MCLC: comments on liberal critique of Mo Yan

Denton, Kirk denton.2 at osu.edu
Mon Oct 22 10:17:59 EDT 2012


 
 
MCLC LIST
From: Rui Kunze <rui.kunze at googlemail.com>
Subject: comments on liberal critique of Mo Yan
***********************************************************

Many words have been said about politicizing Mo Yan so far. I find,
however, the issue of depoliticizing his works, especially by some
"liberal" scholars, is not yet talked about. I'm sending you my thoughts
on the texts of Xu Jilin 许纪霖 and Xiao Han 萧瀚 on Mo Yan and Nobel Prize
in 
Literature. 

Rui

==========================================================

Comments on the Liberal Critique of Mo Yan

The debate about the politics and poetics of Mo Yan and the Nobel Prize in
Literature is ebbing these days. I agree with many colleagues here that Mo
Yan’s liteary works effectively speak for his social and political
engagements. What still interests me is the fact that most criticisms of
Mo Yan came from what Brendan O’Kane called “liberal-minded Chinese
Twitter users,” including some “liberal scholars.” Here I will present two
examples with my analysis. The complacency of these “liberal scholars”
seems alarming to me: they made their grand criticisms of Mo Yan without
truly referring – neither politically nor literarily – to his works and
refuse to acknowledge the efforts of Mo Yan constantly testing and pushing
the limits of the ideological control in China with his literary texts.

 
Xu Jilin 许纪霖,  a professor at East China Normal University, posted a long
microblog text (长微博) “Why do I Criticize Mo Yan” (我为什么批评莫言)
http://www.weibo.com/xujilin57 on Oct. 12, accusing Mo Yan of being
insincere to his own principles. According to Xu, Mo Yan’s literary choice
is inconsistent with the literary ideas that he claims to believe – Xu
does not clearly define the ideas, but in the context it seems to be those
in Mao’s Yan’an Talks, which Mo Yan participated in hand copying this
year. The fact that Mo Yan does not bother to stick to the literary ideas
he claims to believe means that he is a person who does not stick to his
own principles, so argues Xu. The failure to maintain his own principles
makes Mo Yan part of the “evil of mediocrity” (平庸的恶), alluding perhaps
to 
Hannah Arendt’s “the banality of evil.”

Xu seems to expect from Mo Yan either a blunt refusal of hand copying the
Yan’an Talks or a sincere acceptance of it. Anything in between is
insincere, or in my reading, dishonest. As a result, thereason of
criticizing Mo Yan here is not because his literary works support the
ideas of the Yan’an Talks but rather because they do not – only Mo Yan is
not “man enough” to make it clear?! I honestly cannot subscribe to this
view. Can we in fact read Professor Xu’s text as sort of endorsing Mo
Yan’s  achievement since his works do not follow the literary principles
in the Yan’an Talks?

Xiao Han 萧瀚, a professor at China University of Political Science and Law
who is known for suffering repeated censorship for his liberal ideas,
raises the question of whether the Nobel Prize in Literature can be
awarded to a supporter of dictatorship in his essay entitled “A Rose
Growing in the Concentration Camp is also a Rose” (长在集中营里的玫瑰也是玫
瑰),which 
was contributed to the Chinese version of the New York Times
http://cn.nytimes.com/article/opinion/2012/10/17/cc17xiaohan/ (Oct.17).
After comparing Mo Yan’s literary achievement and his relation with the
state to those of many examples including Mikhai Sholokhov and Leni
Riefenstahl, Xiao comes to the “poetic” conclusion that Beauty (art)
prevails and politics does not. Therefore, “a rose growing in the
concentration camp” is also a beautiful rose.

It seems to me that Xiao’s ideas in this essay are the most
counterproductive – but unfortunately widely accepted – ones in discussing
Mo Yan and contemporary Chinese literature. The opening question of this
essay already presumes that Mo Yan is a supporter of dictatorship and thus
politicizes the author. The rest of the essay, however, argues for
depoliticizing artistic works using a copious supply of proper and
improper examples. The comparison between Mo Yan and Riefenstahl is
revealing. Xiao just looks at the “friendly” relationship between the two
artists and their states, while ignoring a substantial difference between
the works of Mo Yan and those of Riefenstahl: Mo Yan’s literary works have
a clear tension with the ideology of the PRC regime and its history
writing, but Riefenstahl’s artistic works identify themselves with the
Nazi ideology. In other words, in his depoliticization of art, Xiao turns
a blind eye to the very political engagement of Mo Yan in his literary
creation.

The criticism of Mo Yan being politically incorrect by some Chinese
“liberal scholars” reminds me of the criticism of Han Han after he
published his thoughts on revolution and democracy around last Christmas.
Both Mo Yan and Han Han are accused of trying to please the regime. If the
“political correctness” of an artist has to be defined negatively by an
“evil” regime, then how would an artist stand on his own feet after this
regime is gone? The same question may also apply to some “public
intellectuals” in the PRC.
 



More information about the MCLC mailing list