress in the environment and the public issues in the social structure. This is a particularly productive and critical line of thought.
Continuing this claim is The Giddens of The United Kingdom. In Introduction to Social Criticism, he proposed that in addition to the sociological imagination, we must also have a historical imagination, that is, we must know not only today, but also how the human beings of the past came to be. At the same time, it also proposes that the anthropological imagination cannot be said to be the only way in which the modern social groups we are familiar with are organized, but that all the experiences of human history and those civilizations that are different from those in Europe should be respected, and their way of existence has its own independent system of meaning.
I first proposed "the imagination of humanities", mainly aimed at the literary world, especially from the 80s to the 21st century, the literary world has always emphasized "pure literature", to get literature out of the context of political control. This also makes literature begin to fall into the field of pure aesthetics, pure personalness, pure sensibility, and the interaction with society has become less.
Such a concept is not wrong, but it actually restricts the writer and the researcher. I recently participated in the selection of the Novel Award of the Department of Chinese of Peking University, and I have intensively read more than 30 novel works between 15 and 17 years. I really feel that our literature has no power to become good, and most of the works are about their own troubles and anxieties from a personal point of view. Novels often end through death, or by disappearing from life. This personal entanglement points to a hopeless living situation that makes one read depressingly.
On the other hand, the overemphasis on pure literature has also made the vision of literary research more and more narrow. Literary criticism began to become more and more specialized, focusing on particularly small issues and materials. The understanding of literature eventually falls into lyricism and aesthetics, most of which talk about language arts, and loses the fundamental vision of literature as literature to explain the world.
The call for "humanistic imagination" is actually to open up oneself and discuss personal problems and literary problems at the level of a large social structure relationship. The first step is to step out. We need to know what other disciplines are talking about at the same time, under the same structure. This necessarily involves an understanding of the social structure and the way the state is organized. In this respect, the social sciences are the most effective. But if literature only follows the social sciences, it is not possible, or it is necessary to exert its most unique power in the disciplinary system and structural relationship of literature, that is, based on human sensibility and emotional recognition. This kind of recognition seems irrational on the surface, but in fact, it is the exertion of human potential, the larger your vision, the wider the space you can imagine, and the greater the energy of literature. So the humanist imagination was originally designed to reactivate the power of literature.
Beijing News: For the current social situation, what inspiration can the imagination of humanities bring to us?
He Guimei: First of all, we must return to the concept of humanities. Humanities, broadly defined, refers to human-centered thought, including human-related values, emotions, and experiences. It was first proposed in the European Enlightenment, forming such a discipline in the process of getting rid of religious control, and also constituting the main vein of Western human knowledge since the 16th century.
Back in the Chinese context, our cultural traditions have always been rooted in the vein of humanism. Unlike "humanitarianism", which emphasizes the natural nature of man, "humanism" emphasizes more on the realm that man's own cultivation and cultivation can achieve. Confucius said, "The Son does not speak strangely and chaotically", we do not say what we do not know, only do what those people can do, and at the same time know that they cannot do it, in order to "cultivate themselves and rule the country and the world". This humanistic tradition places special emphasis on the power of human agency.
The reason why this question has become particularly urgent today is because of a fundamental change in the way society as a whole is organized. For example, the development of technologies such as the Internet, artificial intelligence, and genetic engineering has not only isolated people from the real world to virtual space, but also changed the shape of social operation. Many of these technical dominances are actually anti-human or inhuman, and the most unique and humanistic connotations of man himself seem to disappear today. In this way, people's living conditions will become more and more passive and passive.
Stills from the documentary Surveillance Capitalism: The Smart Trap.
To summon the humanistic imagination, we must first recognize the passive state of man. That is to say, it is necessary to re-understand the historical conditions and material basis that restrict human beings today, including the basic way of technological control of human beings.
There are now two striking humanistic ideas: one is called the "posthumanist" theory, that is, we are not the "people" we used to think of, and the other is the revival of classics. The revival of classics does make sense. They argue that people in the modern world are becoming more and more morbid, so we need to return to the basic questions of the war between modern and classical, and draw strength from classics such as the Analects and the Republic, because their understanding of man is more complete.
This line of thinking is certainly needed, but the rise of classics does not mean that we all have to return to the classical era, but we must re-learn and grasp what these classics offer about the way, vision and ability of man to create himself and the world.
