Ding Ling’s Multiple Identities And Literary Activities

Ding Ling is a unique phenomenon in the history of modern and contemporary Chinese literature. Her literary activities are reflected with the occurrence, development and transition of modern and contemporary Chinese literature, reflecting the complicated relationship among Chinese intellectuals,politics and literature. Ding Ling is a miniature of the modernization process of China. The complexity of Ding Ling’s literary activities comes from the diversity and mobility of her identity. By analyzing the relationship between multiple identities and literary activities, this dissertation tries to study Ding Ling’s pursuing for the self-identity and the loss of the subject. Ding Ling expresses strong writer’s feeling and the May 4th spirit.Ding Ling had experienced a transformation of multiple identities from writers, soldiers to the Rightist, which can be traced back to the integration and conflict of two factors: the individual initiative and the external social force. Ding Ling had been holding firmly to the writer’s identity in her heart behind various social identities by writing and other literary activities in difference periods. In the 1920 s, Ding Ling sought for the Female identity of Being Subjects, leaving her family as a “Nora” new woman. She constructed the subjectivity of the female by gender narrative as a writer in Shanghai, but the reality of female situation and the turbulent social situation made her fall into the narrative anxiety of the gender confusion and she actively sought a new breakthrough.In the 1930 s, Ding Ling was put into the revolutionary torrent to realize the self-redemption of the female subject as a soldier. Although the identity of the soldier brought changes to her literary creation, Ding Ling didn’t give up the concentration on the individual life in revolution writing, which presented a polyphonic discourse. Ding Ling cogitated the relationship between the individual and the nation by the cross and collision of the national discourse and the individual discourse. After the Yan’an Forum on literature and art in 1942, Ding Ling accepted the transformation and self-transformation, but she stood steadily on the ground of the pursuing of the subjective identity in her heart. “The Sun over the Sanggan River” as a representative works in that period was still a distinct color of the enlightenment that focused on the criticism of the national characters in the novel.After the founding of the PRC, Ding Ling was recognized as a cultural official by the national institutional identity because of a wealth of revolutionary literary resources. She practiced the identity of cultural official and became a new system of literary creation and literary orientation under the unquestionable authority of institution. However, Ding Ling’s strong creation complex and the pursuit for the ideal of literature made her overflow the mainstream discourse. She put forward a “doctrine”, respect for history, independent thinking and so on to exhibit her tenacity and toughness of the binding between herself and the May 4th literature tradition. Ding Ling’s May 4th affection made her to bear the brunt of the political movement in the 1950 s. She was labeled “Rightists” and wiped out of official literary power frameworkteam and lived a rough life for the next twenty years. Ding Ling once lost the intellectual independence in order to seek political identity and accept by the way of forbearing and self-criticism. But she still let us see a stubborn soul and the dignity of the individual life and the steadiness on the writing in the struggle with the fate. After the 1970 s, Ding Ling returned to the Chinese literary institution and catered to the mainstream into the literary world in order to remove the stigma of political suspected away from herself. The way she behaved and some activities committed was not understood by people and once appeared the defect of personality. In 1984, Ding Ling began to actively establish the journal “China” to inherit the May 4th literary spirit and continue to write the pursuit of the subjective identity and realize the pursuit of the literary ideal after resuming legal status. The “China” had guided the development of Chinese New Literature with an open and free attitude and had constructed a free speech public sphere for intellectuals, which became a modern event in the history of Chinese literature.Ding Ling had pursuit the self-as-perceiver in various identities in whole life and showed the crisis of identification recognization. Ding Ling’s subjectivity once lost in the influence of revolution, war, politics and staffing, but she sticked to the May 4th spirit and didn’t blindly indulge in political discourse. Her literary activities showed a complex situation. Ding Ling concerned about the individual fate in the process of modernization of the country and presented rational thinking in the collective discourse that made enlightenment run through the whole literary activities. The dissertation discusses the whole life of Ding Ling’s literary activities from the vision of the identity, restores a rich, authentic and stereo Ding Ling image, and reveals the complex relationship and problems about politics and literature, individual and group, traditional and modern in the process of China’s modernization to solve the hidden deep problems.