Subjectivity and Realism in Modern Chinese Fiction

This book provides a reexamination of the debates between Hu Feng, Lu Ling, and other Chinese left-wing theorists from a cultural-political perspective. The author argues that individualism should be understood within changing historical contexts and that subjectivity should be treated as class-based and derived from collective community.

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The questions of subjectivity and the literary style of realism, as manifested in Hu Feng's theoretical writings and Lu Ling's fictional writings, occupy a unique position in modern China. By looking more closely into the theoretical and fictional texts and the social-historical subtext, and through a re-examination of the issue of subjectivity and individualism, this book argues that individualism should not be treated as an ahistorical value-system, but understood within changing historical contexts; subjectivity should not be treated as an issue of personal choice, but as class-based and derived from collective community. To differentiate different subjectivities and the diversified foci of individualism in differing historical periods, Xiaoping Wang finds we need to explore the intellectuals' cultural-political strategy by situating them in the particular historical conjuncture and in the particular cultural fields. With this hermeneutical practice, the politics of recognition and the politics of style are mutually illuminated.