The Deconstruction Of The "Ideal Man"-the "Challenge" Posed By Avant-garde Novels On The Main Tide Of Humanism In The Early 1980s

This paper puts avant-garde novels in the specific context of 1980 s and analyzes its response and “challenge” to the main tide of humanism in the early 1980 s from the perspective of subjectivity and human nature,searching for meaning of life and the human history's writing.It starts from avant-garde novels' relation with human,analyzing the complex relationship between the subject imagination of the humanism and avant-garde novels,which is evolving and deconstructing at the same time.First of all,this paper analyzes the different means of presenting subjectivity and human nature in avant-garde novels and the main tide of humanism.Avant-garde novels do not pursue typical characters,and characters become a symbol with only structure function in the “depiction trap” and “language labyrinth”.At the same time,behind the indifferent narrative language and forms,there are often themes concerning evil nature such as blood,violence,and death,etc.Humanism,at the novel's narrative level,tries to implore the goodness of human nature,and stresses the importance of the subject's individuality,freedom,and dignity.At the criticism level,it requires literature to get rid of the external political ideology,establishing the subjectivity of literature,so as to reveal human's subjectivity.It is because of the development logic of getting back to literature and pursuing freedom and individuality that avant-garde novels “challenge” the humanism's optimism concept of subjectivity and human nature.Secondly,this paper analyzes humanism's searching for the meaning of life and avant-garde novels' deconstruction of external support system.In avant-garde novels,searching often proved to be of no result,and even the process of searching itself has been doubted.They are keen to show the absurdity of the world and human himself,and deconstruct the center of meaning in the game of narrative and language.While humanism,through a “people's ethical narration”,tries connect human broken away from the original meaning system with broad meaning center such as the people and the country.But it did not provide specific solution which can be reflected at the level of experience and practice.Through the doubt about the way humanism constructs the meaning of life;avant-garde novels give up the search for the external meaning center,and sink into the internal poetic land of language and form.Third,this paper discusses the historical interpretation of the avant-garde novels and humanism.Avant-garde novels no longer tell grand history stories,but through the playing of narrative skills,show the suspiciousness and uncertainty of history,demonstrating the desire of ordinary people or folk customs in the historical gap.And humanism takes human as the absolute subject of the history,explaining history through the alienation and return of human nature,and through identifying the past “feudal character”,expects the modern vision in the logic of the linear progress.Avant-garde novels' pursuit of language and form shares the historical development logic of humanism progress,but the meaninglessness,desire and violence presented in specific contexts are inconsistent with the expectation of humanism.Finally,this paper briefly points out that after avant-garde novels deconstructed the “ideal man” of humanism,the human created on the basis of body feeling and instinct desires finally became the “dependency” of commodity markets in the 1990s.