At the same time, the imagination of humanities emphasizes human initiative, and we need to use contemporary human methods to imagine what the world belongs to people is like on the basis of grasping the existing material conditions and organizational forms.
Beijing News: Has there been any change in the evaluation of this book by scholars?
He Guimei: My research has always been both inside the profession and outside the profession. People in the literary world who do contemporary literature, especially literary research in the 80s, read this book more often, and it is also a basic reference book. If you read this book only from the perspective of literary studies, many people will feel unfamiliar with the theories I use, so it will be more difficult to read.
In addition, many literary researchers are more accustomed to the critical discussion of writers' works, and I will mix the author's works into a trend of thought, while also carrying my own sense of problems. Therefore, there are not many discussions in professional circles that can be discussed in depth.
Interestingly, a lot of the feedback I hear comes from outside the literary world. For example, scholars in sociology, art, and history will talk to me more about this book.
PART 3.
Female role models, academic life
with academic ambitions
3.1
Female role models:
A confluence of destinies across ages and generations
Beijing News: In your research career and life experience, which woman has had an important influence and inspiration on you? It can be academic or gender-conscious.
He Guimei: Ding Ling has a great influence on me. On the one hand, I like her personality and literary creation, and on the other hand, I also feel that she needs to be explained, and cannot be treated in a way that I like a writer completely.
Because I am a researcher of women's literature, of course, I will have a lot of contact with the classic writers of 20th century women's literature, such as Bingxin, Lu Yin, Ding Ling, Xiao Hong, Zhang Ailing, and zhang Ailing, and the more recent ones are Zhang Jie, Wang Anyi, Tie Ning, Lin Bai, Chen Yan, etc. Some of my friends especially like Xiao Hong. Although I think she is very talented and literary, I really don't like the self-destructive and self-pitying tone of her. Ding Ling's ego is strong, and her most important feature is the courage to constantly cross herself. Initially, she appeared in the literary world with works such as "The Diary of Lady Shafi", with the most modern and radical image, and in the late 20s she turned to the left and began to express the lives of "others", that is, ordinary people and ordinary people. Xia Zhiqing and others feel that Ding Ling's creative turn is a manifestation of her Jiang Lang's talent. But I think her greatest courage is reflected here, she dares to step out of her comfort zone, to express herself is not so familiar with the ordinary people, dare to break through the limitations of the middle-class female self, and form a stronger self in the hard trials.
Ding Ling in her later years
In my opinion, Ding Ling is the most female writer of the 20th century. Her gender stance is clear, and her literary work has always been concerned with women's issues, and is not limited to women's issues. In the 1980s, Ding Ling was particularly controversial in her later years. In the past year or so, I have re-read many of her works written in the 80s, including her own works about her own imprisonment in the 30s, criticism in the 50s, and the experience of the Northern Wilderness. I think her spiritual realm in her later years is very broad, and at the same time there is a little self-deprecation, but also a little helplessness. However, none of this has been more effectively explained.
Beijing News: What about female scholars? Who has influenced you the most?
He Guimei: There are many outstanding female scholars at Peking University, including Teacher Dai Jinhua, Teacher Le Daiyun, Teacher Xia Xiaohong, etc. For young schoolgirls, their presence is a comforting thing. For example, when you, as a female student, are plagued by gender issues and endure the doubts and self-doubts of the people around you, you suddenly find that Teacher Dai can still do so well, and you have courage and motivation. It was as if they were in front, and it was very solid to follow behind as students. This is also my mentality when I was a student.
To a large extent, they make up my academic tradition as a female scholar. Of course, Ms. Dai had a greater impact on me, and she opened up a whole new field of scholarship and thought for me. If there are no female teachers in the Chinese department of Peking University, I don't think there will be too many students doing women's research. Ms. Dai was a star teacher at that time, and her classes at Peking University have always been difficult to find, and many students, especially female students, like her.
But for me, I would prefer to dive deeper into her academic theory. Teacher Dai taught me, the first is the opening of the theoretical level. Professor Dai mainly studies film, and the theory after the transformation of linguistics is the earliest and most mature in the field of film. At that time, the main academic theoretical resources of our Chinese Department were still in aesthetic criticism and new critical theories, and What Teacher Dai brought to me was a new theoretical resource and critical vision.
The second is the pattern of her research. Mr. Dai not only does theory, but also does film research, gender research, and popular culture research. These are very cutting-edge areas with a wide coverage.
