more notes on formulism

Apparently, the term I so easily equated with the Engels-Balzac paradigm in my last post, has another connotative purpose. In 1956, in the dawn of the Hundred Flowers movement, vice-minister of the propaganda department of the CCPCC Zhou Yang held a speech condemning both "formulism" and "embellishment", and urging writers to open up their range of descriptive subjects, and not to avoid contradictions and conflicts in their "reflection of real life". It seems that in this context, "formulism" takes on a different connotation: it still reflects the difference between a work's intent and content, but the desired effect seems to be different than in its later (?) use. Describing people as formulists here didn't automatically denote that they were to the right of the party line. It rather seems to demand that they become more liberal and less afraid to criticize and to point out conflicts in the ideological practice of life. So one term, if I am not mistaken, could be used to both encourage to and discourage from stating your opinion, and writing about life "as it is." This is confusing. In the first instance described before, the label was used to justify political criticism, here it seems it is being used to justify artistic criticism. Will have to think about that one. Damnit, these terms are fickle.

contradictions: intention and outcome

I think I may have stumbled across another point of interest in Marxist literary doctrine, as practiced by the Chinese in the 50s. My file shows I took the following note at some point, probably while still reading the Yan'an Talks (McDougall translation, I can only re-emphasize what a resourceful text this is...):

the idea that the motives professed by a writer are not by any means everything there is to the text, and that "social practice" as a yardstick for a text's quality is more relevant that the author's own intentions, can be used to explain why the literary critics of the 50s rejected Hu Shi and Yu Pingbo's autobiographical reading of Honglou meng. (my notes)

What is meant here is that in the 1950s, Honglou meng scholars started to distance themselves from the hitherto accepted creed that the novel was for the most part an autobiographical account of the life and times of its main author, Cao Xueqin. This theory had been first proposed by Hu Shi, and then developed together with Gu Jiegang and Yu Pingbo, the latter of whom would go on to become the reigning authority in the field of hongxue until the mid-fifties. One of the main reasons the communist critics gave for rejecting that idea, was that the author's intentions (as stated, for example, in the preface of Honglou meng in the form of a narrator's voice) were not nearly as significant as the overall social import and contents of the text. Thus, though Cao himself was a descendant of a feudal landlord family whose decline he at times may seem to bemoan in Honglou meng, there is enough underlying social criticism and realistic portrait of the pitfalls of feudal life in China to satisfy the general communist expectation of traditional literature. An author's class background (which, according to Marxist logic relates directly to his "intention", as a person is always inevitably a representative of his class interests) does thus not necessarily equate to the content of his writings. Q.e.d.

The incentive for this conviction was actually Western-born and derived from a comment Engels had once made about the French author Honoré de Balzac. Although mostly decontextualized by the Chinese who quoted it, the remark was largely to the effect that despite Balzac's often professed love for the French aristocracy, he had been able to portray them in all their glory and all their decadence realistically enough to merit appreciation by communist criticism. The Chinese critics loved - and when I say loved, I mean obsessively cited - this remark by one of the fathers of communist doctrine. Already during the Anti-Hu Shi-Campaign they used it to defend works from their own past, like Honglou meng, so as to justify their consideration under communist terms. It presented the perfect excuse to redefine the entire literary canon according to ideological standards.

When I first reread the note above, I suddenly saw a parallel: not only would the contradiction between a writer's "reactionary class standpoint" and his achievement to create a work of valuable realism (as proposed by Engels with regard to Balzac) work well as a mechanism of defense of a past author whose class background would otherwise not qualify him for inclusion into the communist canon. This argument can also be used - by reversed logic and theoretically - as a mechanism of attack against such writers and critics who claim to be following the mass line, but for one reason or other are deemed too have fallen out of favor. Just because someone claims he is a devoted Communist, it doesn't actually make him one. Orthodoxy lies in the eye of the beholder, so to speak. See Stalin's view of Leon Trotsky.

