Clough and Halley (eds.), The Emotional Turn: The Theorization of Society
This article was originally published in Literature and Art Research, No. 4, 2024
Abstract The "emotional turn" that has emerged in the study of modern and contemporary Chinese literature in recent years is not only a global event to reflect on the basic paradigm of modernity, but also an effort to rebuild the new subject of civilization in the context of Chinese Chinese. From "emotional history" to "emotional structure", to "lyrical tradition" and even to "desire" and "emotion", China's "emotional turn" has gradually completed the process of replacing the narrative dynamics of history to retelling history with China as the center. Its significance lies in the construction of a flexible and flexible emotional subject based on local experience, which to a certain extent overcomes the world order and human imagination based on interests and contracts since the Age of Enlightenment, and at the same time transcends the fragmentation of human beings and the "retreat of the subject" since postmodernism. However, in order to reach this ideal state, the current "emotional turn" still faces multiple problems. Restarting the "ontology of feelings", from the reconstruction of the subject to the reconstruction of the ontology, may be the key to the continuous deepening of this trend of thought.
introduction
In recent years, there has been a gradual upsurge in the study of emotions in the global humanities, and some scholars have even put forward the slogan of "affective turn/emotional turn" [1]. The so-called "emotion" here corresponds to two slightly different concepts (affect and emotion)[2], but to some extent, they are based on a common theoretical impulse, both of which imply a reflection on the basic paradigm of modernity and a desire to reconstruct the subject.
Looking at the evolution of Western intellectual history, the discussion of modernity has always been based on two dimensions: rationality and desire. For example, in the 17th century, Descartes proposed "I think" as the source of all knowledge and experience, which is a "free, autonomous, and rational being"[3], and the rational subject has become one of the most important conceptions of human beings in modern times. Since Freud put forward the concepts of "subconscious" and "libido" in the 20th century, enlightenment and rationality have been increasingly criticized, and the subject of desire has become an important way to think about people. Later, the rise of postmodernism further dissolved the legitimacy of the rational subject, and even questioned the existence of the subject. But as a result, man is also caught in a double disorientation, wandering in a world that cannot be accurately conceptualized, and on the other hand, inherently losing a sense of meaning, trapped in a panic and fear shrouded in uncertainty [4]. The "emotional turn" that has emerged in the academic community in recent years is an attempt to solve this question: how to reconstruct the subject after postmodernism? The reason why the study of emotions can become an "emotional turn" is that it not only adds a new field or topic to academic research, but more importantly, it tries to re-establish the origin of modernity with emotion in addition to reason and desire, and proposes a flexible subject that wanders between inside and outside and transcends the dichotomy of subject and object.
It is against this background that the "emotional turn" in the study of modern and contemporary Chinese literature has emerged, and the representative works can be traced back to Li Oufan's collection of modern Chinese literary essays Lyricism and Epic (1980), edited for Pushike, but the concentrated research mainly appears in the 21st century. For example, Lyrical Tradition and Chinese Modernity: Eight Lectures at Peking University (2010), co-edited by Wang Dewei and Chen Guoqiu, Lyrical Modernity: Discourse on Lyrical Tradition and Chinese Literature Studies (2014), edited by Wang Dewei and Chen Guoqiu, have since continued to advocate the theory of "lyrical tradition", and have written Lyrical Voices in the Epic Era: Intellectuals and Artists in the Mid-Twentieth Century (2019) and The Origins of Chinese Lyrical Tradition (2021). 2022 is a breakthrough year, the "Journal of Modern Chinese Literature Research Series" has opened a column of "History of Emotion", "What is Emotion: History, Theory and Vision of Emotion Research" edited by Zhang Chuntian and Jiang Wentao was published as "the first academic essay collection with the theme of emotion research in Chinese academic circles"[5], and the "Annual Forum of Global Outstanding Young Scholars" hosted by "Exploration and Controversy" set up a sub-forum of "Emotional Age: Discourse Genealogy and Civilization Imagination of Emotion Research", all of which have had a wide impact. The current craze for "emotional turns" continues.
Wang Dewei, "Lyrical Tradition and Chinese Modernity: Eight Lessons at Peking University", Life, Reading, New Knowledge, 2018
Chen Guoqiu and Wang Dewei (eds.), Lyrical Modernity: A Discourse on the Lyrical Tradition and the Study of Chinese Literature, Life, Reading, and New Knowledge, 2014
Wang Dewei, "Lyrical Voices in the Epic Era: Intellectuals and Artists in the Mid-Twentieth Century", Life, Reading, New Knowledge, Joint Books, 2019
However, the "emotional turn" in the context of the Chinese is not a blind pursuit or horizontal transplantation of overseas academic thought, but has its own theoretical context, which contains at least two levels of meaning: one is to respond to how to reconstruct the subject after postmodernism under the overall trend of "emotional turn"; The second is to raise a more local question, that is, is the subject reconstructed by emotion still a Western-style universal subject? Can China's classical resources and inner experience provide new solutions for it? It can be seen that the "emotional turn" is not only a global event of reflection on postmodernism, but also an effort to rebuild the new subject of civilization in the context of the Chinese Chinese language. From "emotional history" to "emotional structure", to "lyrical tradition" and even to "desire" and "emotion", we can see a kind of in-depth ideological advancement, and China's "emotional turn" has gradually completed the process of replacing the historical narrative momentum to retelling history with China as the center. Based on the key words that frequently appear in this process, this paper examines the ideological context of the different paths of "emotional turn" and its possible significance to the study of modern and contemporary Chinese literature.
1. Agent: The Replacement of "Emotional History" and the Dynamics of Historical Narrative
One of the earlier paths through which the "turn" occurred was the "history of emotion". As early as around 2000, papers with similar research ideas on the history of emotions appeared in Chinese academic circles, Pei Yili's Revisiting the Chinese Revolution: Using the Model of Emotions (2001) took the lead in examining the issue of emotional mobilization in the revolutionary movement, and later historians such as Li Lifeng and Li Zhiyu also wrote related articles, focusing on the powerful encouraging power of emotions in mobilizing the masses to engage in an abstract revolutionary ideal[6]. The 22nd International Congress of Historical Sciences in China in 2015 was a turning point, and "History of Emotions", as one of the sub-topics of the conference, began to attract the attention of Chinese scholars, and this topic was pushed to a fever pitch.
The new research on the history of emotion has achieved a methodological transformation, and the reason why it is different from the previous discussion of emotion theory in literature or history is mainly in the problematization of emotion, and "what is emotion" is no longer a self-evident proposition, but needs to be discussed as a discursive practice. For example, the dominant view of emotion in 20th-century China was an expressionist view of emotion, which believed that emotions were inherent in the human body and would always be expressed in different ways. This is exactly what Barbara Rosenwein, a leading figure in the history of emotion, criticizes as the "hydraulic" model: "Emotions are like a large amount of fluid that exists in every human being, churning and foaming, longing to be released." [7] For example, the popular poetic theory during the "May Fourth" period, "poetry should always be the expression of true feelings"[8], which is a typical embodiment of the "hydraulic mode". The core of the study of the history of emotion as a discursive practice lies in the realization that this expressionist theory of emotion is only a historical construction, such as the "epistemic device" [9] as Tsukitani Yukitoshi said, and once formed, its origin is obscured. Therefore, the current research on the history of emotions does not present the "essence" of emotion, but focuses on the transformation and flow of discourse, and the overall tendency is constructivist.
However, the study of emotional history in the Chinese academic community has also shown its own theoretical tendencies. For example, Monique Scheer proposed the concept of "emotional practice", which examines how emotions can be embodied through mobilization, naming, communication, management, etc., in order to overcome the over-reliance on language in constructivist thinking [10]; Some researchers have also made it clear that the reason for turning to emotional history is because of dissatisfaction with the "linguistic turn" and the resulting loss of identity and fragmentation of subjects [11]. The study of emotional history in China is more influenced by the Chinese translator Wang Qingjia, who particularly emphasizes the reversal of emotional history against Ranke's historiography, which advocates "objective history", and calls for expanding the field of historical research to analyze historical events and characters from both rational and emotional levels[12]. The study of emotional history in the Chinese academic community thus continues this dualistic framework to a certain extent, especially highlights the role of emotional subjects, and completes the replacement of historical narrative dynamics.
Taking the analysis of left-wing literature, especially the literature and art of the liberated areas, as an example, this is the most common field involved in the study of the history of emotions. Its original intention is to use human emotions as a medium to restore the rich and complex layers between literary and artistic policies and real writing practices, so as to avoid the simplification and homogenization of left-wing literary research. As one commentator has put it, "the interaction between revolution and lyricism is not a simple affair or synergy", and "if we are willing to believe that 'emotion' has agency in the historical structure, we should face up to how the emotional practices of different subjects have concretely and subtly entered the interior of the revolution, invented each other with the revolution, and even participated in shaping the daily forms and sensory structures of the revolution"[13]. In fact, this brings revolutionary literature back to the dimension of "people" to be examined, but such "people" are different from the "May Fourth" period: "I swallowed the day!" I swallowed the moon! [14] The capitalized individual is also distinguished from the "masses" that often appear as collectives in revolutionary literature; The core of this is to transform man from a passive practitioner of revolutionary activities into an active subject that becomes rich and flexible due to the intervention of emotions. To a certain extent, this kind of active subject can be seen as a response to the "great debate on the humanistic spirit" in the 90s of the 20th century, and even a rejection and transcendence of "humanistic literature" during the "May Fourth" period.
But this study also implies an underlying divisive tendency, namely the distance between the body and mind of the subject in revolutionary activity. Even the dimension of the history of emotions is probably the most popular in the study of revolutionary literature, probably because the usual paradigm in the field presupposes a rigid binary opposition, and the emergence of emotions stirs the boundaries of the contradictory project, making it ambiguous and complicated. The problem, however, is that trying to overcome the duality itself implies affirming its existence as an object of criticism, and thus does not actually spill over the framework of dualism. In this regard, the history of emotions can open up a limited number of research paths, and its main problem is that it interprets the meaning of "emotion" in a relatively narrow sense, without releasing its true energy.
2. Structural subject: the reconstruction of "emotional structure" and emotional connotation
For the study of the history of emotion, the later discourse of "structure of feeling" may provide a restorative approach. This is an important concept developed by Raymond Williams in his theory of cultural materialism, referring to "the feeling of the nature of life in a particular place and time" [15]. In 2002, Zhao Guoxin published an article entitled "Emotional Structure" in Foreign Literature (included in Zhao Yifan's ed. Keywords of Western Literary Theory), and in 2006, Yan Jia published an article of the same title in Foreign Theoretical Dynamics (including Wang Min'an's ed. Keywords of Cultural Studies), which formally introduced this theory to the mainland academic circles.
