Aesthetics and Marxism

Liu Kang Liu

Description

Although Chinese Marxism-primarily represented by Maoism-is generally seen by Western intellectuals as monolithic, Liu Kang argues that its practices and projects are as diverse as those in Western Marxism, particularly in the area of aesthetics. In this comparative study of European and Chinese Marxist traditions, Liu reveals the extent to which Chinese Marxists incorporate ideas about aesthetics and culture in their theories and practices. In doing so, he constructs a wholly new understanding of Chinese Marxism.Far from being secondary considerations in Chinese Marxism, aesthetics and culture are in fact principal concerns. In this respect, such Marxists are similar to their Western counterparts, although Europeans have had little understanding of the Chinese experience. Liu traces the genealogy of aesthetic discourse in both modern China and the West since the era of classical German thought, showing where conceptual modifications and divergences have occurred in the two traditions. He examines the work of Mao Zedong, Lu Xun, Li Zehou, Qu Qiubai, and others in China, and from the West he discusses Kant, Schiller, Schopenhauer, and Marxist theorists including Horkheimer, Adorno, Benjamin, and Marcuse. While stressing the diversity of Marxist positions within China as well as in the West, Liu explains how ideas of culture and aesthetics have offered a constructive vision for a postrevolutionary society and have affected a wide field of issues involving the problems of modernity.Forcefully argued and theoretically sophisticated, this book will appeal to students and scholars of contemporary Marxism, cultural studies, aesthetics, and modern Chinese culture, politics, and ideology.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• History of ideas
• China

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 10 mars 2000
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822380535
• Langue: English

Extrait

A E S T H E T I C S A N D M A R X I S M

P O S T C O N T E M P O R A R Y I N T E R V E N T I O N S

Series Editors: Stanley Fish and Fredric Jameson

A E S T H E T I C S A N D M A R X I S M

Chinese Aesthetic

Marxists and Their Western Contemporaries

Liu Kang

Duke University Press

Durham and London 2000

q2000Duke University Press

All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acidfree paper Typeset in Trump Mediaeval by Wilsted & Taylor Publishing Services

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data appear on the last printed page of this book. Parts of chapters3and4appeared inNew Literary History

27, no.4(1996). Another part of chapter4appeared in a slightly different form inpositions: east asia cultures critique3, no.1(1993). Part of chapter5appeared in

Social Text10, nos.23(1992).

For Yazeng

C O N T E N T S

Preface

ix

Acknowledgments

xvii

1 Aesthetics, Modernity, and Alternative Modernity: The Case of China1

2 The Formation of Marxist Aesthetics: From Shanghai to Yan9an36

3 Hegemony and Counterhegemony: National Form and ‘‘Subjective Fighting Spirit’’

72

4 Aesthetics, Ideology, and Cultural Reconstruction

111

5 Subjectivity and Aesthetic Marxism: Toward a Cultural Topology of Postrevolutionary Society

Notes

192

Bibliography

Index

225

215

149

P R E F A C E

This book analyzes the relationship between aesthetics and modern Marxism by focusing on the Chinese case. At the same time, it highlights connections, parallels, and differences between the Chinese aesthetic Marxists and their Western counterparts. The heroes are a diverse cast, ranging from writers and philosophers to political leaders, playing in the various acts of the historical drama lasting nearly a century. Common among them, obviously, is a strong emphasis on ‘‘culture’’ and ‘‘aesthet ics’’ in theory and practice. This historical study of the formation of aes thetic discourse in modern China, especially in Chinese Marxist tradi tions, is combined with theoretical reflection on wider political and cultural issues pertaining to the problems of modernity, alternative mo dernity, and postmodernity. The key questions raised in this book not only traverse a broad spectrum of fields of inquiry, but also involve a host of historical and intellectual traditions, Marxist ones in particular. Al though these issues cannot be comprehensively covered in one volume, the chapters that follow alert readers to some important, yet often unno ticed and neglected links among the distinct theories and practices within modern Marxist traditions on issues of culture and aesthetics. In light of the centrality of ‘‘culture’’ in contemporary society and social thought, we need to examine these connections to deepen our understand ing of discrete and heterogeneous modern aesthetic traditions, as well as to seek new alternatives in both theoretical and practical senses. It is pos sible that some alternative model of cultural criticism could be extrapo lated out of Chinese aesthetic Marxism, as indeed its major thinkers have aspired to do. I would be gratified if readers found this study useful as an in troduction to that Marxism and its principal theorists. The Chinese Marx ist ‘‘model’’ does not claim universal validity in the manner of some cur rent Western theories, paradoxically by way of fetishizing difference and

