| This dissertation aims to accomplish two things. One is to develop a theory of public discourse as a process for shaping cultural rituals. The other is to argue that, in reference to the theory developed, the New Culture Movement that took place in early Republican China was characteristically a liminal discourse, a discourse in which was generated a symbolic detachment from the past and a new cultural frame to interpret the necessity of the transition. My main contention is that, without examining the culture movement as a liminal discourse and hence a ritual construction of reality, one cannot understand with precision the highly articulated performances by which the new culturalists were able to overthrow a sacred symbol system--and create a new one--politically, ideologically, scientifically, and imaginatively. To articulate this argument, my inquiry will focus on discussing two main discursive contests: the Controversy over Eastern and Western Civilization and the Polemics on Science and Metaphysics. Not only did their discursive fields specifically embody the main concerns of the culture movement, but they also offered a particular approach to investigate the culture movement from the standpoint of its own discourse, to see how the interplay of cultural capital, practical competence, and linguistic complicity made the discourse as it was. In examining the culture movement from the standpoint of its own discourse, its organization, and process, this dissertation attempts to bring into existence both a new perspective for the study of the New Culture Movement and a different concept of the autonomy of cultural power. |