The significance of the emotional structure lies in the fact that it re-establishes the connotation of emotion on a dual level. The first is to make the concept of "emotional" more ambiguous. From the perspective of word meaning, there are two main translations of this concept in Chinese academic circles: "emotional structure" and "sensory structure". And the disagreement in translation actually points to a deeper question, that is, is the object of discussion of emotional structures emotions? It has been argued that Williams emphasizes "dissolving social experience in flux", and that the reason why he chose the word "experience" instead of "feeling" is that "'experience' as a noun cannot indicate that the subject is personally involved in the process of defining the field of social experience, like the gerund 'feeling'". The present tense of the word 'feeling' emphasizes both the practical and procedural nature of experience", so the translation of "emotional structure" can lead to a certain misreading [16]. But there are also exponents of the emotional turn, such as Lawrence Grossberg, who make it clear that he discovered emotions precisely in the process of reading Williams [17]. Jacob Soule also argues that Williams's "feeling" refers to an immediacy experience, which is both social and individual, and is in fact the hotly debated "affect" [18].
Tracing back to the roots, the ambiguity of the emotional structure may come more from Williams himself. He was one of the first to refer to the "structure of emotion" in his Preface to the Cinema (1954), co-authored with Michael Orrom, as "a shared epistemic experience" that "can only be known by us through the experience of a work of art as a whole"[19]. Later, in Culture and Society (1958), he used the industrial novels of the mid-19th century as examples to illustrate the meaning of emotional structures as the mood of the times. By The Long Revolution (1961), "emotional structure" was proposed as a formal concept, and Williams emphasized that it differed from Fromm's "social character" or Benedict's "cultural model" in that "in the living experience of its time, each element was dissolved, an inseparable part of a complex whole", while the "social character" or "cultural model" was too abstract to be recognized as a sediment of the living qualities of life[20]. Marxism and Literature (1977), as Williams's masterpiece in the later period, summarizes and improves his theory, and the meaning of "emotional structure" has undergone a subtle change here, and has begun to be related to "emerging configurations" [21]. Williams talks more about emotional structures in an empirical way, and his own understanding advances over time. All of this creates ambiguity in the term "emotional structure".
Raymond Williams: The Long Revolution, translated by Ni Wei, Shanghai People's Publishing House, 2022
Raymond Williams: Marxism and Literature, translated by Wang Erbo and Zhou Li, Henan University Press, 2008
But for literary studies, ambiguity may be precisely an advantage. The author notes that in the fields of philosophy and intellectual history, the terms "emotional structure" and "emotional structure" are used more or less frequently, but in literary studies, the former is more favored. In fact, the study of modern and contemporary Chinese literature from the perspective of emotional structure is making use of the mixture between "experience" and "emotion". For example, Li Haiyan's The Revolution of the Mind: The Genealogy of Love in Modern China borrows Williams's concept of "emotional structure", but she mainly discusses Chinese romance and marriage novels in the first half of the 20th century. In his examination of The Teahouse, Song Weijie lays out a series of theories from the lyrical tradition to the emotional, and ultimately boils it down to an analysis of the structure of emotion[22], apparently believing that they can be integrated under a relatively unified vision. In his work on Qiren literature, Liu Daxian also regarded the expression of the mentality of Qiren writers as "the most extensive change in the general emotional structure of the Chinese people"[23]. It can be seen that the emotional structure is extremely encompassing, and its core is "the idea of feeling and the feeling of feeling as a thought concept" [24]. In other words, it is neither a "thought" nor a "feeling", it does not distinguish between the two concepts and then integrate them, but does not presuppose clear conceptual boundaries from the beginning. The structure of emotions thus creates an ambiguous force that offers a certain possibility of breaking down the binary opposition relative to the history of emotions.
Li Haiyan, Spiritual Revolution: The Genealogy of Love in Modern China, translated by Xiu Jiaming, Peking University Press, 2019
Second, the introduction of affective structures attempts to give ambiguous emotions a certain structural character, as Williams makes it clear that "this particular dissolution is by no means a mere fluid, it is also a configuration that has already been structured" [25]. This means that, in contrast to the history of emotion, the structure of emotion goes beyond the level of merely taking emotion as an individual state of mind, and forms a certain relative wholeness in the tension of flow and change. Therefore, Li Haiyan was able to divide Chinese literature in the first half of the 20th century into three types: "Confucian emotional structure", "enlightenment emotional structure" and "revolutionary emotional structure", and refined the overall characteristics of the emotional atmosphere of a particular era. With the help of the structure of emotion, emotion acquires the power to speak, integrate, and even lead to order, and it is in this sense that emotion can truly become a new origin for the re-examination of modernity, providing impetus for the reconstruction of the subject.
3. Traditional Subjects: "Lyrical Tradition" and Classical "Invention"
The ideas of emotional history and emotional structure have pointed out the possible direction for the reconstruction of the subject, but they are still too driven by Western academic thought, and have not yet evolved the path of emotional discourse based on local experience. In this regard, the significance of the lyrical tradition discourse is highlighted. It integrates classical resources, reinterprets the connotation of emotion, and shows the intention and effort to dialogue with Western scholars with Chinese experience. In a series of lectures at Peking University in 2006, Wang Dewei initiated a reinterpretation of the lyrical tradition, which in a sense marked the emotional turn in the Chinese Chinese language to truly incorporate the framework of reconstructing the new subject of civilization.
