"The first batch of young people in Jiangsu criticize top-notch talents" column
Compared with the interpretation of timeliness works, "lagging" commentary requires a thorough review of previous research, and more need a sense of history, insight and a broader frame of reference after precipitation. Zang Qing later reinterpreted the writer's works and discovered and interpreted new problems.
Zang Qing examines the works of writers in the context of literary trends and literary historical order, focusing on the formation of writers' "personal discourse" and "aesthetic style".
Gentle but firm critic
—— Zang Qing's impression
Wen / Wang Yao
Show in the heart and walk outside, this is the impression that Zang Qing left me when I was an undergraduate. During the after-class chat, I knew that Zang Qing had academic aspirations and wanted to be a pure scholar. I suggested that if she had the opportunity to further her studies, she might consider pursuing a degree off-campus. I always encourage our outstanding students to study outside of school and return to their alma mater to teach when they are successful. In 2010, after Zang Qing obtained her master's qualification, I recommended her to Nanjing University to major in Chinese Modern and Contemporary Literature. Zang Qing was lucky to study under Mr. Ding Fan. I read several articles published by Dr. Zang Qing during her studies, and I felt that this little girl had grown up. After receiving her doctorate in 2015, Zang Qing returned to teach at Soochow University's School of Literature and became my young colleague.
When Zang Qing's generation of scholars grew up, the academicization of literary criticism was already the general trend, so we do not have to measure Zang Qing in a narrow sense of "critic". I think that Zang Qing's literary education at Nanjing University formed his own value judgment. The literature of the eighties and nineties of the twentieth century that we have personally experienced is already history for scholars of Zang Qing's generation, or the background for their growth. We discipline this history, look for the intrinsic connection between this history and the new literature of May Fourth, and extract historical and aesthetic value judgments related to "enlightenment literature". The sense of "academic community" formed in China's interaction with the world is also evident in Zang Qing's academic experience. During her Ph.D., Zang visited Duke University for a year, an experience that had a crucial impact on her.
For a long time, the study of literary history and literary criticism were almost two professions, and scholars had their own emphasis. My expectation for young scholars is that it is best to be somewhere in between, and especially encourage young scholars to do more special research. Judging from Zang Qing's existing research ideas and achievements, she is somewhere in between, focusing on the study of contemporary literature. Zang Qing's research interests are mainly threefold: the study of contemporary Chinese literature, including the tracking and interpretation of current literary trends and the reinterpretation of literary classics; Overseas Sinology studies, focusing on the overseas dissemination of Chinese literature, especially the writing of Chinese literary history in the English-speaking world; Gender Studies, focusing on women's writing and culture in contemporary China, was the starting point of Zang Qing's academic research career. Zang Qing's achievements in these three aspects are both focused and cross-integrated, showing the keen, broad and comprehensive research ability of the new generation of scholars.
Zang Qing does not spend too much energy tracking the current creation and doing timely criticism, she seems to be more accustomed to interpreting her works after they have precipitated, which is a characteristic of her literary criticism. The "Hesitation and Dissolution of Personal Discourse: On Re-evaluating the Luyao Phenomenon", "The Avant-garde Legacy and Style Cultivation: On Bi Feiyu's Novel Creation", "The Watchman of the Urban Desert - On Pan Xiangli's Novel Creation" and so on now all reflect the characteristics of her literary criticism. In recent years, re-evaluating Lu Yao is almost a phenomenon, and Zang Qing has faced the "embarrassment" of this phenomenon: "As a writer who once won the "Mao Dun Literature Award", Lu Yao obtained official recognition very early. As a writer who once inspired the youth of an era with "Ordinary World", Lu Yao still has continuous vitality among the general readers. However, most of the literary history writing since the new period has excluded Lu Yao from the ranks of 'classics'. Zang Qing sorted out the basic context of re-evaluating Lu Yao: one is to re-recognize the value of Lu Yao, affirm his achievements in literary creation through the excavation of the connotations of sacrifice, humanity, and epic in his works, and reshape his nobility in personality through a large number of nostalgic articles of writers and readers, and then "complain" for Lu Yao's absence in literary history. The other tendency is to explore the deep causes of the dislocation of the three more rationally through the excavation of the literary field and literary ecology. Zang Qing's sensitivity, directness and profundity lie in her insight that the former's sparing praise lacks sufficient persuasion due to excessive intervention of subjective emotions and the repetition of the old tune of the excavation of the work; The latter's efforts