Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T04:09:03.140Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Pluralist Interpretation of Chinese Marxist Aesthetics in Contemporary European Scholarship

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2020

Qilin Fu  and
Shubo Gao
Qilin Fu
Affiliation:
College of Literature and Journalism, Sichuan University, 24 Yihuan Road, Chengdu610064, People’s Republic of China. Email: [email protected]
Shubo Gao
Affiliation:
College of Literature and Journalism, Sichuan University, 24 Yihuan Road, Chengdu610064, People’s Republic of China. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In Europe there have appeared several important collections on Marxist literary theory, such as Francis Mulhern’s Contemporary Marxist Literary Criticism (1992) and Terry Eagleton and Drew Milne’s Marxist Literary Theory: A Reader (1996). However, Chinese voices are not included at all in these volumes. Maybe this lacuna results from a lack of awareness of Chinese Marxist aesthetics on the part of most European literary historians and critics. In this article, we seek to discuss the circumstances of European scholars’ contacts with Chinese Marxist aesthetics, mainly in the 1960s and 1970s. Starting from the variation theory perspective proposed by Shunqing Cao we will discuss how European scholars read and misread what they perceived as the meaning and universal applicability of what was happening in China at the time. The discussion is divided into three parts: the utopian interpretation of the Chinese theory of revolution in France, the critical reception by Eastern European Marxists, and the sympathetic interpretation by sinologists such as the Dutch diplomat and literary scholar Douwe Fokkema.

Type
Focus: Through Chinese Eyes
Information
European Review , Volume 29 , Issue 4 , August 2021 , pp. 534 - 550
Copyright
© 2020 Academia Europaea

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ahmad, A (2012) Three ‘turns’ to Marx: Derrida, Žižek, Badiou. Social Scientist 40(7/8), 43–59.Google Scholar
Althusser, L (1969) For Marx. Translated by Brewster, B. London: The Penguin Press.Google Scholar
Althusser, L and Balibar, E (1970) Reading Capital. Translated by Brewster, B. London: New Left Books.Google Scholar
Balibar, E and Macherey, P (1996) On literature as an ideological form. In Eagleton, T and Milne, D (eds), Marxist Literary Theory: A Reader. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Feher, F and Heller, A (1987) Eastern Left – Western Left. Cambridge and New York: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Fokkema, D and Ibsch, E (1995 [1978]) Theories of Literature in the Twentieth Century. London: St Martin’s Press.Google Scholar
Fu, QL (2015) The reception of Mao’s ‘Talks at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art’ in English-language scholarship. Comparative Literature and Culture 17(1), Article 12, http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol17/iss1/12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gálik, M (1980) The Genesis of Modern Chinese Literary Criticism (1917–1930). Bratislava: Veda Publishing House.Google Scholar
Hewlett, N (2010) Badiou, Balibar, Rancière: Re-thinking Emancipation. London and New York: Continuum International Publishing Group.Google Scholar
Kolakowski, L (2008) Main Currents of Marxism. Translated by Falla, PS. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Kosik, K (1976) Dialectics of the Concrete: A Study on Problems of Man and World. Dordrecht and Boston: D. Reidel Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Love, J and May, T (2008) From universality to equality: Badiou’s critique of Rancière. Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy 12(2), 51–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lu, X (1977) Pamphlets et Libelles. Paris: Maspero. (On the back cover of the book Althusser talks about Lu Xun.)Google Scholar
Mao, TT (1971) Selected Reading from the Works of Mao Tse-Tung (A). Peking: Foreign Language Press.Google Scholar
Marković, M (1974) The Contemporary Marx: Essays on Humanist Communism. Nottingham: Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation Ltd.Google Scholar
Morawski, S (1978) Inquiries into the Fundamentals of Aesthetics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Pickowicz, PG (1980) Marxist Literary Thought and China: A Conceptual Framework. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Pickowicz, PG (1981) Marxist Literary Thought in China: The Influence of Ch’ü Ch’iu-pai. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Průšek, J (1962) Basic problems of the history of modern Chinese literature and C. T. Hsia, a history of modern Chinese fiction. Toungpao 49(1), 357–404.Google Scholar
Průšek, J (1987) Modern Chinese Literature: Essays. Translated by Li Yanqiao. Changsha: Hunan Literature and Art Press.Google Scholar
Rancière, J (2004) The politics of literature. Substance 33(1), 10–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rancière, J (2011) Althusser’s Lesson. Translated by Battista, E. London and New York: Continuum International Publishing Group.Google Scholar
Wolin, R (2010) The Wind from the East: French Intellectuals, the Cultural Revolution and the Legacy of the 1960s. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zapotocky, A (1958) The party must lead literature and arts. In For Socialist Realism, vol. II. Beijing: Writer’s Press.Google Scholar
Žižek, S (2007) Introduction: Mao Tse-tung, or the Marxist lord of misrule. In Tse-tung, Mao, On Practice and Contradiction. London: Verso.Google Scholar