3.2
From Life to Academics:
"Go out" and talk to reality
Beijing News: In addition to academic research, what do you like to do every day?
He Guimei: Watching movies and reading books. I also like to go around and take a look, before it was purely tourism, now I hope to see the actual situation and changes in Chinese society, especially the grass-roots society, through my own eyes. From last year to now, because I can't go out during the epidemic, I have tidied up the shelves of the bookcase at home and reread the classic books and movies.
I had about four or five years, and the main way to rest was to watch movies. Watch a movie or two almost every day, have time to rest, and watch it when you sit down. Of course, I watch movies with some selectivity, one is epic films, and some films that involve fundamental values and have more depth, such as "Hacker Empire", "Generation Grandmaster", "Ten Commandments", "Godfather" and so on. This choice is also related to age, after people reach middle age, there is a corresponding accumulation of life experience and thinking, even if it is a rest to watch a movie, it is unlikely to be pure entertainment relaxation. Instead, films that can provide some reflective thinking, involve some fundamental or social problems of life, and have a relatively high artistic quality can be watched.
Stills from the film The Ten Commandments (1989).
There is also a category of Asian martial arts films, because it is more relaxed, but also because I am more interested in this type of film. In addition, according to the focus time of interest, we will also watch some national and regional films, such as Korean films, Japanese films, British films, etc. Of course, movies in China (including Hong Kong and Taiwan) at various times are must-see. This is mainly for the sake of doing research.
I used to buy a lot of books, and many of them didn't have time to read. Originally, they were all read for the purpose of writing papers or books, but now they are mainly based on some issues that interest me, such as Braudel's Mediterranean World and European Civilization, Dialectical Theory, Classical Political Philosophy, Critical Social Science, Empire and Communication, Wallerstein, and other books that reflect on social science and world system theory, as well as various works and classics on the history of Chinese civilization. Of course, the underlying motivation for such reading is the desire to understand contemporary China from a broader perspective.
Beijing News: You mentioned that when "20th century", "China" and "literature" became categories that needed to be questioned and questioned, we needed to re-discuss, name and discuss the history of Chinese literature in the 20th century. "Rewriting the history of literature" seems to be your long-standing ambition, and you are also trying to establish your own theoretical style from it. How would you describe the originality of this theoretical style? In the field of modern literary history and intellectual history, what do you want to activate or open?
He Guimei: I do have the desire to "rewrite literary history" and establish my own theoretical style, which is consistent, in short, I try to combine social and cultural theory, literary history, and literary criticism. On the one hand, I attach more importance to the historical dimension of literary studies (hence the term "academic school"). At the same time, I also pay attention to starting from theory, based on literary research, responding to some fundamental problems in contemporary China (so it is called "obscure"), and paying attention to the reinterpretation of important writers and texts (this is the meaning of "criticism", but not only current criticism).
The study and criticism of modern and contemporary Chinese literature was at the forefront of the entire ideological community for a long time (50s and 80s), but since the 1990s, because of the emphasis on "pure literature" and specialization, the research community has greatly lost the ability to respond to social realities. I have tried to revitalize the study of literature (literature) in the total socio-historical perspective.
The so-called "imagination of humanities" is not only "going out", going out from professional literary research, and dialogue with social research and political economy research; it is also "reactivating", placing literary research in the overall vision of social science research and humanistic research, and discussing the ideological power it may have and the ability to dialogue with reality.
Beijing News: What are your next research plans?
He Guimei: My research plan is still two pieces, and it has been advancing. The first is the study of contemporary China. I have completed the study of literary history in contemporary China for 5 periods, and I hope that from the perspective of literature and culture, I can form a comprehensive research result with personal ideological characteristics on the core issues of modern and contemporary China.
Also there is gender studies. I've been doing gender studies for many years, but the only work I've produced so far is just one book. In fact, I just finished writing a book last year, using 9 female figures to talk about the changes in the gender system in contemporary China. But some modifications are needed. There is also a book about 20th-century women's classics, which will soon be published.
Gender studies are actually a comprehensive study. It requires both the accumulation of theories and the grasp of practical problems. I hope that after that, I can integrate literary research and social studies, popular culture and theoretical issues, 20th century historical experience and current China issues, and make some breakthroughs in a more personal academic style.
The author | Qingzi
Editor| Qingqingzi; Lu Wanting; Go Away
Logo design | Guo Xin
Proofreader | Yang Xuli