eBook - ePub
Writing the South Seas
Imagining the Nanyang in Chinese and Southeast Asian Postcolonial Literature
Brian C. Bernards
This is a test
Partager le livre
- 288 pages
- English
- ePUB (adapté aux mobiles)
- Disponible sur iOS et Android
eBook - ePub
Writing the South Seas
Imagining the Nanyang in Chinese and Southeast Asian Postcolonial Literature
Brian C. Bernards
DĂ©tails du livre
Aperçu du livre
Table des matiĂšres
Citations
Ă propos de ce livre
Postcolonial literature about the South Seas, or Nanyang, examines the history of Chinese migration, localization, and interethnic exchange in Southeast Asia, where Sinophone settler cultures evolved independently by adapting to their "New World" and mingling with native cultures. Writing the South Seas explains why Nanyang encounters, neglected by most literary histories, should be considered crucial to the national literatures of China and Southeast Asia.
Foire aux questions
Comment puis-je résilier mon abonnement ?
Il vous suffit de vous rendre dans la section compte dans paramĂštres et de cliquer sur « RĂ©silier lâabonnement ». Câest aussi simple que cela ! Une fois que vous aurez rĂ©siliĂ© votre abonnement, il restera actif pour le reste de la pĂ©riode pour laquelle vous avez payĂ©. DĂ©couvrez-en plus ici.
Puis-je / comment puis-je télécharger des livres ?
Pour le moment, tous nos livres en format ePub adaptĂ©s aux mobiles peuvent ĂȘtre tĂ©lĂ©chargĂ©s via lâapplication. La plupart de nos PDF sont Ă©galement disponibles en tĂ©lĂ©chargement et les autres seront tĂ©lĂ©chargeables trĂšs prochainement. DĂ©couvrez-en plus ici.
Quelle est la différence entre les formules tarifaires ?
Les deux abonnements vous donnent un accĂšs complet Ă la bibliothĂšque et Ă toutes les fonctionnalitĂ©s de Perlego. Les seules diffĂ©rences sont les tarifs ainsi que la pĂ©riode dâabonnement : avec lâabonnement annuel, vous Ă©conomiserez environ 30 % par rapport Ă 12 mois dâabonnement mensuel.
Quâest-ce que Perlego ?
Nous sommes un service dâabonnement Ă des ouvrages universitaires en ligne, oĂč vous pouvez accĂ©der Ă toute une bibliothĂšque pour un prix infĂ©rieur Ă celui dâun seul livre par mois. Avec plus dâun million de livres sur plus de 1 000 sujets, nous avons ce quâil vous faut ! DĂ©couvrez-en plus ici.
Prenez-vous en charge la synthÚse vocale ?
Recherchez le symbole Ăcouter sur votre prochain livre pour voir si vous pouvez lâĂ©couter. Lâoutil Ăcouter lit le texte Ă haute voix pour vous, en surlignant le passage qui est en cours de lecture. Vous pouvez le mettre sur pause, lâaccĂ©lĂ©rer ou le ralentir. DĂ©couvrez-en plus ici.
Est-ce que Writing the South Seas est un PDF/ePUB en ligne ?
Oui, vous pouvez accĂ©der Ă Writing the South Seas par Brian C. Bernards en format PDF et/ou ePUB ainsi quâĂ dâautres livres populaires dans Literatura et CrĂtica literaria asiĂĄtica. Nous disposons de plus dâun million dâouvrages Ă dĂ©couvrir dans notre catalogue.
