Abstract
In this final chapter I will propose and discuss a new kind of aesthetics that is grounded in textual hybridity. This aesthetics of hybridity offers a new concept of cultural identity for our fast globalizing cultural context. Hillel Schwartz argues that in our culture of copy, “authenticity can no longer be rooted in singularity.”1 When an object is deemed original or unique, it then possesses authenticity. Authenticity thus does not necessarily conflict with hybridity as a hybrid is an entirely new (thus “unique” and “original”) product of different entities. Following this line of thought, we can also argue that a hybridized artwork-narrative can be authentic because the artwork has created for itself a new “aura” or style as manifested in the work’s aesthetics.
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Notes
The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays (first appeared in 1975 in Moscow), ed. by Michael Holquist, trans. by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), 358–61.
M. M. Bakhtin, “Discourse in Dostoevsky,” Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, ed. and trans. by Caryl Emerson (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1984). This book was first published in 1929 in Leningrad, under the title, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Art, then was expanded and republished in 1963 in Moscow under the current title.
Terry Eagleton, The Ideology of Aesthetic. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1990.
M. M. Bakhtin, “The Problem of the Text in Linguistics, Philology, and the Human Sciences: An Experiment in Philosophical Analysis,” Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, trans. by Vern W. McGee, ed. by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996, 1986), 105.
Lambert Zuidervaart, Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory (Cambridge & London: The MIT Press, 1994), 145.
Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory (originally published in Germany in 1970), trans. and ed. by Robert Hullot-Kentor (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), “Art, Society, Aesthetics,” 4.
In 1996, David Der-wei Wang edited a new collection, A Flower Remembers Her Previous Lives (Taipei: Rye Field, 1996), comprising seven of Zhu Tianwen’s earlier but most representative short stories, two chapters of what Zhu Tianwen called the “predecessor” of Notes of a DesolateMan—an incomplete novel which she titled Descendants of the Sun Goddess (my translation), and two chapters from Notes of a Desolate Man. The significance of this collection lies in its two prefaces and scholarly criticism by Huang Jinshu at the end of the book. The two prefaces are, “From ