MCLC: Mo Yan, the state, and the Nobel (7)

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Rujie Wang <rwang at wooster.edu>
Subject: Mo Yan, the state, and the Nobel (7)
**************************************************

Michel Hockx thought "the question raised at the end of Tatlow's piece
("Can great, lasting literature come from there? The Nobel committee
thinks so. Do you?") really has only one answer: Yes. Lasting literature
has been produced under oppressive regimes for centuries."

Whether our answer is yes or no, the question itself strikes me as odd. Do
we question the quality of writings by Socrates, Plato, Euripides, and
Aristotle because Athenian democracy allowed only adult male citizens the
right to vote, which was about 20% of the population in this Greek
city-state, and excluded slaves, freed slaves, children, and women? Do we
view the works of Poe, Emerson and Thoreau as less great and lasting if
these early American writers happened to belong to a privileged class
during the time when native Americans were kicked off their land and when
slavery was legal? That Mo Yan's Nobel award for his literary works should
subject him to this kind of controversy boggles the mind. Do we pull
copies of the Holy Bible off the bookshelf if it contains passages against
homosexuals?

If we practice such reductionism and political correctness, there would
soon be no "lasting literature" to give Nobel prize to. Some regimes or
entities are oppressive precisely because they institutionalize a
totalizing theory of culture, such as the one within which we are invited
to judge Mo Yan and China in general.

Rujie