Rethinking Lu Xun's Spiritual Dilemma Under The Historical Perspective Of "modernization"

The study of Lu Xun in the 21 st century may be heading for a dilemma of repeated interpretation.The "modernization" historical research paradigm restarted by Chinese historians in the 1980 s may provide a new history perspective for the study of Lu Xun,especially the study of Lu Xun's spiritual predicament.The "modernization" history perspective formally put the process of China's continuous introduction and development of modern mode of production since the 19 th century(including the holistic changes of Chinese society brought about by this process)into the history investigation.The perspective which started from the introspection of the extreme overuse of revolution-oriented history research paradigm,has now developed into a widely used interpretation system of the history research in China.Lu Xun's spirit contains rich feelings about history.The "modernization" history perspective may bring us new insights and inspirations.Lu Xun's spiritual predicament can be summarized into four pairs of contradictions: belief in history evolution and reality in degenerate appearance;opposition between two worlds(old and new)and loss of author himself;intense desire to fight and little hope for victory;courageous positive action and more trapped situation.They are closely related to history.Through these,Lu Xun's revolution-centered history cognition could be uncovered,which is based on the decay and the semi-colonization of China society at that time.However,modernization process is another important history clue of China: besides darkness and revolution,the society Lu Xun lived in had made multidimensional progress little by little in the process of modernization;Lu Xun's own growth had also profoundly benefited from the modernization process and ultimately he grew into one of new generation of China intellectuals;meantime,ordinary people in the process had positive participation and brave response to the social reality of the country in a series of important historical events,such as the railway construction's and mining's rights regaining movement(1900s),the unfortunate experience of China in Paris Peace Conference(1919)and so on.And these are relatively different from the times,author himself and the ordinary people in Lu Xun's texts,and from Lu Xun's revolution-centered history cognition which was activated by the decay and the semi-colonization of China at that time.They could lead us to rethink Lu Xun's spiritual predicament which is closely related to history.From the "modernization" history perspective,we could re-interpret Lu Xun's spiritual predicament from three aspects: value judgment,perceptual cognition and temperament characteristic.First of all,Lu Xun's spiritual predicament stems from his unipolar judgment which is not completely suited to China's multidimensional development situations at that time,and from his unipolar value measurement mostly based on spirituality or culture.However,spiritual or culture could not hold all contents of history alone.Secondly,Lu Xun's spiritual predicament also stems from his emotional rejection of the gradual process of China's historical change at that time.Lu Xun had almost completely negative attitude toward the thought of "Chinese essence and Western utility",which had provided important theoretical support for modernization reforms in late Qing Dynasty.Last but not least,Lu Xun's spiritual predicament is a kind of predicament of re-creation due to his vulnerable temperament.Compared with the long and hard modernization development of China,Lu Xun has a relatively vulnerable temperament;it can not block Lu Xun's creative practice in his life,but makes Lu Xun's mind full of distresses and doubts about the re-creation after some failures of creation.