The earliest proposer of the concept of "lyrical tradition" was Chen Shixiang, a scholar studying in the United States. In his 1971 speech to the Comparative Literature Panel of the American Society for Asian Studies, he argued for the first time that "it would not be an exaggeration to say that the Chinese literary tradition as a whole is a lyrical tradition"[26]. Later, Gao Yougong, who was also in the United States, put forward a similar theory, including a series of concepts such as "lyrical tradition", "lyrical spirit", and "lyrical beauty classic", and he was a visiting professor at National Taiwan University in 1978, influencing a generation of Taiwanese scholars and forming the "lyrical traditional school" in Taiwan [27].
However, from Chen Shixiang and Gao Yougong to Wang Dewei and Chen Guoqiu, a major change has taken place in the lyrical tradition, that is, the change of thinking from essentialism to constructivism. Chen Shih-hsiung, Gao Yougong, and their successors in Taiwan generally explored the lyrical tradition at the essentialist level, and they always started with a genre (mostly lyric poetry) and implemented it in the investigation of Chinese literature and cultural history. For example, Chen Shixiang takes the Book of Songs and Chu Ci as the source of lyrical tradition, believing that they represent the meaning of lyricism in terms of words and movements and self-expression. Gao Yougong started from the theory of ancient music, taking "Wenfu" and "Wenxin Carving Dragon" as the turning point, taking the Tang Dynasty's rhythmic poetry and cursive script as the peak, and the literati paintings of the Five Dynasties and the Song Dynasty as typical examples, sorting out the beginning and end of the "lyrical classics" in ancient China. For them, the lyrical tradition is intrinsic to the history of Chinese literature and culture, and their work is mainly "discovery", peeling back the surface of history and exposing it.
There are many problems with this essentialist lyrical traditionalism, and the first question it faces is: does the lyrical tradition really exist? Is this a compensatory imagination of Chinese literature in Western contrast? Gong Pengcheng has made a concentrated refutation of the lyrical tradition in articles such as "The Non-Existent Tradition: On Chen Shixiang's Lyrical Tradition" (2008) and "The Systematic Drama Theory: On Gao Yougong's Lyrical Tradition" (2009). He believes that classical Chinese literature is a complex genre, and poetry, especially lyric poetry, is only one of them, and Chen and Gao excessively elevated the status of lyric poetry, and even "lyricism" is not a common expression in classical literary theory, and uses more concepts such as "affection" and "temperament" [28]. If lyricism does not occupy a dominant position in the history of Chinese literature and culture, as Chen and Gao say, and even influenced the creation of other genres, then where does the lyrical tradition come from?
The brilliance of Wang Dewei and Chen Guoqiu lies in the fact that they adjust the direction of their arguments and admit that the lyrical tradition is an "invention of tradition", so the focus is not on whether Chinese literature and cultural history really conform to their theoretical assumptions, but on the significance of the lyrical tradition: what kind of new space can it open up for Chinese literary criticism? In other words, Wang Dewei and Chen Guoqiu discuss the lyrical tradition at the level of constructivism. Wang Dewei once talked about a kind of "derived aesthetics", believing that "instead of tracing back to the origin, to trace the source or true meaning of lyricism that has no trace", "as a modern or postmodern intellectual, perhaps what we need to do is to turn it backwards and admit that there must exist, or even necessarily exist, in the lyrical tradition, 'derived aesthetics'", "lyricism is important because it becomes a reference relationship that exposes literature/art in the face of the 'ignorance' of life, and refers to the formal dispersion dimension of 'sentient' meaning generation" [29]。 Wang Dewei is well aware that the lyrical tradition as the source does not exist, and that it can only be used as a constantly generated discursive practice, as a "critical interface"[30]. Therefore, immediately after the publication of Lyrical Tradition and Chinese Modernity: Eight Lessons at Peking University, Chen Guoqiu and Wang Dewei co-edited Lyrical Modernity: A Discourse on the Lyrical Tradition and the Study of Chinese Literature, which no longer focuses on the existence of a lyrical tradition in the history of Chinese literature, but instead discusses the modern literati's discourse on lyricism. In 2021, Chen Guoqiu's book The Origins of Chinese Lyrical Tradition focuses on the background, realistic context and academic intention of the concept of "lyrical tradition", and this attempt is fully revealed. At this point, it may be time to change the way we question the "lyrical tradition" and examine the intention and effect of this concept.
Why, then, is the "lyrical tradition" proposed? On this issue, Wang Dewei has actually talked about it many times. At the beginning of his essay "The History of 'Sentient Feelings': The Lyrical Tradition and the Modernity of Chinese Literature", he pointed out that the discourse on Chinese literature over the past century has formed two major tones, revolution and enlightenment, and that the discussion of anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism, the New Left, and neoliberalism has not yet been discussed in this context, so that "this paper proposes that in addition to revolution and enlightenment, 'lyricism' represents another aspect of Chinese literary modernity, especially the construction of modern subjects"[31]. At the end of the article, he reiterated: "After a century of Western studies, can our discourse on literary modernity still revolve around the topics of revolution, enlightenment, the state, and the subject of desire as defined by Freud? There is no way back in front of me. In the wake of a post-colonial and anti-imperialist critical discourse, what kind of discursive resources should we, as researchers of Chinese literature, provide to provoke dialogue? [32] In other words, the lyrical tradition provides Wang Dewei with two possible new ideas: one is to open up another interface for the discussion of modern Chinese literature in addition to revolution and enlightenment, and the other is to return to the homeland in the face of the strong encirclement of Western discourse, find a way of speaking that is more suitable for China's own context, and provide resources belonging to the East for the rich development of world literature. In fact, this intention inherits the consistent idea of exploring "pluralistic modernity" in the literary circles since the 90s of the 20th century, and also echoes the development direction of the theory of "civilized China" and the construction of China's academic discourse system in the new realistic context after the 21st century.
For Wang Dewei, it is not only lyricism that matters, but also tradition. This means that to a certain extent, he shows a cultural stance of returning to the classics, and the subjects he reshapes are traditionally oriented. Wang Dewei particularly emphasized that "the so-called lyrical tradition includes the tradition of 'expressing anger with lyricism', the tradition of 'exciting, contemplating, grouping, and resenting', and the tradition of 'looking for affection'", "It is precisely because we have returned to some resources of traditional Chinese literary theory and aesthetics that we have been able to once again expand our imagination of lyricism." The intersection of modernity and tradition thus complicates "[33]. However, the problem lies in the dilemma implied in his discourse: on the one hand, he wanted to continue the context of classical literary theory, but on the other hand, he could not truly refine the core concept of classical "lyricism", so his pen lost its original lyrical tradition and gradually evolved into a "super signifier"[34], the core of which is empty. In this regard, it is actually difficult for Wang Dewei to really develop lyrical novelty from local resources, and in specific case analysis, his so-called "lyricism" always constantly slides between the two dimensions of breadth and narrowness: in a broad sense, lyricism can include all lyrical expressions in ancient and modern China and foreign countries; In a narrow sense, it is always in dialogue with the Enlightenment and the revolution, with a slight hint of defense. In both broad and narrow dimensions, the classical sources of lyricism have become ambiguous, and even fall back into the trap of Western romanticism and individualism.
The congenital theoretical defects of the lyrical tradition have profoundly influenced the further elaboration of the lyrical tradition. At present, a large number of studies in the name of "lyrical tradition" show a strong trend towards the integration of existing paradigms of literary history into emerging paradigms. Lyricism has been narrowed down to a way of writing or even a narrative technique, as mentioned by Lü Zhenghui in Lyrical Tradition and Modern Chinese Literature, the "impressionistic dot depiction" of Lu Xun's novels, and Lao She's inheritance of folk storytelling and vernacular novels [35]. Taking such a discourse a step further, it would reduce the lyrical tradition to a stylistic analysis of "poetic novels" and "prose novels", and bring an otherwise dynamic theoretical concept into an outdated research framework. This research trend is related to Wang Dewei's inability to give substantive connotation to lyricism.
4. The ghost subject: "desire", "emotion" and the imaginative subject practice
Compared with the "history of emotion" and "structure of emotion", the concept of "lyrical tradition" proposed by Wang Dewei obviously has greater theoretical ambitions, and it is not even limited to a disciplinary literary research method, but in a certain sense, it has a dialogue with the "end of history" and "clash of civilizations" that have been popular in the world since the 90s of the 20th century, and conceives a new subject of civilization based on Chinese experience. For him, therefore, the lyrical tradition is not fundamentalist, but "we are still living in a lyrical tradition"[36], that is, "a torrent of inventions, counter-inventions, and reinventions"[37]. But how exactly can this "tradition" be reinstated and the process of "invention" promoted? Wang Dewei does not seem to have a specific answer, and his "hollowing" treatment of lyricism does not allow it to provide a clear way.
For this question, we may refer to Wang Hui's analysis of "The True Story of Ah Q" in recent years. Although Wang Hui does not directly use concepts such as "emotion" and "lyricism", his argument implies similar thinking and may provide a more practical subject of "action". In "Six Moments in Ah Q's Life", Wang Hui mainly analyzes the six moments when Ah Q's spiritual victory method fails, believing that this is the moment of instinctive awakening. In contrast to Marxists, Wang Hui argues that "the subject of revolution cannot arise through the process of moving from instinct to consciousness, but can only be reshaped through continuous resistance to this mechanism of repression and transformation"[38]. In other words, although Wang Hui adopts Freud's concept of "instinct", he is "anti-Oedipus" and follows the logic of "desire production" in the Deleuze sense. Deleuze reinvents the psychoanalytic concept of "desire", which, in his view, does not mean want, but is productive, positive, "a constant and seemingly omnipresent flow of creativity and intense emotion" [39]. Therefore, it is important not to suppress or sublimate desires, but to indulge them and allow them to flow and generate, thus revealing a deterritorialized escape route. As "the revolutionary function of Kafka's writing machine" does not consist in "protesting against oppressive systems or proposing utopian alternatives", but "by moving forward by transforming the intolerable status quo into an unforeseeable future"[40]. This is what Wang Hui calls the "asymmetry of ghosts": "The ghost or ghost in this sense represents the agency of the person I have not been able to feel. I can't confirm it, and therefore I can't deny it. Lu Xun did not believe in the existence of hope, and he could not deny the existence of hope, and this despair of despair became the root of his literature. The despair of despair does not come from his loneliness and boredom, but from his acknowledgment of what he cannot feel. ”[41]
Wang Hui: Six Moments in Ah Q's Life, East China Normal University Press, 2014
Sitting opposite the ghost is the agency that confronts "desire". In this regard, Wang Hui proposes an endogenous way of resistance, and his "politicization of vitalism" is similar to Badiou's "fidelity to the event itself" in the way of realization: for Badiou, the "event" is the crack left behind the ideological curtain, the breaking of conventionality, and it is in the active intervention of the "event" that the subject becomes the subject. In short, someone has to stand up and declare the existence of the event, to be faithful to the kind truth (vérité générique) that the event creates. In this way, the subject is generated in the event, and the subject not only expresses the event in a quasi-truth-like way, but at the same time, the subject generates itself. [42] For Wang Hui, "Six Moments in Ah Q's Life" is the key moment for him to penetrate the ideological net, and once an "event" occurs, it will always leave a trace, and it is precisely in the loyalty to the "event" caused by "desire" that Ah Q may have achieved "downward transcendence" and brought "ghosts" or "ghosts" to us.
