The Ghost Of Enlightenment

"Speech at the Forum of Art and Literature in Yan’an"(I refer to it as the "Speech" in the following.) has an significant impact on Chinese art and literature since it was written by Mao Zedong in1942. It opened the prelude to a new era of literary norms and cultural system, so that the Chinese literary world showed an unprecedented new face. Therefore, the "Speech" has always been a research hotspot of Chinese academic study. But when we enter the "Speech", we always encounter two problems:the attitude and the method. Different attitudes we have to the "Speech" means different value judgments to it. Over the past70years, people have different evaluation on the "Speech", and behind the positive or negative attitude are two different deductions from the ideology of "the Left" and "the Right" in the Chinese intelligentsia. I do not want to be involved in these two studies, and try my best to avoid directly simple value judgments on the "Speech". I try to go deep into inside text of the "Speech", studying how this particular literary theory developed and what effect it brought. Methods relates to how to dissect the "Speech". Since the past70years, the research methods and interpretation dimension of the "Speech" have been expanding. On the basis of previous studies, this paper will think of enlightenment as a key to start the "speech", by cleaning up several central concept sets——"People"、"Intellectual" and "Enlightenment"——in the "speech" in the way of archaeology of knowledge, examining the origins, development, evolution and the process of shaping of these words in the history of ideology and culture, in order to understand the subject, policies and consequences of modernity the "Speech" created in the theory of the enlightenment.The prologue of this paper begin with a conversation made by Mao Zedong and Xiao Jun, roughly introducing the historical background in which the "speech" was born and the property of text due to the imprint of history. The historical background discussed includes war status of the1940s, the overall conditions of literary and art circles in the Yan’an period and many movements in Chinese modern history joined by the "speech" as an literary policy, relating to the Comintern, the power struggle within the Communist party, confrontation between the KMT and the CPC, imperialist aggression, rectification movement in Yan’an and so on. In historical macroscopic visual field, the "speech" will be accepted as multiple texts of history, philosophy, literature and politics. In the contexts, this paper embarks on a journey of enlightenment, starting comb keywords.Firstly,"People". The "People" is the core of the theory of the "Speech". This paper will analyze the concept of the "People", and demonstrate its ambiguity and conflict, and try to examine these questions:Who is the "People"? How "People" was narrated in the "speech"? The "Speech" ended a variety of different imaginations of the new literature on "People" from May Fourth Movement to1940s, using political power and literary imagination to make the word "People" finally point to the workers, peasants and soldiers. Combing the "People" on diachronic and synchronic words’ lineages, we could find that the use of the words "public","people" and "the masses" on the "Speech" is confusing. These words can replace each other, so that these words reflect that Mao Zedong shaped the new historical subject in Yan’an Literature, by borrowing.collective nature of "the masses", political attributes of the "People" and folk nature of the "public".Secondly," Intellectual ". The "Intellectual" is the real problem that the "Speech" urgently needs to solve. An important outcome of the "Speech" and Rectification Movement in Yan’an is that "intellectuals" are successfully organized into a huge machine of "revolution". With the emergence of the name of "intellectuals","intellectuals" were gradually organized into the narrative of the revolution. During May Fourth Movement,"intellectuals" emerged as "intellectual class". The shift from the "intellectual class" to "intellectuals", in fact, was the process that an independent class was broken up and given new meaning. Only those progressive and revolutionary molecules in "intellectual class" can be called "intellectuals"."Intellectuals" could become moralized and legalization only by means of the revolution.Thirdly,"Enlightenment". The "Speech" is not devoted to expound the word "Enlightenment", but "Enlightenment" as a device always lies within the "Speech". The "speech" as the representative of Yan’an Enlightenment contains a new dialectic of Enlightenment that is two-way Enlightenment. It is different from the self-identification and self-collapse inside Enlightenment that the Western Marxists revealed. It brings "the other" to "Enlightenment", rather than making "Enlightenment" self-circle in one-dimension. It brings revolution, belief and the other subject, leading the Enlightenment to be finally translated into a revolutionary practice that dual subjects relatively complement and reason and passion interact. The "Speech" interconnects "Intellectual" and "People" thus to provide a possible solution to solve the crisis of the Enlightenment. In the literary and artistic heritage that Yan’an left to China, the "Enlightenment" expands in the manner of anti-enlightenment. The "Enlightenment" in the "Speech" is not only a theory, but also a practice. This practice finally realized effective connection between tradition and modernity, which deserves that people of today and in the future continue to think deeply and explore.