The Bifurcation of Qing (情): The Lyric Tradition, Affect Theory, and the Possibility of Literature

Abstract

Qing (情) has been represented in literature through various conceptual guises—lyricism, affect, emotion, and feeling. Rather than recuperating a pre-lyrical state or clarifying the historical genealogy of qing, this paper argues for a critical shift toward the act of shu ( 抒, expression), emphasizing formal analysis and the agency of enunciation. In this framework, while the lyric tradition may function as an invented prehistory of modern and contemporary literature, its very articulation is a modernist undertaking, one that engages the present literary field through its dialogic and affective concerns.This articulation intersects with the affective turn, which, in the wake of the linguistic turn, resists infinite textual deconstruction and anti-essentialism by recentering embodied sensation and pre-cognitive intensity. Within this critical conjuncture, the classical notion of feng (風) in Chinese lyricism resonates with the concept of immediation in affect theory: both navigate terrains beyond the binary oppositions of body/mind and sensibility/rationality. They pose ontological questions such as "How is the self possible? " and "How is the other possible?"Furthermore, through the expressive motion of shu and the practice of reparative reading, the work of representation and the affective orientation toward the other transform into broader inquiries: "How is literature possible?" and "How is society possible? " This paper interrogates the bifurcation of qing across Chinese and Western literary theories in order to explore how qing can serve as a critical vector for re-opening the literary, thereby reconsidering both the nature of literature and the agency of the literary subject.

Keywords

Comparative Literature / Lyric Tradition / Affect Theory / Deleuze (intensity) / Sedgwick (reparative reading)

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