Pioneer Research About Production Mechanism Of Contemporary Literature

As we know, contemporary Chinese literature has experienced three important historical periods, named as "17 Years", "The 80s" and "The 90s up to now". Within the three historical periods, the appearance of contemporary Chinese literature exhibits a great contrast, which has been reflected in many aspects, such as work content, writer identity as well as literature concept. Around the world, you can't find the second country's literature, like contemporary China's that within half a century has experienced such a complicated evolution. Concerning such unique literature phenomenon, Chinese scholars can't clearly explain it in terms of the former literature concept, which would only involve them into a debate over value judgment. All of those researches would be futile for us to identify the historical force behind the new literary form as well as the relationships between different literary forms. On this account, nowadays most scholars tend to use genealogical methods to solve this issue and to clarify the evolutionary trace of literature concept. Since "The 80s" is a transitional period between the two different literary forms, no one can avoid such crucial period to make a study of articulation and continuity of contemporary Chinese literature. Therefore, more and more papers are using genealogical method to "return to The 80s", and "The 80s" undoubtedly becomes the focus of study and the access to research.However, in my paper, I argue that the basic characteristic of the 80s lying in the conversion among institution, knowledge and practice. Using genealogical method to explain Chinese literary phenomenon will more or less restrain our research. In contrast, although cultural studies are still in an initial stage of this field, it has yet opened a new research space. If we investigate the cultural practice of the 80s intellectuals, which included its purpose, conditions, basis, and membership, then we will have a better understanding of the complicated relationship among literature creation, concept, system and situation etc. According to my paper, I summarize these intricate relations up as literature production mechanism (or literature mode of production), and regard, these changes in turn to influence literary production, as the evolution of literature production mechanism. This paper will explore the evolution process of literature production mechanism with object of literary practice of "Shanghai Literature" ranging from the 70s to the 80s.Before coming to the topic of my thesis, firstly I will give a brief introduction to the basic form of literature mode of production within "17 Years". The establishing process of contemporary literature system has gone through three times division of labor:the division of labor on cultural production and other production units, that on Writers Association and the Press and Publication Administration as well as internal institution of Writers Association. According to those three planning divisions of labor in literary institution, my paper will give them a general name as "plan-profession literary institution" which brought about the journals of Writers Association. The Division aims at:on the one hand, enhance the leadership of Chinese communism party to writers; on the other, establish a unified distribution system in order to spread the political will throughout the country from top to down. However, the Writers Association brought together a large number of intellectuals holding a concept of pure literature; meanwhile it reproduced a professional literature system which in some degree broke away from the revolutionary practice. Therefore, the reform movement of intellectual thought, as a means of literature self-restoring system, took place throughout the country. During the Great Leap Forward period, literature planning system needed a self-adjusted process as well, which evolved into a "political system of literature" featuring a direct dominant leadership from party committee at all levels, an effective cooperation by various official medias and a new form of interactive writing between experts and the masses, with a final goal of constructing or producing a new socialist man. Actually, the intellectuals directly participated in the country's propaganda system to work in the management of grassroots units, and in this sense they offered meaning standards to grassroots units for typical election, resource allocation and even the power of appointment and removal. Thus, the totality of socialism was just produced under such circumstances, yet the public concerns about the justice of resource allocation or powers of appointment and removal also emerged. For this reason, New Time Literature started with democratic issues. The above mentioned is the main idea discussed by my paper's Introduction part. The first chapter of my paper, beginning from writer composition and column designing, will focus on institutional conditions of "Shanghai Literature" in the "early spring" literary scene, which include several aspects, such as "administrative literature system", "plan-profession literary institution" and "Writing Team literary institution" formed during the Cultural Revolutionary period. Under such institutional circumstances, "Shanghai Literature" published a series of commentator's article, formed its democratic standpoint on publication, and even constructed a cultural space covering between the central and local government, "literature" and "political", officials and the masses.The second chapter will discuss the problem novel appearing in the journals in the "early spring" literature scene. I will try to prove that those issues displayed by the problem novel, were actually a kind of "internal conflict within people", which in the past time the literature of socialist realism wanted to discuss, but was frustrated by the administrative literary institution and failed to write it out. Seemingly, the problem novel came up against the creation principle of socialist realism, whereas its writing purpose and basic value just originated from it. Therefore, there is isomorphic interpretation rather than contradiction between those two literature concepts. Emergence of the problem novel symbolized that it was necessary for socialist realism to carry out self-renewal. However, such renewal striving for rebuilding the totality, under the literary and institutional condition of that time, had no way to realize.The third chapter, taking editorial guidance of "Shanghai Literature" and that of the embedded system as well as the changes of situation as the inlet, will reiterate the process of Eighty-five New Trend and its political meaning, and then point out the changes associating with the editorial ideas and the journal appeals, that is, the issue of reconstructing the meaning of socialist system which has lost in the conflicting literature practice. This chapter will focus on analyzing the complicated relationships ranging from root-seeking literature and problem novel to new trend in Eighty-five and democratic appeal.Chapter IV will discuss, in the process of institutional transformation of "Shanghai Literature", how to deal with operational difficulties, and confront with the disorganization of the writer group as well as the sporadic group of readers. From the journals' continuous efforts and those insurmountable obstacles they encountered, we can observe what kind of spaces the literature has owned and how these spaces disappeared at last.When returning to the starting point of the paper and rethinking the issue of "the capacity of literary intervention in reality", now we are equipped with more consciousness about institution. Literary practice of the 80s, which took place within the system integration, influenced literature policy through the practice of journals, and even brought in the reform of literary institution, however, it has planted seeds of failure behind its success. Thus, the collapse of the integration system means that the institutional condition of literary practice has vanished from the historical stage. In this sense, restoring the capacity of literary intervention in reality is actually a pseudo-proposition.