Thus, it should have been possible to argue from an orthodox point of view against one rightist or another in 1957: "My dear alleged fellow communist, I am afraid your line of thought isn't one with your writing. Though you claim to be fully in line with today's party policy, your text here shows otherwise. Intention isn't always the same as outcome, as you must be aware Engels said... so I am very sorry, but you are henceforth labeled a rightist." Ah, it could have been so simple. Unfortunately, what happened was that they dropped Engels' creed when it came to evaluating modern writing - thus creating a defined distinction between literature before and after the communist "revolution" - and stated flat out that Balzac was lucky to have been born in earlier times, when openly stating you love the aristocracy and their decadent feudal lifestyles didn't earn you a one-way ticket to the gulags. They also said that he couldn't help it, and that his ideological indoctrination apparently didn't prevent him from writing decent prose. Yes, he was lucky, and his much lauded realist writings also mostly met with Chinese communist approval in the 50s (unlike Zola, the dirty naturalist, but that will be the subject of another post...). The fact is: the basic point Engels made was still quite simply "intention doesn't always equal outcome." Motivation isn't the same as action. Sometimes. Why would that only be true of the past??

By canceling out the Balzac-option for their present, "enlightened" stage of pre-communist-kind-of-socialism (or whatever stage they considered themselves to be in), the Chinese cultural leaders had to come up with a concept that basically said the same thing as "intention doesn't equal outcome", but wasn't obviously the same as what Engels had said. So they came up with the term "formulism" (gongshihua 公式化). "Formulism" basically is the same concept, but refers to present writing: someone starts an argument by saying "In the name of true communism...", and ends it with something like "...Trotzky wasn't such a bad guy. Really. His glasses were sorta cute, in a nerdy bourgeois-intellectual kinda way." Hm, yeah. Obvious problem. Especially if and when, according to the reigning orthodoxy, the words "cute", "bourgeois-intellectual" and "true communism" really shouldn't be used in the same sentence and referring to the same subject (especially not the latter two). Though real-life cases were mostly a lot less easy to detect, and the use of Marxist terminology often enough truly subject to re-interpretation in the name of vagueness (see my last post), the handy formula of "formulism" could be enough to call into question the most innocent and sincere of attempts to comply with the mass line. By labeling someone a "formulist", a critic was able to draw attention to the difference between what a writer preached, and what he practiced. Again we have the formula: "Intention doesn't equal outcome." The difference her lies in how the communist system decided to treat the author: while Balzac had been in the wrong time and place to be publicly condemned and labeled a rightist, the "rightists" of the 1950s weren't. Thus the need for a different slogan.

At the end of the day, it seems that the Engels-Balzac-paradigm and the questionable epithet of formulism are one and the same, the former used for the author-work/intent-content relationship of the past, the latter of the present. The difference, as with the subject of both these terms' criticisms, lay in not in ideological intention, but in ideological practice.

some notes on vagueness and cultural control

Once again sifting through my files for ideas for that final research paper I have to hand in. One idea I initially had when reading the Yan'an Talks (McDougall translation, see my last post) has proven to be the very root of all my observations of the Chinese literary field, its changes in structure and content from the mid- to late fifites. I had been wondering whether the definition of concepts such as "socialist realism" (shehuizhuyi xianshizhuyi) in China (and the Soviet Union, for that matter) during the 40s and 50s had been left rather vague and open on purpose. Whether it wasn't a much more favorable situation for the political leadership to keep these concepts vague and ill-defined, so as to be able to guarantee that the exegeses would remain in line with the current CCP policy. Today, when I read the conclusion of Douwe Fokkema's impressive and meticulously researched Literary Doctrine in China and Soviet Influence, 1956-1960 (The Hague: Mouton, 1965), I came across the following sentence:

