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Fictional Authors, Imaginary Audiences: Modern Chinese Literature in the Twentieth Century |
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Year of Publication : 2004 |
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Publisher : Chinese University Press |
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Review : |
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This book collects ten previously published articles by Bonnie S. McDougall, all but one revised and updated for the current publication. The collection gives an excellent overview of the remarkably coherent views on modern and contemporary Chinese literature by one of the most eminent and most prolific Western scholars in the field. These views appear mainly to revolve around two key concepts: appreciation and complicity. The very first question raised in the very first chapter of the book is a question of appreciation: “Why is modern Chinese literature so unappealing to many Western readers?” (p. 17) The rest of the book is, at least in this reviewer’s opinion, an elaborate and consistent attempt to answer that question and to point at ways in which modern Chinese literature can be appreciated. In order to tackle the question of appreciation, McDougall distinguishes carefully between the various audiences that consume modern Chinese literary works, paying special attention to the two main intellectual communities that promote and support modern Chinese literature: the community of Chinese intellectuals and the community of overseas Chinese and Western scholars. Her identification, throughout a number of the essays, of a tendency towards strong complicity between modern Chinese authors, modern Chinese intellectuals and modern Western critics leads to a strong and consistent critique of modern Chinese literature and its canonisers. Striking in this respect is McDougall’s wholly convincing dismissal of C. T. Hsia’s famous notion of “obsession with China.” As her analysis in Chapters 2 and 7 clearly shows, Hsia’s judgmental statement covers up his own complicity in transmitting a canon of westernized, male-centred writing that can only be said to display an obsession of male Chinese intellectuals with their own position in society. To her credit, however, McDougall does not end with this observation, but points out that it is possible to approach this literature, and the intellectual community supporting it, with understanding and sympathy. She writes: Yet there are also reasons why we can still look at this literature with sympathy and understanding. We need to understand that the accelerated pressure of a rapidly modernising society on a social class whose role is no longer secure produces inevitably the literature of an embattled few, preaching to the converted, in a situation largely out of their control. […] Even if we do not fully sympathise, this literature can provide information about the élite of one of the largest countries in the world — insights not necessarily achieved from any other source. […] Finally, we may in the process even find out something about ourselves. (pp. 38–39) In the same chapter where this quote appears (Chapter 2), McDougall expresses her remarkable confidence in recent theoretically-inspired studies of modern Chinese literature. This is understandable in the sense that recent theory is largely based on the assumptions of cultural studies, according to which appreciation is irrelevant and any text, regardless of its appeal to its intended audiences, can and must be analysed for its contribution to systems of power and representation. McDougall’s suggestion that recent theory, despite its relative neglect of questions of value, might in fact lead the way to new ways of appreciating modern Chinese literature is thought-provoking, but remains currently at the hypothetical level. Apart from “appreciation” the second key category of literary analysis explored in most chapters of this book is “complicity.” McDougall’s readings and analyses are most rigorous and impressive when they address the hidden links between texts, their authors and their audiences. The first part of the book (Chapters 2, 3 and 4) focuses on the ways in which modern Chinese literary texts, as mentioned, were written for a priori sympathetic audiences and have been transmitted by equally sympathetic critics, and as a result failed to attract the general Western reader who does not realize that sympathy is needed to appreciate the texts. The second part (Chapters 5, 6 and 7) studies works by Wang Anyi, Chen Kaige, Mao Dun, Bing Xin, Ling Shuhua and Shen Congwen, pointing up gender-specific complicities between author, audience and critics. This part is in my view the most uneven part of the book, because the two chapters on Wang Anyi and Chen Kaige appear to be permeated by the author’s own critical bias, which is incongruent with the approach outlined in previous chapters. It is understandable that McDougall favoured Chen Kaige over Wang Anyi when these essays were first written in the early 1990s. However, the benefit of hindsight and the opportunity to revise the essays for book publication should, in my view, have led to a more critical treatment of Chen Kaige, who is the only modern Chinese cultural producer in the book whose statements of self-importance and self-indulgence McDougall appears to accept and sympathize with. Similarly, McDougall’s dismissal of Wang Anyi’s work should have been revised in the context of Wang’s later work which, by almost general consensus, is among the best that modern Chinese literature has to offer. The final part of the book (Chapters 8, 9, 10 and 11), entitled “Authors and Authority,” mainly discusses the delicate question of complicity between modern Chinese authors and the political authorities. It is in these chapters that McDougall’s critical acuity merges with her extensive personal experience of living and working in the Chinese socialist system. I know of no other scholar who is more insightful when it comes to “reading” the statements and activities of contemporary Chinese literary intellectuals. Any student of modern Chinese literature should, in my view, read at least Chapters 8 and 9 (on literature and the arts of the period 1976–1986 and on (self-) censorship) in order to become aware of the large extent to which contemporary Chinese writers, including those who claim to be “dissident,” are complicit with the Chinese Community Party authorities, their values and their practices. Moreover, these chapters show how it is possible to be aware of these problems and still remain sympathetic towards the aims and the literary products of the community. Bonnie McDougall’s work represents one of the most knowledgeable, most critical and most original voices in the study of modern Chinese literature. This collection of essays contains some of her finest article-length writings and should become a standard entry on all reading lists for courses on modern Chinese literature and culture. Michel Hockx |
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