MCLC: new book on Haizi

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: new book on Haizi
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Rui Kunze, Struggle and Symbiosis: the Canonization of the Poet Haizi and
Cultural Discourses in Contemporary China (Bochum, Freiburg: Projekt
Verlag, 2012).Pp. 340. ISBN number: 978-3-89733-250-8. Price: 23.90 €
 

Available for sale at:

http://www.projektverlag.de/shop/show_product.php?products_id=789&language=
en
 

This book examines the ongoing canonization of the Chinese poet Haizi
(1964-89) and observes continuities and changes in Chinese culture from
the Maoist Era to the 1980s and the post-1989 decades, in particular the
increasingly subtle struggle and symbiosis between literature and
politics, between the intellectual and the state in China. Haizi committed
suicide in March of 1989, only months before many others died on June 4th
of that same year. A relatively obscure poet at the time of his death,
Haizi is now hailed as the epitome of the “hero of poetry” whose writings
represent the idealistic 1980s. Does Haizi’s death coincide with the 1989
pro-democratic movement only in time or are there certain connections? Why
are Haizi and his poetry interpreted as representative of the “idealism”
of the 1980s? What does this interpretation suggest about culture and
society in post-1989 China?
 

This book first traces the cultural practices involved with the
canonization of Haizi from 1989 to 2010. After contextualizing Haizi and
his writings within debates of “modernism” and “world literature” in the
1980s, it investigates three aspects of Haizi’s texts which contribute
heavily to his canonization: the literary theme of minjian contesting the
official narratives of “history” and “nation;” the writing of epic aiming
at creating a national canon; and the rhetorization of Christian symbols
and motifs which shares ideological grounds with the “Mao style” in their
prescription of a “sublime” poet-hero.