Hence, the system of principles which constitutes the literary doctrine upheld by the Chinese communist leadership has been kept vague and deceptively simple. And intentionally so. For vagueness, ambiguity, and contradictions allow for easy maneuver in the continually changing political situation. This is the basic, utilitarian, principle behind the inexplicitness of its doctrine, and this is also the main reason why the Chinese Communist literary doctrine of these years, or even since 1942, does not easily lend itself to detailed analytical description. (256)

Et voilá, merci Douwe! Of course, the thought as such is not even a surprising one. In fact, it is just one of those regular phenomena that occur in research: you start getting into a certain subject matter, you start developing a feeling for the periods/genres/people/structures in question, and so naturally the first intellectual abstractions you make are bound to be the most basic and obvious within the possible range of approaches.

It seems almost a natural consequence of a system organized according to an ideological doctrine that binds the system's constituents to the governing elite (which also governs the doctrine's most recent exegesis) by way of demanding absolute subordination and loyalty to its principles, that fields tending towards the apolitical are not only politicized, but also made dependent on a political mainstream. Therefore rules of cultural practice must be adopted that leave enough room to account for political change, and that are never defined clearly enough to sanction any direction save for the direction most readily adaptable to current Party policy. By keeping the cultural practitioners in the dark about both the preconditions and the consequences of their practice, the Party is ensured that they will not cease to try and prove their loyalty, be it out of genuine conviction or out of fear to accidentally take a wrong turn and suffer for it. And the best thing that can happen to any absolutist regime, is if it doesn't have to enforce loyalty of its subjects, because the subjects voluntarily compete for a chance to prove themselves. Vagueness: a silent tool of terror. Nice.

change: yes I can!

Alright, enough with the bullshitting. I have been neglecting this blog shamefully, I must admit, for more time than is necessary. The reasons mainly being: I had no idea what to write. I am missing "la fila rossa", so to pretentiously speak, in my work and my academic life in general lately. So I am going to change the way I am presenting ideas here. The structure will be entirely dependent on the ideas I gather while engaging in my weekly readings in the library. Usually they are just ideas I come across when reading something that in my mind relates to something else I have read or somehow randomly thought of, and that present some kind of logical or otherwise epistemological problems I have little time to deal with during the week. Since I am an academic jarhead with a tendency to make a note of everything I read/summarize/think of/might forget/etc., I have a separate section in most of my "notes" files, labeled "ideas". Now, because I never take the time (or rarely) to go over these ideas again at the end of the week and see what makes sense and what doesn't, this lovely blog will henceforth serve exactly that purpose. More random sinological ramblings, but more related to on-going work and thus hopefully more complete and regular.

So, looking into my notes this week, I find the following key phrase: think about "audiences" and what you can do with them.

I came across the problem of audience when I read the McDougall translation and commentary of Mao Zedong's infamous Yan'an Talks on Literature and Art of 1942 (I have linked to the English wikipedia page here, though I find the entry rather crude). One of Mao's main points is: what kind of audience should literature and art be for? Whose needs should we cater to, both in creating and critically receiving works of art or literature? His idea is of course: literature and art should cater to the needs of this indistinctive crowd of reviewers termed "the masses" (renmin dazhong 人民大衆), preferably of the peasant, soldier and worker kind. Yeah well, who would've guessed? I am not even going to discuss the ethical validity of this concept on a universal scale, though even from a staunchly non-Marxist point of view you do kind of get that the ideal version of it was supposed to entail a desperately needed anti-elitism, so as to finally "liberate" the Chinese cultured class from their privileged status and make literature and art more accessible to, as well as more focused on the majority of the population that was at that point largely illiterate.

