Mr. Wang Furen (right) and the author in Shanghai
Seeking the Rights and Freedoms of Literary Research: A Brief Introduction to Wang Furen's Academic Image
Li Linrong
One
When the whole academic enterprise is settled in the position of a vassal of another cause by the great hand of the times, literary studies and literary researchers naturally have no special freedom to stand out from the outside. However, when academic careers need to play their role in public opinion and fulfill their obligations to open the way for the transformation of the times, literary studies and literary researchers are often pushed to the forefront. At this time, people did not care whether the various remarks made by literary researchers in the name of literary research were really related to literature and whether they could be regarded as a kind of academic research. As the transformation of the times gradually fades from illness to death, people's expectations for literary research and literary researchers are also decreasing day by day, so that people no longer like to hear, are no longer magnanimous, and no longer pay attention to literary researchers who continue to speak and write as before. The number of people who completely neglect the profession of literary studies will become more and more numerous. -- In an era when most people regard such a social and cultural circle as a commonplace norm of life, it is obvious that the promotion of literary research in an academic sense can only be an individualized act that stays within the scope of personal interests. What stands out in Wang Furen's cultural and educational career for more than 30 years so far is a trajectory that has gradually drifted away from the above-mentioned social and cultural circles and finally deeply entered the inner world of individualized spiritual thought.
Regarding the writing experience of drowning in the melody of the chorus in the early part of his literary and educational career, Wang Furen's summary is:
"That can't be regarded as 'academic research', just like a thief who wants to steal something from a large family, he first has to stand outside the courtyard wall and throw a few small stones into it, and some articles at that time played the role of 'throwing stones to ask for directions'." ①
However, when he obtained the qualification to become a naturalized "big family" for "academic research" through Lu Xun's Early Novels and Russian Literature (1981), which was later hailed as "the foundation work of Chinese comparative literature in the new era", the truth that this "big family" was ostensibly rich but actually poor was exposed before his eyes. A person who can never feel lack or inadequacy, no matter how heroic his words and slogans, is destined to be a person who will never create anything, this is probably not a difficult and profound truth to understand, but in China's "academic circles", which has always prevailed in the trend of conforming to the herd, this truth is often transformed from the opposite into a strange fact. What is even more peculiar is that most of the people who specialize in playing with slogans and slogans often have the specialty of suppressing and misinterpreting the creative behavior and achievements of others. This makes people who are complacent about creating and maintaining false prosperity always live more justifiably in China's "academic circles" than those who have the courage to face reality.
It is in such an environment that Wang Furen not only gained insight into the obsolescence and crudeness of the thinking of modern Chinese literature research in the "new era" by following his true inner feelings and his recognition of Lu Xun's proposition of "reading less Chinese books and more foreign books", but also further discovered the fact that the entire academic cause of Chinese humanities has long deviated from the basic position of the ideological and cultural field and slipped into the field of political practice at the methodological and functional level. -- The first concentrated expression of Wang Furen's understanding of Wang Furen, which still seems to be very relevant and historically critical today, is the "Synthesis of 'The Scream' and 'Hesitation'" (1984), which attracted criticism at the beginning of its publication. Now, those who criticize such writings as "The Scream" and "Hesitation" on the pretext of the majesty of ideological orthodoxy have basically disappeared. However, in the academic sense, people who truly understand and accept the conceptual principles and thinking framework established by the "Scream" and "Hesitation" Comprehensive Treatise seem to be rare even in the field of Lu Xun studies and modern and contemporary Chinese literary studies. Comparatively speaking, what people get more from Wang Furen's work is a series of concrete research conclusions that shimmer with speculative brilliance. Only a few people who are quite ambitious in their own academic ambitions and intellectual ambitions are happy to admit that they have received great inspiration from Wang Furen's magnificent Lu Xun research, which touches the depths of their thinking. (2) This shows from one side that with the "Scream" and "Hesitation" as the starting point, Wang Furen's academic research has leapt to a higher level of thought that is difficult for others to achieve.
Mr. Wang Furen signed the author's book shadow
Two
The mid-to-late 1980s was a period of dreams and trials for Chinese scholarship, especially for humanities, and in Chinese society during this period, regardless of whether or not they had the ability to think independently, anyone who preclaimed to be an intellectual or scholar had an impulse to exalt words and give directions. Unscrupulous and active in thinking is a social situation that is welcomed by cultural people of all times and positions. Wang Furen was no exception, and when he later talked about his academic interests during this period, he made this analysis:
"I was born in a rural area, and I received an orthodox ideological education since I was a child, and my thinking was conservative, which was not completely in tune with the various new ideological trends at that time, but at that time, the enthusiasm of Chinese intellectuals for thinking about the reality and culture of my own nation also had a huge effect on me. At that time, I was mainly thinking about the development of modern Chinese culture, but also about traditional Chinese culture. This actually has a lot to do with the research on Lu Xun that I was engaged in before. Lu Xun is a cultural giant, and it is impossible to have a more in-depth and detailed analysis and grasp of the value and significance of Lu Xun's works without a more detailed thinking and understanding of the development of Chinese culture in general, especially modern Chinese culture." ③
In the process of conducting specific research on the history of modern Chinese culture, Wang Furen paid the most attention to the mental state and fate of intellectuals, a vulnerable group who often acted as ideological and cultural pioneers in times of social upheaval, but were often pushed to the margins in times of social reorganization.
If Lu Xun is a modern Chinese intellectual who has successfully realized his social value in his lifetime, so Lu Xun's research has correspondingly become an academic project that does not require too much effort at the level of social function, then for modern Chinese intellectuals who exist as a whole, on the contrary, not only do they not implement their own cultural pursuits and value orientations to the level of social consciousness, but even they themselves find it difficult to undertake the cultural pursuit and value orientation that modern Chinese intellectuals should have throughout their lives。 Why did an intellectual, like Lu Xun, who had undertaken the mission of modern Chinese culture all his life to the letter, become almost an isolated case in China's modern and modern history? This is probably a problem that every researcher who has really entered Lu Xun's spiritual world and experienced Lu Xun's psychological experience of fighting alone with the masses will sooner or later encounter when he turns to such a macroscopic object of investigation as China's modern and modern cultural history. However, such an issue would not have received widespread attention in the 1980s, when "most Chinese intellectuals were very optimistic" (4). With the title of "New China's first doctor of literature," Wang Furen was indifferent to the question of whether his performance in the carnival-like craze of Chinese humanities in the mid-to-late 1980s was timely and eye-catching. In the midst of the uproar, he quietly advanced his research topic of deducing the spiritual process of modern Chinese intellectuals. From this time on, in terms of case-based microscopic research, Wang Furen's analysis of the works and genres of thought of modern Chinese writers began to extend to a wide range beyond Lu Xun,—— from Cao Yu, Feng Xuefeng, Guo Moruo, Mao Dun, Yu Dafu, to Wen Yiduo, Bingxin, Xu Dishan, Ba Jin, Lao She, Zhu Ziqing, from the "Restoration", "Westernization", to "New Youth", and then to "Creation Society", which was once embodied in "The Scream" and "Hesitation" In this series of new topics, the subtle and unique observation and judgment of the candle have been used more skillfully and three-dimensionally, and in terms of overall macro research, through "Two Balances and Three Types of Mentality, Constituting the Dynamic Process of the Continuous Evolution of Chinese Modern and Contemporary Culture" (1986), "The Reverse Characteristics of the Development of Modern Chinese Culture and the Reverse Characteristics of the Development of Modern and Contemporary Chinese Literature" (1989), and "On the Significance of the "May Fourth" New Culture Movement (1989) and other long papers, Wang Furen is good at extracting and grasping major ideological and cultural themes, and travels back and forth in the complex historical facts, while at the same time being able to develop a new academic style of generalization and analysis that is vertical and horizontal, and penetrating and penetrating, which has been clearly established.
In fact, when the Chinese humanities community regrouped in the desolate early 1990s after a strong shock, some people found that it was an academic posture like Wang Furen, which seemed to be somewhat low-key but firmly grasped the reality of Chinese society and culture at the spiritual level, that was enough to match the responsibility that history has accumulated on the shoulders of contemporary Chinese humanities intellectuals. Of course, in the 1990s, when more and more intellectuals woke up from the imagination and dreams of intellectuals, and became more and more accustomed to using the methods of businessmen or officials to run or deal with "academics", the recognition of Wang Furen's academic stance could only be very limited. It's not normal, but it's not something to be weird about. No matter what era or place it is, a professional industry will always go through a period of alienation and differentiation driven by interests, and those who grab fish and meat, and those who sell their fame and reputation, will never give up if they do not completely devalue the professional treatment assigned by society to this industry. The 1990s were the beginning of the mass professionalization of the intellectual class in China, and its original passively formed monolithic form began to show some obvious signs of alienation and differentiation, and in the long run, it was a long process that needs to be promoted rather than opposed. As for the causes of this process and its negative side, Wang Furen has made a wonderful revelation:
"On the one hand, the specialization and professionalization of intellectuals is necessary for society to realize the exchange of ideas and feelings, and in order to specialize, it is necessary to provide the intellectuals with the necessary material living conditions, and according to the principle that it takes more social funds to produce intellectuals than to produce an ordinary labor force, intellectuals should also receive more material remuneration than ordinary members of society. But it is precisely because of this that it attracts more and more members of society to the ranks of intellectuals and intensifies competition among intellectuals. This competition can take two different forms: competition for knowledge and competition for professional interests. The competition of the former is conducive to socio-cultural production, while the competition of the latter is detrimental to socio-cultural production. But the two types of competition are often intermingled, making it extremely difficult to distinguish between them. At a time when the competition for professional interests intensifies, intellectuals will not only no longer become a positive force for the exchange of ideas and feelings in society, but will also become the main messengers of the communication channels in Yongsai. …… Some intellectuals have paid a serious price for the normal exchange of ideas and feelings in society, even to the point of sacrificing their own lives, while others have gained high-ranking positions and favors in the production that destroys society and culture. Therefore, on the one hand, the professionalization of intellectuals provides good conditions for the prosperity and development of society and culture, and at the same time, it has also become an important reason for the obstruction of communication. ”⑤
Mr. Wang Furen signed the author's book shadow
Three
Perhaps it is precisely because of the existence of the "obstructive" factor from within the intellectuals that Wang Furen noticed that his continuous efforts in academic exploration have always been under the shield of habit and popular forces. Some people who regard themselves as experts in the study of modern and contemporary Chinese literature, while having to admit Wang Furen's professional achievements, have quite a few criticisms of Wang Furen's unique ideological passion and speculative edge in his professional writings, believing that they are unorthodox manifestations that do not conform to the rules of the profession. Regardless of the psychological reaction of these arguments that seem to cherish professional norms, which are inconvenient to express, it is not difficult to see the exact opposite of these arguments full of resentment from the perspective of professional norms alone. In Wang Furen's academic achievements in the past 20 years, the most glorious aspect is precisely the continuous and in-depth display of the consciousness of construction and pioneering in the norms and principles of literary research.