What Wang Hui calls "instinct" or "desire" forms a kind of intertextuality with "affect," a core concept of "emotional turn." The latter emphasizes the autonomous emotions of the former subject, which have not yet entered into cognition or formed concepts, which is reflected in Zhang Xudong's recent discussion of Yu Hua's novels and Lu Xun's essays [43]. According to Deleuze, art is the creation of emotion, and "the sensations presented in art interrupt our everyday and preconceived connections between words and experiences"[44], and at the heart of it lies in the "not yet", that is, the unnamed to us, which is in fact a kind of "historical ghostology"[45]. In this regard, emotion shapes the future-oriented subject of "action", and may actually answer the question of how to lead the subject reconstruction into practice.
However, the discourse path of "desire" and "emotion" also has its own limitations. As some commentators have argued, the Deleuze context of the "emotional turn" overemphasizes the distinction between "emotion" and "affect" and advocates an embodied "emotional autonomy" that is not governed by ideology[46], which is "not so much a new approach as a new academic attitude—an attitude or belief in things that are not socially cultural"[47]. In other words, emotion is more of an imaginary way of discourse, and its reality is untested, which is why some scholars have criticized Wang Hui's "instinctive revolution" as "ahistorical"[48]. "Ahistorical" can open up multiple dimensions of imagining a new order in the future, but it can also fall into fiction and abstraction. In fact, this discourse is proposed in the context of the decline of the global left-wing movement, and attempts to use "desire" as an alternative to restart the possibility of revolution. However, the problem is that the "events" caused by "desire" only provide an opportunity to resist and transform, and how to maintain loyalty to "desire" and turn the feelings and experiences captured by chance into a relatively stable emotional experience, and even change the existing social structure, the path is still long and uncertain.
epilogue
In general, from "emotional history" to "desire" and "emotion", the many paths of emotional turning show an increasingly clear vein. The concept of "emotional history" reverses the position of emotion and reason in the dualistic framework, reaffirms the role of emotion, and thus completes the displacement of historical narrative dynamics. The concept of "emotional structure" overcomes the dualistic way of thinking by providing "thoughts as feelings and feelings as thoughts", and integrates changing personal emotions into a dynamic "structure", which can be seen as a supplement and repair to the "history of emotions". However, there are still obvious traces of Western theoretical transplantation, but they do not highlight the background of Chinese thought of "emotional turn". It was not until the 21st century that Wang Dewei's reinterpretation of the "lyrical tradition" really appeared, and he began to consciously activate the legacy of classical poetics and construct an emotional discourse with Chinese characteristics, thus opening a dialogue with Western academic circles. But the hollowing out of "lyricism" has also reduced it to a rootless tradition, and it is doubtful to what extent it can go in terms of unearthing the Chinese experience of "emotional turns". In contrast, Wang Hui and Zhang Xudong's application and elaboration of "desire" and "emotion" draw on the discourse of Western theoretical circles, but they have realized the transformation of the Chinese context, for example, Wang Hui understands the "short 20th century" as the "birth of the century" in China with the help of the re-examination of "revolution"[49], and also uses the imagination of "instinctive revolution" to put forward a possibility of how to practice the reconstruction of the subject.
In other words, under the different paths of the "emotional turn", there is actually a common theoretical impulse, that is, the dissatisfaction with the existing way of historical interpretation and the demand to reconstruct the new subject of civilization, which is the ultimate direction of the "emotional turn" in the study of modern and contemporary Chinese literature. Clearly, we can no longer hope for a "universal order" modelled by the West, but must forge a path of "so-called uniqueness or universalism about uniqueness"[50] based on local experience. In this regard, the significance of the "emotional turn" lies in the fact that the Chinese experience provides a flexible and flexible emotional subject, which to a certain extent not only overcomes the world order based on interests and contracts since the Enlightenment and the imagination of human nature behind it, but also transcends the fragmentation of human beings and the "retreat of the subject" since postmodernism [51].
Of course, this is closer to the utility of the emotional agent in an ideal state, and to reach this state, the current "emotional turn" still faces multiple problems. Most importantly, the existing discourse approaches more of the emotional as a complementary perspective, and do not discuss it at the ontological level, so it lacks sufficient impact on the paradigm of modernity based on reason and desire.