otherness. Nevertheless, it contains implications beyond regional and geopolitical boundaries. Rather than a ‘‘detached’’ observation, this book is an ‘‘intervention,’’ in a small way, into the subjects under discussion. I try to apply dialectical method in both the historical description and explanation of Chinese the ories and my own critical position. This dialectical thought is intrinsically selfreflexive, as is evidenced by the use of Chinese aesthetic Marxist prac tices in rethinking modern traditions and the legacies of revolution and modernity. Analogies to this thought are noted in the ways that modern Western Marxists reflect on capitalist modernity and postmodernity. Re thinking the ‘‘rethinking’’ of culture, politics, and aesthetics, I examine historical events and the less tangible historicity of the concepts and cate gories by which events are mapped out. Insofar as the dialectic of ‘‘prac tice’’ (or history proper) and ‘‘theory’’ constitutes the very problematic of Marxism (which as the ‘‘principal contradiction,’’ lies at the heart of Chi nese Marxist traditions), the reinscription of ‘‘selfreflexivity’’ as a proper Marxian dialectic represents a renewed effort at cultural critique. The central thesis of this book is that culture and cultural revolution are inextricably related to the Marxist projects of critiquing capitalist moder nity and constructing an alternative modernity. Aesthetics and culture have been of primary concern in Chinese Marxist circles. In this respect, the diverse practices and designs of Chinese Marxism are similar to those of Western Marxism, or an equally distinct variety of EuroAmerican Marxist intellectual enterprises. But save for a partial grasp of Maoism, Western Marxists had little awareness of what their Chinese colleagues were doing in a different context. Thus, although it is generally understood that Maoism transformed the ways that Europeans thought about Marx ism, by comparing Chinese aesthetic Marxism and Western Marxism we can gain insight into the historical development of modern Marxism. Chinese aesthetic and Western Marxism both create a theoretical space for critical interventions by empowering cultural politics. European and North American cultural politics have fostered an oppositional vision centered largely on the problems of domination and resistance, manipula tion and selfgovernment, and consent and coercion in modern capitalist society. In contrast, aesthetic Marxism in China has served the twofold mission of critiquing the intrinsic contradictions of revolutionary hege mony and offering a constructive vision of culture in a postrevolutionary society. Herein lies the value of Chinese aesthetic Marxism, with implica tions that reach beyond China proper in the world of global cultural cri tique. Moreover, being nonWestern, Chinese aesthetic Marxism has self consciously questioned the inherent Eurocentrism in Marxism itself. If this Eurocentrism is to be challenged and problematized, questions posed

x

preface

by Chinese aesthetic Marxists cannot be neglected. Its originality, as well as its historical and structural limitations, has allowed Chinese aesthetic Marxism to make a crucial difference in the struggles of the real world. Hence, it is a significant development within Marxist tradition, deserving critical attention. Searches for an alternative modernity by Chinese Marxism (including, of course, its ‘‘first stage,’’ represented by Mao Zedong) have critiqued not only capitalist modernity, but also its determinism and teleology. Yet the Chinese critique, like that of modern Western Marxism, privileges ‘‘cul ture’’ as both a means and an end in itself in constituting an alternative modernity. In Mao’s version, the role of cultural revolution is second only to that of peasant guerrilla warfare, and key to the establishment and de velopment of a revolutionary hegemony, the predominant feature of his socialist alternative. Such a privileging of ‘‘culture,’’ however, has resulted in the neglect of other critically important areas of social life, the eco nomic in particular. In the postrevolutionary period, cultural revolution and revolutionary hegemony gradually lapsed into massive politicization and instrumentalization of aesthetic and cultural life. This severely un dermined social and economic reconstruction, or the constitution of a so cialist mode of production, as another central goal of an alternative moder nity. Mao’s privileging of culture, as a way in its inception to counter the economic determinism of classical Marxism, was eventually turned into a ‘‘culturalist’’ determinism and essentialism. His plan for a socialist China as an alternative to both Sovietstyle socialism and Western capi talism became a liability, and even long after Mao’s era ended, the Maoist legacy has left a huge amount of vastly complex problems in ideological and cultural terrains. Yet contrary to the widely accepted view that Chinese Marxismpri marily represented as Maoismis monolithic, there have always been dif ferent Marxist positions in China. This book analyzes these discrete prac tices of Chinese Marxist intellectuals, emphasizing the construction of autonomous cultural space in a postrevolutionary society. The tragic con sequences of Mao’s Cultural Revolution and revolutionary hegemony compelled Chinese aesthetic Marxists to reflect on Mao’s privileging of culture, first, as a betrayal of the Marxist principle of the primacy of the economic, and second, as an impediment to constructive and systematic social transformation. Chinese aesthetic Marxism, especially Li Zehou’s ‘‘philosophy of practical subjectivity,’’ reaffirms historical materialist concepts as well as the categories of material ‘‘practice’’ and ‘‘mode of pro duction’’ visàvis the language of contemporary cultural criticism. This is not to suggest that Chinese aesthetic Marxists followed the agenda of Western Marxism; the Chinese have selfconsciously critiqued

preface

xi