Reimagining the Soviet Union in Contemporary Chinese Literature： Soviet Ji in Wang Meng＇s In Remembrance of the Soviet Union and Feng Jicai＇s Listening to Russia

An examination of Soviet nostalgia--nostalgia for the times when the People＇s Republic of China （PRC） had a close relationship with the Soviet Union, as it appears in contemporary discourses that reimagine the Soviet Union, is essential to understand the quotidian aspect and cultural history of the PRC in the 1950s, as well as cultural attitudes in contemporary China. Wang Meng＇s In Remembrance of the Soviet Union （2007） and Feng Jicai＇s Listening to Russia （2005） are characterized by nostalgia for the lost Soviet Union, which exerted a strong influence on the PRC during the 1950s. In contemporary China, where the market economy is the dominant mode of production, Wang and Feng＇s Soviet nostalgia is a gesture of yearning for a type of historical temporality that has seemingly been lost. Their works express the desire to reclaim the historical past of the 1950s, which they portray as having been completely erased by the developmental logic of late-capitalism--the authentic cultural experiences in the 1950s, especially the everyday life along with the revolutionary ideals are rendered unreal within the post-revolutionary logic. The concept of Soviet ＂ji＂ （祭 ＂remembrance＂） provides a theoretical framework through which to understand the way in which the phenomenon of Chinese nostalgia has the potential to shift contemporary social reality.

Intellectuals in Chinese Novels at the Dawn of the 21st Century

The dawn of the 21st century saw images of intellectuals in novels change in a drastic way.Intellectuals,and those in the humanities in particular,are no longer portrayed as privileged Enlightenment thinkers or sages with Confucian ideas of salvation.In the novels that take intellectuals as their subject matters,such characters often end up involved in betrayal,self-exile,or spiritual/mortal death.This is not a historical process,nor an inevitable course for intellectuals to be sure,but it remains a legitimate question to ask why these fictional intellectuals are becoming,more often than not,new tragic heroes.Why are they becoming misfits in their society and ending up in exile,abandonment,and even death?The present paper examines different images of intellectuals and the makings of their destinies.

Compulsive Repetition of Rupture： Strategies of Representing Trauma

This article focuses on the strategies that literature and cultural criticism adopt to represent trauma in comparison to a current medical definition. The contemporary medical definition, trauma as post-traumatic stress disorder （PTSD）, is the most narrow and specific definition to discuss trauma. The discourse of medicine does not necessarily match those of literature and cultural criticism, nor need they conform to each other. PTSD includes a collection of symptoms, any one of which might not have anything to do with traumatic experience, but which together point with increasing intensity to a psychological syndrome caused by traumatic shock. Although this is historically a recently defined syndrome （1980）, its features had long before attracted attention and been recorded under other terms and diagnoses. Although Chinese literature is only occasionally given to psychological realism, we do find occasional descriptions that strongly suggest aspects of the syndrome. Also, the aims and the needs of medicine and literature or cultural criticism are not necessarily the same, but it is important to explore in greater detail the aims and the needs of literature and cultural criticism.