MCLC: Lupke on Mo Yan

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Christopher Lupke <lupke at wsu.edu>
Subject: Lupke on Mo Yan
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Here’s a pop quiz:

What do He Jingzhi, Tie Ning, Chen Zhongshi, Wang Meng, Li Cunbao, Jia
Pingwa, Feng Jicai, Mala Qinfu, Bi Shumin, Ye Zhaoyan, Mo Yan, Liang
Xiaosheng, Han Shagong, Su Tong, Liu Heng, Chi Li, and 84 other Chinese
writers have in common? They all participated in copying over a portion of
Mao Zedong’s infamous Yan’an Talks on Literature and Art. Do I condone it?
No. Do I think it is significant? Not particularly. And I say this as
someone who to date has never been called a partisan for the Chinese
Communist Party.

I’ve silently observed the veritable pile on of people who have attacked
Mo Yan since he won the Nobel Prize in awe and with some bemusement.
Frankly, it baffles me. But, most important, to me it ironically mimics
the sort of mass and accumulating criticisms that vulnerable intellectuals
faced during the Anti-Rightist Campaign and Cultural Revolution in China.
Comparisons with Ezra Pound, frankly, test the bounds of reason and
decorum. Ezra Pound was a great poet, to be sure, but he was a vicious,
fascist, anti-Semite who worked actively and tirelessly day and night to
defame the Jewish people. What has Mo Yan done? Nothing. That’s his curse.
Mo Yan has harmed no one. He has attacked no individual. He has
participated in the purge of none of his peers in China. He has gone on no
rampages. He is not a Zhou Yang nor even a Ding Ling. He simply has not
spoken up vigorously in defense of dissidents in China who have suffered
at the hands of the state. As someone who sleeps under the blanket of a
democratic system that protects my freedom of expression almost
absolutely, I may be disappointed in that to some extent but find myself
not in much of a position to attack him. In an effort to remain as
unassuming as possible and to ensure housing, health care, a pension, and
a secure income through which to provide for his family – long before he
was famous – he joined the Communist Party in China (with 80 million of
his closest friends) and played the role of a fairly meaningless,
mid-level functionary while he was given the time and space to practice
his art freely and as he wishes, and in my opinion and many of my peers,
to considerable accomplishment.

Someone who has no academic credentials in Chinese literary studies and
publishes an attack on his work in the journal of one’s home institution
has benefited from nepotism or, more precisely, a form of benweizhuyi 本位主
义
, a malaise in China that we should not repeat in the United States.
Scholars can reasonably differ on the merits and quality of his literary
writing per se, but I urge them to make their arguments in systematic and
extended fashion and submit them to academic journals through the blind
peer review structure of our profession, so that they may be evaluated for
the strength of their argument and their textual support prior to
publication.

Short of that, for my New Year’s resolution I plan to get off this poor
man’s back and let him enjoy an award for his hard work for which he
should be proud and for which his family may look on him with pride. I
hope my colleagues will join me in that resolution.

Christopher Lupke
Washington State University