In The Explosion Chronicles （Zhalie zhi 炸裂志）, Yan Lianke combines ancient and contemporary practices of constructing and destructing, building and burning, in a literary style he calls mythorealism. The fictional...In The Explosion Chronicles （Zhalie zhi 炸裂志）, Yan Lianke combines ancient and contemporary practices of constructing and destructing, building and burning, in a literary style he calls mythorealism. The fictional chronicles relay a history of development written in the modem language of growth, documenting the development of a community called Explosion, which subsumes a discussion of economic growth within a theme of twisted temporality. This article uses The Explosion Chroniclesto interrogate the temporal assumptions inherent in contemporary discourses of economic development in China. At the heart of my analysis of these tropes is a critique of the ideological function of linear time. Time can be arrested in economic growth, becoming an interface that activates intersubjective gazes before narratives mature.展开更多
This article examines the adoption of ghost marriage （冥婚） as a literary theme in twentieth-century Chinese literature, arguing that this theme reflects a set of changes in perceptions of temporality from the premo...This article examines the adoption of ghost marriage （冥婚） as a literary theme in twentieth-century Chinese literature, arguing that this theme reflects a set of changes in perceptions of temporality from the premodern to the modern period. As a traditional ritual of holding marriage for the dead, ghost marriage embodies premodern views of time and space wherein the living and the dead are perceived as coexisting in parallel spaces, and the boundary of life and death is seen as transcendable through the extension of kinship. In this way, the dead are kept within the family, maintaining the warmth of familial relationships that transcend being and non-being. Modern authors, promoting a linear view of time, have taken up ghost marriage as an anchoring point of nostalgia for an unrecoverable ethics-based society. For instance, Yan Lianke＇s 阎连科 1994 novella Searching for the Land （寻找土地） announces the utter corruption--and therefore the death--of ethics-based society, suggesting that the only alternative is to confront the future as a road to hope rather than indulge in an illusion of the past. Through an analysis of Yan＇s novella, this essay discusses how the theme of ghost marriage fits into the broader literary context of the early 1990s while also anticipating some of the distinctive elements ofYan Lianke＇s subsequent novels.展开更多
文摘In The Explosion Chronicles （Zhalie zhi 炸裂志）, Yan Lianke combines ancient and contemporary practices of constructing and destructing, building and burning, in a literary style he calls mythorealism. The fictional chronicles relay a history of development written in the modem language of growth, documenting the development of a community called Explosion, which subsumes a discussion of economic growth within a theme of twisted temporality. This article uses The Explosion Chroniclesto interrogate the temporal assumptions inherent in contemporary discourses of economic development in China. At the heart of my analysis of these tropes is a critique of the ideological function of linear time. Time can be arrested in economic growth, becoming an interface that activates intersubjective gazes before narratives mature.
文摘This article examines the adoption of ghost marriage （冥婚） as a literary theme in twentieth-century Chinese literature, arguing that this theme reflects a set of changes in perceptions of temporality from the premodern to the modern period. As a traditional ritual of holding marriage for the dead, ghost marriage embodies premodern views of time and space wherein the living and the dead are perceived as coexisting in parallel spaces, and the boundary of life and death is seen as transcendable through the extension of kinship. In this way, the dead are kept within the family, maintaining the warmth of familial relationships that transcend being and non-being. Modern authors, promoting a linear view of time, have taken up ghost marriage as an anchoring point of nostalgia for an unrecoverable ethics-based society. For instance, Yan Lianke＇s 阎连科 1994 novella Searching for the Land （寻找土地） announces the utter corruption--and therefore the death--of ethics-based society, suggesting that the only alternative is to confront the future as a road to hope rather than indulge in an illusion of the past. Through an analysis of Yan＇s novella, this essay discusses how the theme of ghost marriage fits into the broader literary context of the early 1990s while also anticipating some of the distinctive elements ofYan Lianke＇s subsequent novels.
