Residual Romanticism in a Contemporary Shanghai Novel

Abstract

Through a close reading of Wei Hui’s bestseller Shanghai Baby (1999), this article highlights five elements to delimit a post‐romantic neoliberal literary sensibility and its ruptures: (1) a “melotraumatic” quest for exuberance, (2) denial of dependency, (3) a celebration of individual choice and market rationalities, (4) disillusionment and disappointment, and (5) a quest for intelligibility through narrative. Along the way I probe the narrator’s residual romanticism as a little‐addressed foundation of the novel’s testimony to a generational sensibility. By examining the relationship between Coco the narrator and Coco the protagonist, I contend that the narrator’s sustained self‐remembering evokes her growing unease with neoliberal values. The tension between post‐romantic cynicism and residual romanticism suggests the extent to which a supposedly dissident novel may entice precisely for the ways its deep structure reinforces dominant discourses. Whereas Coco the protagonist follows a logic of consumerism, Coco the narrator gestures to non‐commercial values—loyalty, care, empathy, trust, and solidarity. Appreciating the novel’s residual romanticism alongside its post‐romantic cynicism sheds new light on the story, its context, ambiguous feminism, and reception.

Key words： market rationality; residual romanticism; feminism; Shanghai Baby; Wei Hui; chick lit; body writing