This paper is a discussion of the fantastic genre in literature and film. I employ the term genre in this paper in two ways. First, I attempt to define the fantastic as a genre of writing through the emblematic form of the zhiguai. Second, I link this genre of writing to fantastic film, a category of genre film that has dominated the market in China recently. One of the earliest forms of fiction in Chinese literature, zhiguai were often contrasted to textually verifiable historic writing. First, I contrast discussions of zhiguai to modern conceptions of the fantastic and Enlightenment and revolutionary conceptions of narrative and history. The zhiguai share some features with fantastic storytelling in Europe, notably the Gothic tale that emerged in the late eighteenth century. Second, I draw links between state intervention in religion and superstition and the early modern classification of fantastic literature and film. State anti-superstition campaigns in the early twentieth century would frame fantastic films as superstitious (shenguai dianying). Third, I discuss how the fantastic has been framed in the contemporary China. The modern and contemporary fantastic in China is a combination of Chinese and Western categories of the real and the supernatural.
In his book Time in Ruins, the French anthropologist Marc Augé pointed out that “humanity is not in ruins, it is being built.” These words well fit both the present-day Chinese context and the figurative trend of new shanshuihua in which construction sites, cityscapes and artificial nature territories become the subject of depiction. New iconic elements that provide a visual and conceptual framework for artists’ construction of a different shanshui-type heavily indebted to Chinese social and environmental changes, these new coded depictions substitute the traditional representation of natural landscape, reflect the rise of a new sensibility about nature and challenge the idea of what landscape is in the context of Chinese contemporary art. By focusing on a variety of works related to the theme of artificial nature and representing paradigmatic images of physical and allegorical landscape, this paper aims to explore this visual and conceptual innovations introduced in the context of new shanshuihua and analyze the way in which artists use nature, trying to find a new aesthetic categorization for this artistic genre.
“Youth and the Countryside” by Li Dazhao is a pivotal text that initiated the “Going to the People” movement in China. Scholars have long focused either on its similarity with Russian populism or on its impact on Chinese Communist revolution later on. This paper attempts to situate the essay in its historical context and to delineate the process how the countryside as a problem emerged in Li Dazhao’s thinking. In “Youth and the Countryside,” the rural problem is closely associated with Li’s reflections on youth problems. Accordingly, the emergence of the countryside as a problem can only be possible after Li formed an understanding of class issues through his concept of “common people.”
As we enter 21st century, with China’s economic rise, Chinese intellectual circle have come up with some new narratives regarding China’s position in the world order. Among these narratives, one that attracts most attention is the “civilization narrative.” It holds that China is not a general “nation-state,” nor a traditional “empire,” but a political body that should be described in terms of “civilization.” This article, by combining together intellectual history and social history, tries to make a critical evaluation of this “civilization narrative” from four aspects: first, the narratives about “civilization-state”; second, the relation between “civilization” and “China”; third, the contemporaneity of “civilization,” i.e. the historical condition under which classical canons and tradition are reconstituted in contemporary China; fourth, to examine the genealogy of “civilization narratives” and conceive the possibility for imagining a pluralistic world.
Setting to the task of a logical exposition of this article from Mao’s Talks with regards to both historical context and philosophical content, a re-reading explores the “living historical document” as a theoretical possibility. The author indicates that the literary-artistic hypothesis of Talks consists in the political and military logic of “the revolutionary machine,” offering a politically autonomous character to artistic formulation while simultaneously drawing up a mechanics for the general relationship between the reconstruction of art and social relations in the country’s future. Successively, in an attempt to engage with an elucidation of Mao’s notion of “universal enlightenment” in the contemporary context, is an analytical emphasis on the implications of the material of Talks which embodies its cultural-political framework. This indicates that the revolutionary machine imposes a double function on the cultural-artistic worker as somebody who undertakes the responsibilities of both teacher and servant; who occupies the position of a “vanishing mediator” in the process of universal historical movement; and whose vanguard characteristics and ultimate existence possess no independent value but instead depend on and draw from their relationship with the historical totality. The author holds that this perspective supports the advancement of our cognizance with regards to the civilizing functionality and ethical constructiveness of the Chinese Revolution in world-historical context.