Now, as I have to write an article by next March about the development of the critical reception of China's literary heritage in 1950s China, I think the Yan'an Talks should hold a central position in my argument. I mean: yes, the Cultural Revolution was the point in recent Chinese history that brought the Talks to their overbearing and unjustified apotheosis, but even before that, if you look at Chinese history in the 50s without taking into account later developments, the Talks were omnipresent. I mean, seriously. After their revision in 1953 (when, incidentally, the term "socialist realism" was introduced as a substitute for the original "proletarian realism" - credits to Lorenz Bichler for this one, details will follow), you only have to look into i.e. the Anti-Hu Shi-campaign essays to find terms, phrases, ideas, concepts in literary criticism discussed that are ALL already in some way or another mentioned in the Talks. Even some of the most memorable quotes from "original" Marxist sources are taken over and used profusely throughout the 50s, until they almost become a cliché. Balzac's counterintuitive realism is a famous example. So anyone telling me Mao was "not yet all that influential" in academic policy-making in the 50s in my opinion frankly doesn't know what the hell he or she is talking about...

So anyways: audience. I was thinking - why not take this main point Mao was making in his Talks as a starting point and take a look at the newly emerging literary histories from the point of view of "audience"? Who were the people that were actually supposed to read these criticisms? Who was the literary heritage supposed to cater to? Was it really the peasants, soldiers, and workers or was it actually the new governing class, which is of course the much more likely variant? More on this later.

on the same note...

...here is a link to a summary of Sun Yuming's criticism of Liu Xinwu 劉心武, the popular/populist persona-non-grata in the "serious" redologist world of China today. If this blog continues, I promise there will be an entry on modern redology, which will include some info on Liu Xinwu, who is quite the figurehead of what has been derogatively termed the Xin suoyin pai 新索隱派 (New obscurist school) in Honglou meng studies. As for now, this link must however suffice.

(I know, I know: months of silence, and then such incompleteness...I bow my head in shame)

...and again, it's been a while

...and ironically, this is not an entry I am writing because I am feeling very inspired, but because I am feeling like a blog should be kept or abolished. Haven't quite decided what it's going to be yet, but as I am already writing these lines, I might just as well keep on going.

Good books I have recently been reading include Sun Yuming's Hongxue:1954 紅學: 1954 (Redology:1954; Beijing: 2003), which I might just give a short summary of, as I would for once say: this is a Chinese work of secondary scholarship on modern China that is actually worth reading. Clearly, Sun Yuming 孫玉明, who is (among other things) the vice-editor-in-chief of the redologist journal Hongloumeng xuekan 紅樓夢學刊, devoted much time and research into his case study of Yu Pingbo's downfall at the hands of the Communist literary critics in the mid-fifties: at the end of each chapter, there are pages of footnotes revealing not only his source material, but also the contradictions he battled in analyzing it (I should perhaps mention that this is indeed a rare trait of Chinese modern historical studies).

The book is divided into nine chapters, and pretty much treats the first national literary campaign from every possible angle, beginning with the protagonist Yu Pingbo 俞平伯 and gradually moving on to all those involved either directly or indirectly in both the prelude and aftermath of the case. From Mao Zedong's direct involvement in the publication of the two central incriminating articles to the fall of the editors of Wenyibao 文藝報 and Guangming ribao 光明日報 who at first refused to publish them, from two no-name postgraduate students from the periphery to the upper echelons of the CCP and the political and personal rivalries playing into what allegedly started as an academic debate, Sun Yuming's book gives an insight into the literary field of the P.R.C. in 1954 and beyond. If one looks past the occasionally overwhelming display of rhetorical allusion and speculation as to possible alternative twists and turns to the plot, this book has a lot to offer in terms of understanding the workings of a system of literary critical production under the early Mao-regime, and it is perhaps an intriguing task to set the scene back then against the field of today, which, to Perry Link's knowledge (The Uses of Literature) apparently still has much in common with its past.

Among Sun Yuming's other works is a brief history of Japanese redology (Riben hongxue shi gao 日本紅學史稿), published in 2006.

il prato - ennio morricone

And just because I happened to see it tonight and was moved by the music - here is the soundtrack to the beautifully crafted film by the Taviani brothers. Ennio Morricone at his best.