Li Zehou, "Philosophical Exploration", The Road to Chinese Modernity, Oriental Publishing House, 2019
In this regard, the concept of "ontology of feelings" proposed by Li Zehou at the beginning of the 21st century may provide a kind of enlightenment. Drawing on the tradition of classical temperament, he pointed out: "'Affection' is connected with 'desire' rather than 'desire', and 'emotion' and 'sexuality' ('reason') are connected rather than 'sexuality' ('reason'). 'Emotion' is the configuration and combination of 'sexuality' (morality) and 'desire' (instinct) in various and different proportions, so that it is impossible to construct a fixed framework and system or a 'transcendental' 'ontology' (whether it is 'external transcendence' or 'internal transcendence'). It can be seen that this 'ontology of feelings' is no ontology, and it is no longer an 'ontology' in the traditional sense. This metaphysics is that there is no metaphysics, and its 'metaphysics' is in the 'metaphysics'. [52] In other words, Li Zehou continued the "one world" way of thinking in Chinese philosophy, without distinguishing between ontology and phenomena, metaphysical and metaphysical, but always unified reason, emotion, and desire in the daily life world, making it a dynamic structure of a trinity. In this framework, reason, as "degree", is the practical law that melts into emotion, and desire serves as the basis of emotion, the starting point that must be transcended in the evolution from animals to man. Therefore, the only thing that really appears in the living world and can exist as an ontology is emotion. On the one hand, it is based on the basic fact that "people live", and affirms people's physiological needs from the perspective of practice; On the one hand, he constantly asks "why to live" and "how to live", and in the context of postmodernism, he establishes the meaning and value of human beings through the construction of a sentient world. From this point of view, the "ontology of feelings" transcends the "ontology of desire (animal) of natural human nature" and the "ontology of reason (God) of moral metaphysics"[53], and truly proposes a paradigm of modernity with emotion as the origin. Therefore, restarting the "emotional ontology" and reconstructing from the subject to the ontological reconstruction may be the key to the continuous deepening of the "emotional turn" in the future.
exegesis
[1] 2007年克拉夫（Patricia Clough）和哈雷（Jean Halley）主编的论文集，从情感角度深化了批判理论，题目即为“情感转向：社会的理论化”；2010年普兰佩尔（Jan Plamper）约请情感史研究的代表人物在美国《历史与理论》杂志上做了一期访谈，他们大体认为，情感史研究近期出现的繁荣可称作一种“转向”。 参见Patricia Ticineto Clough, Jean Halley (eds.), The Affective Turn: Theorizing the Social, Durham: Duke University Press, 2007；Jan Plamper, “The History of Emotions: An Interview with William Reddy, Barbara Rosenwein, and Peter Stearns”, History and Theory, Vol. 49, No. 2 (May 2010): 237-265。
[2] Affect (translated as "emotion"), which mainly appears in the field of philosophy and intellectual history, has regained its theoretical vitality due to Deleuze's elucidation of Spinoza; Emotion, mainly used in the field of historiography, is reflected in the fact that in recent years, social history and new cultural history have focused on the role of emotion as a perceptual force in the process of social history. Some people think that there is a big difference between the two, for example, Brian Massumi, an important figure in the theory of emotion, has always emphasized that emotion is personal and belongs to the realm of the self, while affect is a phenomenon that occurs between subjects outside or beyond the self; Lawrence Grossberg also pointed out that emotion is the articulation of affect and ideology, and is an ideological attempt to understand certain affect production. However, some scholars confuse them, arguing that emotion, affect, feeling, passion, etc. all have intersecting connotations and cannot be absolutely separated. See Lawrence Grossberg, "The Future of Emotion: Rediscovering the Virtuality in Reality", translated by Pu Yue, edited by Wang Xingkun, Wang Min'an and Guo Xiaoyan, Production, Vol. 11, Deleuze and Emotion, Jiangsu People's Publishing House, 2016; Jin Wen: What is emotion? Foreign Literature, No. 6, 2020.
[3] [4] Nick Mansfield, Subjectivity: Theories of the Self From Freud to Haraway, Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2000, p 13, pp. 165-168.
[5] "Editor's Note", Zhang Chuntian and Jiang Wentao (eds.), What is Emotion: History, Theory and Perspective of Emotion Research, Peking University Press, 2022, p. VII.
[6] Li Lifeng, "Grievances in Land Reform: A Micro Analysis of Popular Mobilization Technology", Journal of Nanjing University, No. 5, 2007; Li Zhiyu, "Shaji Tragedy: The "Emotional Mobilization" of a Revolution", Guangdong Breeze, No. 4, 2010.
[7] Barbara H. Rosenwein, “Worrying about Emotions in History”, The American Historical Review, Vol. 107, No. 3 (June 2002): 834.
[8] Guo Moruo, "Filling", Creation Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 2, 1922.
[9] Kotani Yukito, The Origin of Modern Japanese Literature, translated by Zhao Jinghua, Central Compilation and Publishing House, 2013, p.10.
[10] Monique Scheer, “Are Emotions a Kind of Practice (And is That What Makes Them Have a History)? A Bourdieuian Approach to Understanding Emotion”, History and Theory, Vol. 51, No. 2 (May 2012): 193-220.
[11] Nicole Eustace, Eugenia Lean, Julie Livingston, Jan Plamper, William M. Reddy and Barbara H. Rosenwein, “AHR Conversation: The Historical Study of Emotions”, The American Historical Review, Vol. 117, No. 5 (December 2012): 1492.
[12] Wang Qingjia, "Why is the Study of Emotional History a New Direction in Contemporary Historiography?" Historical Monthly, No. 4, 2018.
[13] Lu Yang, Sun Xiaozhong, Cheng Kai, Zhou Dengyan, "Emotional Practice, Subject Transformation and Social Reconstruction: A Study of Literature and Art in the Liberated Areas from the Perspective of Emotional Politics", Literature and Art Research, No. 7, 2021.
[14] Mo Ruo, "Tengu", Shishi Xinbao Xuedeng, February 7, 1920.
[15] [20] Raymond Williams, The Long Revolution, trans. Ni Wei, Shanghai People's Publishing House, 2022, pp. 69, 69.
[16] Peng Ting, "Raymond Williams's Interpretation of the Keywords of "Sensory Structure": A Partial Misreading of Domestic Studies", China Book Review, No. 4, 2015.
[17] Lawrence Grossberg, The Future of Emotion: Rediscovering the Virtuality in Reality.
