Power·Speech·Political Culture

It is no so much as what is or should be signified as how to or for what reason it is signified. This dissertation focused on the significance of Xia Yan's work within the cultural coordinates of a certain political background to search for the its notion under specific time, space and cultural background for further abstraction of his philosophical, functional and methodological tendency in his works as well as critics. The dissertation is hereunder divided into seven chapters:The first chapter: Political Culture, Power, and Subject of Practice. This chapter examined the methodology and research angle, as well as defined and explained a number of core keywords and theoretical propositionThe second chapter: Dangling Between the Role of a Fighter and the Road of a Poet. This chapter analyzed the complicated inner world in a micro way in the direction of political cultural psychology and individual emotional feature. He was always under the temptation "to win awards", which appeared to him occasionally like a magic flute; meanwhile, "an ignorant children's heart" was protecting him like "a little elf. He was indulged in the freedom of writing as well as the intellectual thinking of the theoretical understanding, which paradox was reflected in the multiple, even conflicts of the texts.The third chapter: Option of Speech Strategy and Writing Style. This chapter launched the discussion of Xia Yan's writing style choice by analyzing the speech strategy. His translation of foreign literature works marked a sharp turn of Xia Yan from a reader to a writer. This chapter highlighted the trace of enlightenment of modernity in his translation works, how the writer's thinking habits were formed, influence of readers' interests, his expansion in the exploration of writing methods, the introduction and application of writing style patterns and t writing techniques. This chapter also gave light on how Xia Yan, in favor of "publicity" and "popularity", intentionally ignored poems and novel to drum for the national combats with critics and dramas.The fourth chapter: Political Imagination of Literature. This chapter described Xia Yan's blueprints for a beautiful future. In this chapter, various images of "the organization" were given detailed analysis for its introductory function in social life, people's struggle in the depressive time was featured to explain the complex of "under the roof, his imagination about the state was abstracted from the narration of U.S.S.R. and new China, and the analysis of his "heroes and small potatoes" was used to illustrate his thoughts about human and humanity. The fifth chapter: The Restricted Passion. This chapter discussed the alternation of his passion for literature and that for revolution, as well as the demonstration of his emotional expression to annotate how political culture restricted his speech manners.The sixth chapter: Pack up the History and Plea for Innocence. This chapter concentrated on his work to "pack up the history" to give justification of the Nation and the Party as well as his anxiety of personal identity in the new times, to manifest how personal motivation was inserted into the national speech to rebuild self-identity and faith so that the present power was finally justified by quoting the past history of revolution.The seventh chapter: Isomorphic Intertextuality. This chapter compared myriad texts of Xia Yan, traced the intertextual, multicultural and fabric of diversified speeches to display mutual dialogue between reflection, integration, criticism, denial, correction, and adjustment, which contained the deepness of writing and fulfillness of cultural and social historical significance as well as the complicated writing attitude of Xia Yan under current political culture.Politics is the "actional life" and culture is the "actionless life". Speeches are never self-contained while presence of speeches is the action of power. Xia Yan's dilemma to attach or alienate individual speech practice to the social political and cultural hegemony in the 20th century was encounter by most reasoned Chinese intellectuals during the course of modernization.