EACS-2016. Book of Abstracts

Modern Literature 21st Biennial Conference of the European Association for Chinese Studies 60 much more subjective viewpoint. The main vehicle of the plot (which in most cases follows history) in these fictions is not the class struggle, but such subjective values as lust for power, sexual desire, the will to live, revenge. In this article I endeavor to compare the ‘revolutionary history’ of the 1950s fictions to the ‘personal histories of the 1920s-40s’ of the NHFs. Special attention will be paid to the substitution of Marxist values with a more personal outlook on the same period of history. Sorace Christian (Australian National University) The Dictatorship of Formalism My paper provides an explication of the Chinese Communist Party’s concept of “formalism” 形式主义 . A Key words: China, formalism, political aesthetics, post-Communism, comparative theory ccording to the CCP, formalism is a political disease in which form is exaggerated, distorted or entirely replaces content — a situation in which appearance reigns over reality. Previously, Mao referred to it as a “pernicious wind” that might cost the Party its legitimacy, and currently Xi Jinping has targeted formalism as a “poison” within the Party. If it is a poison, however, what is the antidote? By examining the concep- tual roots of formalism in the Confucian “doctrine of proper names” 正名 and Communist theories of propaganda, I argue that the CCP’s political authority and power derives, to a large extent, from its ability to “stabilize” the highly porous and slippery relationship between form and content. This ability however is not guaranteed or historically constant. When official campaigns against “formalism” are themselves examples of formalism, and largely derided by society, it signals a crisis in the credibility of the repre- sentational scaffolding of political power. In the final section of my paper, I analyze Yan Lianke’s 阎连科 novel 受活 Lenin’s Kisses as a provocative depiction of a government and economy that entire circulate around the management of forms. Zaichenko Sofiia (Ankara University) A“Philological Metaphor” in Contemporary Chinese Poetry Key words: philological metaphor, language, philosophy, linguocentrism, post-Obscure poetry The review of linguistic theories (Sapir-Whorf hypothesis); contemporary (American Language Poetry — Charles Bernstein; post-Obscure poetry and Yang Lian) and modern poetic traditions (Russian Acmeism— Osip Mandelstam; Futurism—Velimir Khlebnikov; Formalism—Viktor Shklovsky; Joseph Brodsky; Czeslaw Milosz); relevant trends of Western (Martin Heidegger’s “language as the house of Being”; Jacques Derrida’s “world as text”) and Chinese philosophical thought (Xia Kejun 夏可君 views language as a sort of a “poetic double-gift”) has detected the constant recurrence of language-focused pat- terns throughout these texts, which serves as direct evidence of the interdisciplinary interest in language as a self-sufficient medium in the world today. In modern philosophy, language is crowned with laurels, that is to say, the major schools of modern philosophical thought focus mainly on the phenomenon of language. Language per se has gradually become a spinal cord in the body of global knowledge. The phenomenon of linguo-poetics has recently been rapidly gaining importance on the Chinese literary scene; the “philological metaphor” has been revealing itself in the works of most post-Obscure poets. This paper aims at revealing the specificities of an unexplored phenomenon of language-centered poetry in China. Research subject — the distinctive features of a linguo-philosophical picture of the world painted by them. For the purpose of this research, the following question is addressed: To what extent is the phenom- enon of Chinese linguo-poetry self-sufficient? Hypothesis of research — the peculiar linguocentric ideas in the works of Third Generation poets are devoid of West-imitative pathos and artificialness. Philological awareness runs in their blood; it courses through the veins of contemporary Chinese poets and corresponds to the nation’s cultural spirit. Nowhere else but in China can one find literature, philosophy, and linguistics so closely interwoven into the fabric of life.