to reproduce the literary ecology can provide rational thinking and objective reference for Lu Yao's repositioning. Here, Zang Qing not only has the perspective of literary history, but also places Lu Yao in the literary context since the 1980s. In fact, many of the commentaries on Lu Yao are formed from specific ideas, avoiding the more complex order of literary history and the key issues of literature since the eighties. Lu Yao's enduring popularity among the general public is the personal struggle of Gao Garin and Sun Shaoping, that is, the personal discourse characterized by self-realization. It is the social reality touched on by the personal discourse of the work that wins the love of readers, rather than the sacrifice, humanity, epic and other connotations of the work excavated by the majority of critics. The paradox of history is that Lu Yao finally canceled the discussion of the form of personal value realization in "Ordinary World", split Gao Garin into two brothers, Sun Shaoan and Sun Shaoping, and avoided the question of whether Gao Garin's personal struggle was legitimate through their firm choice of rural and urban respectively, and also directly announced Lu Yao's self-dissolution of personal discourse. This phenomenon of Lu Yao is actually the dilemma of many writers since the 1990s, rather than a single personal creation problem. As Zang Qing revealed, this kind of incomplete and silent creation of personal discourse is not only related to the criticism and guidance of the time, but also directly stems from Lu Yao's own creative values consciously inherited by a literary spirit and literary tradition. For a long time, "realism" has been an important entry point for investigating Lu Yao, and academic research still repeats the image of Lu Yao's "realist fighter", affirming that he still adhered to the position of realism at the moment when various new wave literature in the mid-80s of last century and the collective "inward turn" of the literary circle, praising him as "Don Quixote" who fought alone against the blind pursuit of the new in the literary world and for the aesthetic ideal of realism. As some researchers realize, Lu Yao appreciates modernism, not only affirming the achievements of Western modernist literature, but also respecting Márquez himself, and is by no means simply sticking to the old pile of paper. Zang Qing further pointed out: Lu Yao does not understand modernism, he saw the literary circle's "running with the wind" to the new trend of the West, saw the blind impetuosity of frequent experimental techniques, and also saw the disobedience of Western resources when grafting the mainland, but he did not see these dazzling experiments, behind the wave is the resistance to ideological discourse and the call for capitalized "people". Zang Qing's views may also be regarded as biased, but while respecting and affirming Lu Yao's achievements, she directly points to the limitations of Lu Yao and Lu Yao's researchers, showing the character of a young scholar.
In Su Tong's novel creation since the new century, "The Exploration of Balance and the Possibility of Classics", it also reflects the characteristics of Zang Qing's grasp of the inherent contradictions of writers' creations in structural relationships. The question Zang Qing wants to discuss is: in Su Tong's long-form works since the new century, a former avant-garde writer has launched an impact on a new writing dimension and then moved towards the road of classicization, and the specific question is whether he can find a new aesthetic style. Zang Qing's focus is therefore that Su Tong's writing has a consistent focus, that is, he does not care much about what the story is, but puts all his passion on how to tell the story, that is, he is far more interested in harnessing the discourse of the story than the meaning conveyed by the story itself, that is, if the novel goes out of the humid south and floating history, and bids farewell to the beautiful and decadent mood and exquisite and elegant language, then on what level and how the story is told, this is the challenge that Su Tong faces in the new century. Zang Qing seems to regard "Why Snakes Can Fly" and "Binu" as transitional works of Su Tong's "new story", and she accurately grasps the "embarrassment" in Su Tong's adjustment: if "Why Do Snakes Fly" is too close to reality and loses the "flyability" in personal style, "Binu" floats too far in romance, making the narrative overwhelm the spiritual construction; Then, in "Riverbank" and "Yellow Sparrow", Su Tong gradually found an ideal scale between reality and imagination. The maturity of Zang Qing's thinking lies in the fact that she found a second problem from the adjustment of Su Tong's specific writing: how should the novel deal with the distance between the story and the background. Like other avant-garde novelists, Su Tong's novels have always been histories, that is, the story is always far away from the background. The question now is how modest this distance is. Zang Qing believes that "Riverbank" and "Yellow Sparrow" and the previous Su Tong are "harmonious but different", which not only has the imprint of "made by Su Tong", but also brings the story and background of the novel closer, thus achieving a basic balance between seeking innovation and change and self-continuation. The "backward turn" of avant-garde novels since the 1990s has been a topic of criticism, and Zang Qing expresses her understanding here through a specific interpretation of Su Tong.
