Ethnography of a Chinese essay zawen in contemporary China

This dissertation thesis explores the poetics, politics and social implications of writing, editing, publishing, reading and responding to a specific type of essay called zawen. The zawen, despite the misleading appellation which translates as "miscellaneous essay," is a more or less established genre of short, boisterous critical essays that appear in popular Chinese newspapers and periodicals. They are highly stylized in presentation, sometimes marked by technical features such as special fonts or borders on the page. Even when they are not marked typographically, they are announced by special rhetorical techniques such as classical language, subtle allusions, outrageous or extreme positions or images, or pervasive ironic tone. The study of zawen illuminates three areas of contemporary Chinese culture: the connection between imagination and community, the nature of performance and text, and the practice of dissent.;My ethnographic examination of the community of writers, editors, and readers that participate in zawen performance reveals that zawen are recognized acts in specific, if transient, social contexts. I demonstrate how they are held to be a public form of social performance, in which critical moral opinions are delivered, and powerful emotional connections are sought with readers. The acknowledged and unacknowledged spaces that frame zawen on the newspaper page are precisely the corners and margins that many Chinese readers inspect closely for signs of change impending changes in the political and moral climate, signaled by the continual "pen-wars" of zawen. I also include a diachronic account of how the active promotion of cultural change and moral temper through the publication of zawen has been a constant through succeeding eras of widely different political structures in China, and has developed into a complex and evolving symbol of the changing ethical "imaginary" of today.