Although it is far from being said that there was no real academic study of Lu Xun in China before the publication of Wang Furen's Lu Xun research results, the reason why Lu Xun studies became the common commanding heights of the two academic fields of modern Chinese literature and modern Chinese intellectual history in the mid-to-late 1980s was clearly contributed by a few works represented by Wang Furen's A Mirror of China's Anti-Feudal Ideological Revolution (1986). The so-called "cultural studies", which was the most eye-catching field in Chinese humanities scholarship in the 1990s, gradually showed a relatively independent character in the sense of methodology and epistemology because of the contributions of a few people, including Wang Furen. According to a saying circulated in professional circles in the past, a successful academic achievement should become a document that cannot be ignored or put aside by all subsequent researchers on the same topic. From this point of view, the two sentences he mentioned in the introduction to his doctoral dissertation 17 years ago - "never limit or cut off the roots of research that extend infinitely to the deep space with his own discourse" and "I am willing to be the starting point, not the end", indeed indicate a rare characteristic of his academic thinking. ⑥
With regard to academic norms, apart from the most basic restraints of personality and self-discipline in public morality, which are essentially applicable to all professional spheres in a sound society, what other norms or norms in our society are worthy of being called "academic norms"? Even the entire academic undertaking of the humanities, what kind of rules should be followed, and what criteria should be used to evaluate its merits or inferiorities, or its success or failure, are questions that intellectuals themselves do not need to consider and do not allow to decide, because our entire academic undertaking is "naturally" prescribed as a metaphysical department of another kind of undertaking, and our academic research can only be a simple mechanical operation in essence, and our scholars can only regard acting as a well-behaved mental operator as their duty. More than one generation of so-called scholars and experts have grown up and matured from this background. INTERVIEWER Are people who forget or avoid this fact still qualified to hold up the sign of "academic norms" to criticize others? This is probably not an issue that can be argued about on paper. At least in Wang's case, he has never been concerned with the sneaky thief's shouting of thief-catching criticism, and he has focused on how to effectively confront the structural shortcomings and methodological holes in the entire academic undertaking of Chinese humanities, including the research community of modern Chinese literature, and how to effectively reverse this situation step by step.
Since the mid-1990s, Wang Furen has devoted more effort to conceptual re-examination and theoretical reconstruction closely related to the study of modern and contemporary Chinese literature, and has published a series of articles such as "The History and Current Situation of Lu Xun Studies in China" (1994), "On Chinese Modernist Literature" (1996), and "On Chinese Neoclassical Literature" (1998). At the same time, he also began to engage in the writing of his self-proclaimed academic essays with a more active attitude than before, and the four essay collections published after 1995, "The Sound of the Cicada", "The Sound of the Cicada and the Sound of the Cow", "The Collection of Whispers", and "Talking about Myself", recorded many details of his daily ideological activities in a more vivid and relaxed form, which was a way for him to communicate with more readers outside the professional circle. At the beginning of the 21st century, when more variables have emerged at the social and cultural level, and the fission of Chinese intellectual groups and Chinese humanities and academic circles is becoming more and more open-minded, Wang Furen cannot but show a deeper concern for the situation of those who have the courage to adhere to the mission of intellectuals in social life and academic activities. As for himself, in the face of an era in which the legitimate rights and freedoms of academic undertakings and individual scholars are constantly disturbed and ambiguous by various external factors, Wang Furen's requirements are-
"I'm going to struggle to hold myself up." ⑦
In August 2000, he was born at Beijing Normal University
Exegesis:
(1), (4) and (7) are respectively quoted from Wang Furen, "The Road I Walked", Wang Furen's Selected Works, Guangxi Normal University Press, January 1999, pp. 1, 5, 9.
(2) On this point, see Wang Hui, "Historical Criticism of Lu Xun Studies", Literary Review, No. 8, 1988.
(3) Quoted from Wang Furen, "Know Yourself, Know Your Own Times, Know the Literature of Your Own Times", Talking About Myself: Wang Furen's Academic Essays, Fujian Education Press, April 2000, p. 30.
(5) Quoted from Wang Furen, "Cultural Crisis and Spiritual Overproduction", Literary World, No. 6, 1993.
(6) See Wang Furen, "A Mirror of China's Anti-Feudal Ideological Revolution", Beijing Normal University Press, August 1986, p. 10.