From Ah Q to Lei Feng

Freud and Revolutionary Spirit in 20th Century China

Wendy Larson

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN:
  9780804700757
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780804769822
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Asian Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

When Freudian sexual theory hit China in the early 20th century, it ran up against competing models of the mind from both Chinese tradition and the new revolutionary culture. Chinese theorists of the mind—both traditional intellectuals and revolutionary psychologists— steadily put forward the anti-Freud: a mind shaped not by deep interiority that must be excavated by professionals, but shaped instead by social and cultural interactions.

Chinese novelists and film directors understood this focus and its relationship to Mao's revolutionary ethos, and much of the literature of twentieth-century China reflects the spiritual qualities of the revolutionary mind. From Ah Q to Lei Feng investigates the continual clash of these contrasting models of the mind provided by Freud and revolutionary Chinese culture, and explores how writers and filmmakers negotiated with the implications of each model.

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Table of contents

• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Freudian Obsessions
• 2. Psychology and Freudian Sexual Theory in Early 20th Century China
• 3. Revolutionary Discourse and the Spirit: From Ah Q to Lei Feng
• 4. The Spirit of the Countryside: Mang Ke’s Wild Things and Wang Xiaobo’s The Golden Years
• 5. Extracting the Revolutionary Spirit: Jiang Wen’s In the Heat of the Sun and Anchee Min’s Red Azalea
• 6. The Workspace of a New Age Maoist:He Jianjun’s The Postman
• Conclusion: History and Literary Aesthetics in the Study of Modern Chinese Culture
• Chinese and Japanese Character List
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index