[18] Jacob Saul, "From "Sensory Structure" to "Emotional Structure", trans. Wang Bingbing, Studies in Marxist Aesthetics, Vol. 19, No. 1, Central Compilation and Publishing House, 2016.
[19] Quoted from Zhang Dengfeng, "'Sensory Structure' as a 'Key Concept': Theoretical Genealogy and Cultural Practice", China Book Review, No. 12, 2019.
[21] [24] [25] Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature, translated by Wang Erbo and Zhou Li, Henan University Press, 2008, p. 143, p. 141, p. 143.
[22] Song Weijie, "'Teahouse': Temporal and Spatial Deformation, Emotional Structure", Modern Chinese Literature Research Series, No. 4, 2019.
[23] Liu Daxian, "Eight Banners of Mind: Banner Literature, Emotion and Society (1840-1949)", Social Sciences Academic Press, 2021, p. 132.
[26] Chen Shixiang, "On the Chinese Lyrical Tradition", translated by Yang Yanni and Chen Guoqiu, Chen Guoqiu and Wang Dewei (eds.), Lyrical Modernity: A Discourse on the Lyrical Tradition and the Study of Chinese Literature, Life, Reading, and New Knowledge, 2014, p.48.
[27] See Xu Cheng, A Study on the Traditional School of Chinese Lyricism, China Social Sciences Press, 2015.
[28] Gong Pengcheng, "Non-Existent Tradition: On Chen Shixiang's Lyrical Tradition", Journal of Chinese at National Chengchi University, No. 10, 2008; "Systematic Drama Theory: On the Lyrical Tradition of Gao Yougong", Tsinghua Journal of Chinese, No. 3, 2009.
[29] [31] [32] [33] [36] Wang Dewei, "Lyrical Tradition and Chinese Modernity: Eight Lessons at Peking University", Life, Reading, New Knowledge, Joint Bookstore, 2018, p. 215, p. 3, p. 64, p. 348, 351, p. 215.
[30] Lu Yang, "Lyricism as a Critical Interface", Literature and Art Controversy, No. 10, 2018.
[34] Li Yang, "°How "Lyrical" Is "Modern", "Modern" How "Modern" is "China"-"Chinese Lyrical Modernity"±, Tianjin Social Sciences, No. 1, 2013.
[35] Lü Zhenghui, "Lyrical Tradition and Modern Chinese Literature," Journal of Modern Chinese, No. 5, 2011.
[37] Wang Dewei, "The Lyrical Voice of the Epic Era: Intellectuals and Artists in the Mid-Twentieth Century", Life, Reading, New Knowledge, Joint Bookstore, 2019, p. 5.
[38] Wang Hui, "Six Moments in Ah Q's Life", East China Normal University Press, 2014, p.22.
[39] Wang Min'an, ed., Keywords of Cultural Studies, Jiangsu People's Publishing House, 2020, p. 530.
[40] Ronald Borg, "Deleuze Essays", trans. Shi Hua, Nanjing University Press, 2022, p. 106.
[41] Wang Hui, "The Good and Evil of Sound: Lu Xun's 'Breaking the Evil Sound Theory' 'Scream and Self-Introduction' Lecture Notes", Life, Reading, New Knowledge, Joint Bookstore, 2013, pp. 175-176.
[42] Lan Jiang, "Portrait of Alain Badiou's Thoughts", in Alain Badiou: Pornography in the Current Era, trans. Zhang Lu, Henan University Press, 2015, p.140.
[43] See Zhang Xudong, "Narrating in the Storm of Time: Reading Yu Hua's 'Brothers'", Journal of Modern Chinese Literature Research Series, No. 2, 2021; "The Continuation of the Huagai Collection and the Diversity Experiment of Lu Xun's Essays", Journal of Modern Chinese, No. 4, 2022.
[44] Claire Kohlerbrooke, "Introduction to Deleuze", translated by Liao Hongfei, Chongqing University Press, 2014, p.29.
[45] Wang Hui, "Historical Spirituality and the Ancient History of Modern China: Ancient History/New Stories (Part I and Part II"), Literature, History and Philosophy, No. 1 and 2, 2023.
[46] See Brian Masumi, Virtual Fables: Movement, Emotion, Feeling, translated by Yan Beiwen, Henan University Press, 2012.
[47] Quoted from Liu Yameng, ""Emotional Turn" and the Self-Renewal of Western Rhetorical Studies", Contemporary Rhetoric, No. 3, 2022.
[48] Qiu Huanxing, "'Six Moments': The Significance of Ah Q's Instinctive Revolution and the Problem of China's Century", Novel Review, No. 4, 2023.
[49] See Wang Hui, "The Birth of the Century: The Logic of Chinese Revolution and Politics", Life, Reading, and New Knowledge, 2020.
[50] Wang Hui, "How to Interpret "China" and Its "Modernity"? —— Preface to the New Edition of "The Rise of Modern Chinese Thought", The Politics of Depoliticization: The End of the 20th Century and the 90s, Life, Reading, and New Knowledge, 2008, p. 476.
[51] See Peter Bilger, The Retreat of the Subject: A History of Subjectivity from Montaigne to Barthes, trans. Chen Liangmei and Xia Qing, Nanjing University Press, 2004.
[52] Li Zehou, "Philosophical Exploration", In Search of the Road to Chinese Modernity, Oriental Publishing House, 2019, p. 301.
[53] Li Zehou, "On Practical Reason and Musicality Culture", The Historical Ontology of Anthropology, Tianjin Academy of Social Sciences Press, 2008, p.216.
*All images in this article are provided by the author