Informations
Sujet
LiteraturaSous-sujet
CrĂtica literaria asiĂĄticaCHAPTER 1
Modern Chinese Impressions of the South Seas Other
By most historical accounts, modern Chinese literature was born of the New Literature movement, one of the broadly based, often iconoclastic cultural transformations that began within the decade following Chinaâs 1911 national revolution and continued through the 1920s.1 Collectively known as the New Culture movement, these transformations were catalyzed by the 1919 May Fourth movement, a massive student demonstration in Beijing both against the West (namely the victorious Allied nations following World War I) for having ceded the former German possessions in Shandong province to the Japanese at the Paris Peace Conference that year (instead of returning them to China) and against the provisional government of the Republic of China whose envoy to the conference complied with the terms of the treaty.2 Citing the dual failure of the 1911 revolution to impede the aggressive encroachment of Western imperialism (dating back to the mid-nineteenth century) and to emancipate the new Chinese citizenry from subservience to feudalistic authority, the May Fourth movement called for an inward critical reevaluation of Chinese culture through an outward-oriented quest for âenlightenment.â3
Regardless of how they approached the classical canon of Chinese literature, and irrespective of their internal diversity, the major writers of New Literature shared a common trait: they actively sought creative inspiration in a literary universe whose cultural, linguistic, and geographic boundaries transcended that canon. Their interest in different intellectual, aesthetic, and literary trends beyond China inspired them to not only consume imported texts and translations from abroad, but compelled many of them to physically venture beyond China in search of this knowledge and to then âtranslate the worldâ for readers back home. For many, the experience of living and traveling abroad itself motivated them to become writers. Against the bleak outlook of a newly established Chinese republic ravaged by internal and external conflicts, New Literature confronts (and reproduces) a âcolonial modernityâ simultaneously oppressive and emancipatory: while paving the way for humanist liberation from the bondage of âfeudalâ traditions, this modernity also exposes the dehumanizing material conditions of global industrial capitalism.4 Tempered by a sobering cynicism regarding these conditions, the sojourns of May Fourth authors and their creative works beyond Chinaâas well as their selective discovery and appropriation of the âforeignââproduce an idealized dream of modernity as cultural enlightenment.
As a principal impulse of New Literature, the quest for enlightenment and humanistic emancipation transformed the South Seas as a Chinese literary trope. From a primitive, feminized, and fantastical realm of âsouthern barbariansâ in the patriarchal worldview of imperial China, the Nanyang now came to symbolize the simultaneously binding and liberating conditions of colonial modernity that inspired the overseas voyages and outward orientations of modern Chinese authors. Many of these authors traveled to (and through) colonial Southeast Asia: whether a long-term destination or a short stopover to points elsewhere, the Nanyang left enough of an impression to be worthy of creative composition. These travel narratives are New Literatureâs works of âSouth Seas colorâ (Nanyang secai). Though literary histories might remember them otherwise, canonical authors such as Xu Zhimo, Xu Dishan, Lao She, and Yu Dafu were all at one point âsouthbound writersâ (nanlai zuojia; literally âwriters who came southâ).
Not to be written off as New Literatureâs detour into exoticism, the impressionistic South Seas color in the short fiction of Xu Zhimo and Xu Dishan is integral to modern Chinese literary enlightenment. It suggests a broader conception of and inquiry into âthe worldâ than typically attributed to the New Culture movement. South Seas color encompasses exchanges with, and sometimes misreadings of, manifold âothersâ who inhabit or navigate the cultural cross-waters among East, South, Southeast Asian, and Western experiences of colonial modernity. As narrative content, South Seas color denotes both an object of representationâtypically a colonial Southeast Asian environment and South or Southeast Asian peoplesâand a subjectivity of expression: the modern Chinese transoceanic traveler. The interaction between the traveler and his (as the authors, narrators, and protagonists are mostly male) object of representation (often female) produces local impressionsâflavors, textures, colors, and sensationsâthat, although superficial, fleeting, and sometimes âindescribable,â prompt serious reflection and self-examination. As narrative form, South Seas color implies a travelogue style, even in the genre of short fiction. In the short stories of Xu Zhimo and Xu Dishan, the Nanyang is an itinerary as much as a destination of travel. This itinerary is noncanonical: it produces a brand of cosmopolitanism through historically overlooked axes of cultural comparison. This âdiscrepant cosmopolitanismâ is shaped as much by the transcolonial network between China and Southeast Asia as it is the canonical blend of Chinese, Western, and Japanese elements attributed to the global paradigm of Chinese literary modernity.
