| In this dissertation, "freedom" can be understood as "passages" in their literal, abstract and figurative senses. I consider the concept of "passages" as inspired initially by urban experience, and as the theme and aesthetic ideal of Xi Xi's fiction. Using Walter Benjamin's The Arcades Project (Das Passagen-Werk) and Michel de Certeau's notion of "street walkers" as a starting point, the most important characteristic of "passages" can be seen as their fluid, transient nature in terms of people, commercial goods, currency, information, etc.; and from the perspective of Paul Virilio's dromology, they can be spaces of "disappearance" in their most extreme form.;I use the term"passages", not only to refer to urban space and its practitioners in Xi Xi's novels (through the poetic and meticulous descriptions of ordinary people's daily lives, which demonstrates how Xi Xi's work represents the most concrete and liveliest parts of urban culture---in spite of theorists' notion of the city as an increasingly abstract space), but also to reflect the aesthetic features, ideals, and values developed over the years in Xi Xi's writing. Using the techniques of different points of view, dialogue, collage, intertextuality, mixed media, etc., Xi Xi's fiction enables formal fluidity and openness. But the obvious "postmodern" characteristics of these formal experiments do not aim at the elimination of meaning. Rather, the playful gestures in these works are full of affectionate attention toward the world. Xi Xi's work, therefore, adapts the fluidity of "passages" in a capitalist city, but at the same time, resists its ruthless nature. "Passages" in her work do not imply disappearance, but communication and dialogue. They also exhibit a vision of life: all things in the fluid universe can transform into each other. |