Zang Qing's "lagging" comments are quite late-coming. Compared with the interpretation of timeliness works, this kind of criticism requires not only a thorough review of previous research, but also a sense of history, insight and a broader frame of reference after precipitation. One of the requirements for critics is the ability to reinterpret writers' works and to discover and interpret new issues. How do you speak when others have said so much? Zang Qing's recently published "Avant-garde Legacy and Style Cultivation: On Bi Feiyu's Novel Creation" also shows the characteristics of her literary criticism. Regarding Bi Feiyu's research, Zang Qing does not agree with the usual division of stages, in her opinion, the key words of power, human nature, history and other keywords involved in the early works represented by "Island", "Narrative" and "Who Speaks in the Night" are the motifs throughout Bi Feiyu's creation, and the absurdity, allegory and psychoanalysis techniques he prefers to use have also been developed in disguise in several temperings. On the other hand, the research relatively ignores Bi Feiyu's transitional writing between 1995 and 2000, which was between two peaks, in which he briefly withdrew from his obsession with history and focused on urban life and real survival. He has also been inspired by the form of Chinese and foreign literary works, and has made a variety of attempts in various dimensions. Although neither the author nor the researchers are optimistic about the creation of this transitional period, Bi Feiyu's reflection on avant-garde writing and his efforts to open up a personal style can be clearly seen from works such as "Home is in Chaos" and "That Summer, That Autumn". Zang Qing's academic reflection on Bi Feiyu's research has revealed her idea of discussing Bi Feiyu, that is, as a highly introspective writer, what twists and turns Bi Feiyu has experienced in this process. The paper focuses on Bi Feiyu's journey from "follower of pioneers" to "surnamed Bi", especially which legacy of pioneer writing he inherited and continued, and what new elements he absorbed and borrowed in the post-pioneer era. Zang Qing usually clearly states the problems she wants to focus on and solve, rather than twists and turns. To a certain extent, this straightforward exposition is not a question of the way of exposition, but a firm grasp of the problem.
Even from the above three articles I have cited can be found a characteristic of Zang Qing's literary research, which places writers' works in the context of literary trends and literary historical order, focusing on the formation of writers' "personal discourse" and "aesthetic style". This characteristic has been evident in Zang Qing's studies, and is reflected in her doctoral dissertation ""The Individual" and "Women": A Study of Chinese Women's Literature in the 90s of the 20th Century". Frankly, I value and wary of the study of "women's literature", which for some time has proliferated rather than flourished to the extent that its research significance has diminished. During the completion of her doctoral dissertation, Zang Qing published some papers, such as "Double Contrast in Women's Marriage Writing: From < Love, It Is Unforgettable> to <A Winter's Fairy Tale >" and "The Failure of Women's Writing "Inward" in the Early New Period: From <Northern Lights> to <Three Birthstones>", etc., I have roughly read. Zang Qing later revised her doctoral dissertation and published the monograph "Research on Personal Discourse in Contemporary Women's Literature", and after I read it, I gave her WeChat and said some affirmative words. Taking "individual" and "woman" as the research starting point, the paper explores the diversified development of women's literature in the nineties through the evolution of their categories and interactive relationships. Zang Qing realizes that the concept of "individual" or "woman" is not fixed in the vacuum of society, nor can it be regarded as a tool completely governed by ideology, but as a "performance act"—the connotation and extension of categories are always changing, and the interrelationships are constantly updated in different discursive historical contexts. On this basis, through close reading of texts and research by writers, this paper explores how women's literature as a trend became a trend in the 90s, and its inheritance and fluid relationship with women's literature in the May Fourth period and the 80s. It also pays attention to the changes in its relationship with literature and cultural phenomena, and presents the problems and landscapes of women's literature in the overall context of literary history and the cultural ecology of the nineties. These insights may not be surprising, but Zang Qing shows her thinking in terms of research methods: first take the problem as the core, and use the problem to promote the argument. The core question is how the categories and relationships between "individuals" and "women" changed in the nineties, and secondary questions arise around this question, such as how did the thread of "individual" and "woman" extend from the modern era to the nineties? What is the overall situation and specific differentiation of the literature of the nineties from this perspective? Zang Qing further asked the socio-cultural mechanisms behind these questions, that is, how did the official ideology and sociocultural atmosphere participate in the changes in women's literature? What is the logic of this? Each of these secondary problems brings up more specific minor problems. Secondly, the paper takes historical clues as a reference to form a mutual observation between history and literature. Discuss from the historical clues of women's literature, and obtain historical depth through the research method of mutual verification of literature and history, so as to avoid falling into static thinking when discussing women's literature in the nineties, and strive to use historical theory and discussion from history. Zang Qing's awareness of these problems and methods directly influenced her later literary criticism.
The study of overseas sinology is another field that Zang Qing gradually developed. The "On the Phenomenon of Overseas "< Declassification > Fever" that we read now is her first achievement. When writing "Diverse Historical Images and Symbiotic Interactive Spaces: On the Writing Form of <Harvard's New > of Modern Chinese Literary History", Zang Qing wanted to find her own research direction, and the result of this thinking was a research project of the National Social Science Foundation "Research on the Writing of Modern Chinese Literary History in the English-speaking World". The academic work Zang Qing wants to do is to systematically organize the compilation of modern Chinese literary historical works in the English-speaking world; Re-evaluating overseas studies of modern Chinese literature; Explore the canonization and cosmopolitanization of Chinese literature. In the construction of the academic research community, Zang Qing's research is worth looking forward to.
Source: Literature News (WeChat public account)
Editor: Deng Jiejie
Second instance: Liu Ya
Third trial: Wang Yang
