From Individual To Collective: The Liberation Imaginations And Predicaments In The Socialistic Rural Fiction(1949-1966)

The "liberation" of Chinese peasants is one of the problems of historicalfulfillment, but it may be also the one concerning the imagination simultaneously.The reason lies in that, in Revolutionary China, namely the old China before1949,with the parlance of so-called three mountainous social oppressions ever existing,which are imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucrat capitalism, the "liberation" ofpeasants is naturally comprehended (or imagined) as the land and the "turningover" problems. In the long Democracy Revolution years, this comprehension wasonce said in the simple and direct catchword like "fighting local despots,redistributing the land", and expressed as various ordinances and laws of land etc,from the late1920s to the early1950s. But meanwhile, that understanding aboutpeasants’ Liberation mentioned above had some obvious characters of historical time.Taking "17years" for example, those hopes of "the land returning its home" and thepoor people’s "turning-over" etc had already been carried out one by one in the newpeople’s republic of China in fact. These are exactly the historical practice ofpeasants’"liberation" in the years. But, practiced on the new foundation of history,the problem of "liberation" could also inconspicuously bear some new and complexcomprehensions or imaginations, which formed many understanding differences tothe socialistic "new life" in those early years and made the problem even morecomplicated thus. It could say that, being understood or imagined exactly on thisnew foundation, the meaning of peasants’"liberation" becomes one "problem" again,which we may still need to discuss today. This dissertation tries to trace the differentlayers of the intertexture by various history materials, story and novel texts, andsubjective imaginations originally from the years of1949to1966, and help thenarrations of rural fiction in "17years" to display their characteristics ofmultiple-tone.——Probably, that is the possible condition that we can be able tocarry out our explanations for the socialistic rural-fictions under "the public opinionsuniformly same", although it will also bring us some new problems. Certainly, it aswell as means that, this dissertation will take textual close-reading and culturalstudying for the main discussion methods, which consists of viewing stories as fields,distinguishing narration into different levels, comprehending texts as contradictionclosing-circles, believing compilation factual reality, and always historicizing theinterpretation, etc, though they probably aren’t the best ways on the whole.The dissertation is divided into four chapters. Chapter One, Non-memberpeasants: enculturation problem under the circumstances of rural politics and landreform. This chapter sees the rural fictions in1940s as the pre-history of thosefollowing ones in "17years", the leading roles being the peasants in working alone ages. This chapter tries to discover a few main topics about rural stories and novels,such as the feudalistic space,"individual", desire, and historicizing, etc, whichinfluenced the writings in1949-1966. This chapter tries to present the complicatedfeatures of Chinese rural area under the interleaving discourses of tradition,modernization and revolution etc, and rediscover the "liberation" of peasants as thenew question that we need to discuss again.Chapter Two, Member peasants in mutual aid group: about pent-upformalization for desires under the revolutionary discourse. This chapter involvesthese main topics as follows: Under the call of "to organize" in those early years,how the ideas of "labor" and "dignity" emerged, and in the same process "desire"how and silently came across to be repressed almost completely. How at that timesome formalization imaginations about peasant liberation came into being, such as"the road battle between socialism and capitalism", and what it ever caused etc. Thischapter tries to elucidate that, the inhibition of desire formalization passages underrevolutionary discourses, possibly drove the whole socialistic literature into a state ofsomewhat turbulent discomfort structurally for quite a long time.Chapter Three, Member peasants in primary community and superiorcommunity: Collective imagination and the stranded Individual. This chapter mainlydiscusses how the "Individual" in the socialistic rural fictions historically got intoentanglements with the "Collective", and what is the predicament, etc. This chaptertries to explain,"Collective" is still needed by Chinese peasants necessarily; But ifthe peasants inside the collective are not given some kinds of acknowledgementwhich they deserve anyhow, various damages will be brought to the "Collective" thatconstituted originally by them, thus make the "Collective" face the danger that theintersubjectivity between the "individual" and "collective" may be completelydestroyed.Chapter Four, Member peasants in people’s commune: scenes of peasant"liberation" and re-historicizing of its narration. Although the Great Leap Forwardand People’s Communization Movement in the late1950s suffered severe frustration,this romantic movement stirred up a great deal of ardent imagination on the literature.These imaginations pointed to some reflectibility and possibility which transcendedthe realistic predicament of that period. This chapter expects to re-appear thecomplicated correlation between literature and politics from late1950s to early1960s, and pursuit those positive imaginations ever drowned under the surface of it.This chapter tries to show that, those imaginations have been already forgottenexactly by us today, and from this point of view, they are the historic reality, too.Epilogue: Re-expecting the literature affinitive with the masses. The literature ofmasses or the literature with affinity to the masses seems worth our expectation. Letthe peasants and their life in the rural stories and novels return to the dimension ofdignity and justice in the imagination and narration. Put the discussion of"liberation" into the realistic fields. Make those problems be described and named. Perhaps, those are the possible hopes for rural fictions.Anyway, we shall always imagine the future. Though it is hard to say that,which interpretation to the stories and narrations of Chinese peasants in the20thcentury is virtually more effective, our literatures and criticisms have already putforward a quite difficult task to us: Through what kinds of paths, do we then canresume (more accurate parlance may be "construct") the lost correlation of"acknowledgement" or "identity"? This dissertation sincerely expects as well, by theseries of related discussions, we can finally help a little to let the peasants become"people" whom the modern "liberation" era necessarily means, to make the rural lifebrought into the so-called "good life" field, to have principles of "equality","justice"and "dignity" etc, be plated to shine in our imaginations and narrations again.