NEW LITERARY ENLIGHTENMENT: BEYOND THE CHINA-WEST-JAPAN PARADIGM
New Literature is informed by two intertwined goals of the May Fourth movement: ânational salvationâ (jiuguo) and âenlightenmentâ (qimeng). The enlightenment ideal is rooted in the failure of the 1911 revolution (which overthrew the Qing dynasty and inaugurated a republic under the Nationalist Party, or KMT) to eradicate what the May Fourth activists perceived as âoutworn cultural values.â They recognized that national salvation could not depend on political revolution alone but required âa commitment to jiuren, the salvation of mankind,â a kind of âcritical-minded humanism.â5 May Fourth intellectuals saw âtraditional cultureâ as the primary obstacle to a âmodern orientation.â This traditional culture not only included popular folk superstitions (of which Chinese elites had long been wary), but also the values of the classically educated Confucian scholar class from which most of these intellectuals came.6 Enlightenment necessitated an iconoclastic rebellion against oneâs own heritage to liberate younger generations from Confucianismâs âentrenched habits of self-repressionâ and its âethic of subservience to patriarchal authorityâ as dictated by elite familial and educational structures.7
To âsaveâ China, therefore, was to âintegrate her into the modern worldâ by freeing her from a âcosmic anomaly of immobility and stagnation.â8 This mission represented what C. T. Hsia famously referred to as modern Chinese literatureâs âobsession with Chinaâ and its âmoral burden.â9 What began as a political demonstration on May Fourth against the governments who orchestrated and agreed to the 1919 Treaty of Versailles blossomed into an expansive, energetic exploration and importation of ânew thoughtâ (xin sixiang) from a global array of sources, resulting in the emergence of diverse (and sometimes opposed) ideologies and literary camps. Though the authors of New Literature varied greatly, there is general consensus about their overall literary ambitions: defeating foreign imperial aggression could not begin from a revalorization of âthe native past,â but rather from the exposure and eradication of the âfeudal traditionâ that made China particularly vulnerable to external exploitation.10
To this end, New Literature relied on establishing a clear, inviolable temporal and geospatial dichotomy: a temporal rupture between an enlightened modernity and a crippled tradition, and a geospatial demarcation of the boundaries between âus,â the Chinese nation (as a single territory and people) and âthem,â the foreigners (predominantly Western and Japanese aggressors). New Literatureâs prescribed content is deceptively simplistic, merely requiring the ârealisticâ depiction of the nationâs victimization at the hands of foreign imperialism and native feudalism. Mainland Chinese historians further delimit the scope of New Literature as a Marxian project of class struggle. Though writers explored a vast array of subjects such as âpeasants, women and intellectuals, as well as the urban problems of alienation and isolation,â these themes get absorbed under the rubric of class-based oppression.11 May Fourth activists distinguished their movement from previous political, cultural, and literary reforms through their articulation of and appeal to âthe masses.â12 As opposed to the esoteric scholarly essay or the serialized sensational popular novel, authors of New Literature advocated fictional realism in an often figurative, allegorical, short-story mode adapted from Western literary trends: by distilling a complex, contemporary social crisis into a single anecdote, short fiction could poignantly agitate readers with a modern sense of immediacy. While fictional realism ranged from the subjective reality of the individual (provided by the often unreliable perspective of a first-person narrator) to an omniscient one, it was ultimately supposed to awaken readers to broader social truths.13
Adopting fictional realism and targeting the masses meant eschewing the classical literary script (wenyan wen)âthe common written medium of the scholar-eliteâto capture the vernaculars of the ânationâs peopleâ (guomin), particularly when rendering spoken dialogue. The impulse toward vernacular realism was actually one toward linguistic pluralityânot unificationâthat shattered rather than consolidated the collective ideal of a âcommon scriptâ (tongwen) among the Sinitic languages. Yet the vernacular movement (baihua yundong) intended to foster a unifiedânot pluralizedânotion of national culture. The institutionalization of âstandard Chineseâ as a common vernacular scriptâliterally âpure speech writingâ (baihua wen)âwas based on conformity to a monolingual standard: the grammatical patterns and vocabulary of spoken Mandarin and its northern Chinese variants. The vernacular movement naturalized the perception that standard Chinese reflected the social reality of a nationwide readership. As the âNational Languageâ (Guoyu), it was imagined as the âCommon Speechâ (Putonghua) of the masses. As the medium of New Literature, standard Chinese was more the creation of a new social reality than it was its reflection.
