Description
Book SynopsisDeleuze and Chinese Pure Literature: Literary Worlding from History to Becoming probes into the potentialities of a new conception of literature obscured by the critical ambivalence in China's literary field around the turn of the century. With the help of Gilles Deleuze's philosophy, this book articulates many of the latent social, political, and cultural ideas embedded in pure literature subsisting as a literary sensibility waiting to be expressed. The specific practices and works of pure literature analyzed in the book also serve as instances of what Deleuze's creative concepts can address, testing and fleshing out their efficacy. Identifying shared problem-solving areas between Deleuze's philosophy and Chinese pure literature, Jian Xu uses them to shed light on the hidden edges of Chinese pure literature. Through such Deleuzian theses as the immanence of becoming, the need of the nonhistorical, the virtual real and pure event, the ills of representationalism, becoming-minoritari
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction: What is “Pure Literature?”
Chapter 2: Appreciating “Pure Literature” through Deleuze
Chapter 3: The Challenge of “Subaltern Literature”
Chapter 4: From History to Becoming
Chapter 5: Yan Lianke: A Realism of the Virtual
Chapter 6: Wang Anyi: The Literary Image of Thought
Chapter 7: Mo Yan: Nonhistorical Becoming as Content of the Form
Chapter 8: Lin Bai: Becoming-Woman, Becoming-Literature
Chapter 9: Conclusion: “Pure Literature” and Control Societies
Bibliography
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