Emotional Politics:A Study Of Liang-qichao’s "Novels Enlighten People"

In his novel theory,Liang-Qichao greatly emphasised the importance of’emotion’ that has the incredible power of the novel.However,he created large areas of boring ’speech’ and ’reasoning’ in his novels,for example,the long novel The Future of New China.In fact,’speech’ is also a kind of emotion,though it is more subtle and deeper.Thus,by cutting into Liang Qichao’s idea of "Novels Enlighten People" from the perspective of emotion,it is not difficult to find that the people deconstructed the cultural salvation aspirations of intellectual enlightenment by means of their own economic aspirations through "complaining of hardships".Here,the failure of enlightenment is due to the fact that the ’Ordinary People’ challenged the external indoctrination of enlightenment with their own subjectivity.In this way,"Novels Enlighten People" is ostensibly a revolutionary proposition on the triad of ’new novel/new people/new nation’,but in fact it is embedded in the relational proposition of ’literature/emotion/revolution’.Liang-Qichao used literature’s infectious and inflammatory effect on people’s emotions as a political tool to promote the development of revolution,using the superficial literary revolutionary movement to promote the inner ethical and political revolution,and ultimately to achieve salvation.However,as the emotional revolution was always in the subconscious of the revolutionaries and was not explicitly a part of the revolution,the intellectuals’ construction of popular subjectivity was instead detached from the people’s own will and became a perfect picture of their own imagination.Secondly,Liang-Qichao’s revolution through emotion : on the one hand,to mobilize the political enthusiasm of the people and transform their minds for revolutionary salvation;on the other hand,he had to cut through the political changes of the previous stage and form a stable emotional community.In this sense,the majority of the Chinese people were behind the "Emotional New People".The point is also that the majority of society is not the "new people",but the people who need to be transformed.In Liang-Qichao’s logic,"education to save the country" became the quickest solution.His "education for national salvation" and "new people" were both imaginative visions that existed in the distant future rather than in the present reality.Thus,the dilemma of the revolutionary’Novel for a New People’ naturally emerged.However,the emergence of the ’dilemma’also opened up a new direction for the Chinese revolution,that the Chinese revolution was not only political and rational,but could also be literary and irrational.The top-down ’emotional’ enlightenment was no longer self-explanatory,but also influenced by the subject of the enlightenment.