Of course, the formal experimentation of New Literature was not a mere exercise in propagating a standard vernacular. Exposing an overemphasis on the vernacular script as modern Chinese literatureâs primary revolution in form and as its foundational âtechnology,â scholars have revealed other novel tools and technologies heralding its arrival. These include the advent of visual media such as film and photography.14 Modern Chinese literary histories characterize May Fourth writers as the pioneers of new forms who experimented with novel âtoolsâ and âabsorbed all the main trends in Western cultureâromanticism, realism, naturalism, and symbolism.â15 These writers were well versed in Western literature, whether in its original languages or in Chinese or Japanese translation. Beyond that, they also spent at least some portion of their young adulthood studying abroad or sojourning in places such as Japan, Europe, and North America. The Western and/or Japanese education these authors received was a major contributor to the enlightenment ideal of May Fourth discourse: they saw experimentation with Western literary forms (sometimes patterned after similar Japanese experimentations) as necessary for Chinese literary, intellectual, and spiritual development.16
Given the scholarly emphasis on the lengthy periods that many canonical writers of New Literature spent studying, working, or traveling abroad in the West and Japan, advancements in steam-engine technology that revolutionized transoceanic travel in the late-nineteenth century should likewise be recognized as another profound technological influence on Chinese literary modernity, for these steamships made possible the writersâ distant sojourns and returns.17 Although travels to Japan and Western countries were no doubt integral to the creative impulses of Chinese literary modernity, these sites were not the only travel destinations of significance. Yet modern Chinese literary histories are generally bound by a tripartite China-West-Japan paradigm that masquerades as âthe world.â18 This paradigm precludes broader readings of modern Chinese literary enlightenment and nationalism: namely, it pins these ideals to the deceptively clear-cut spatio-temporal dichotomies between a native feudalism and a foreign imperialism while reducing them to a literary blend of âWestern formâ and âChinese content.â
The China-West-Japan paradigm of New Literature fails to capture its truly global character, mainly by suppressing its transcolonial dimension. Consider the following story, which follows a fairly conventional May Fourth plot line: a young man aspires to receive a modern, Western education, but his more traditional father opposes, particularly because the Western imperial powers have disgraced his country. The young man falls in love with a childhood friend, but his father opposes the match because the coupleâs horoscopes do not align. The young pair allegedly commits suicide by drowning themselves in a lakeâtheir ultimate tragedy drawing attention to the larger social forces (feudalism and imperialism) that control their fate. This is the plot to âBirds of a Featherâ (âMingming niaoâ; literally âbirds of the same fateâ), a short story first published in Chinaâs Literary Monthly (Xiaoshuo yuebao) in January 1921. The author, Xu Dishan, is one of New Literatureâs foundational authors. The plot in which two young people navigate a broadening sphere of progressive ideas and cultural influences, but are thwarted by their parentsâ adherence to feudalistic superstition, is actually the storyâs least fascinating and most clichĂ©d feature. Rather, the appeal of âBirds of a Featherâ is that it is considered New Literatureâs first work with a truly âexotic toneâ (yiyu qingdiao).19 The story takes place entirely outside China and none of the characters are Chinese.20 Instead, they are Burmese, and the story is set in Rangoon.
Xu Dishan wrote the imaginative âBirds of a Featherâ from personal experience: from 1913â15, he lived in Rangoon as a Chinese-language instructor at a local middle school. In the story, Xu frequently refers to Burmese sites and historical events from the British colonial era. For example, Jialingâs father harbors long-standing resentments over the British construction of a military post on the grounds of the holy Shwedagon Pagoda in 1852. This outrage morally justifies his irate opposition to his sonâs desire to attend an Anglophone school established by Christian missionaries. After debating the matter, Jialing and his father reach a compromise, agreeing that he will attend the Rangoon School of Advanced Studies, since the institution apparently strives harder to âpreserve Burmese customs.â21 Through the colonial Burmese setting (rather than the imperial centers of Japan or the West) and Burmese characters (non-Chinese subjectivities), Xu Dishanâs discrepant overseas route of âenlightenmentâ challenges the âobsession with Chinaâ that permeates the origins of a Chinese literary modernity constituted from a China-West-Japan global paradigm.
Although he was the first author of New Literature to compose a work of âexoticismâ on colonial Southeast Asia that reflected his travel biography and cultural interests, Xu Dishan was by no means an anomaly. Most of the authors who embarked on transoceanic voyages to Euro...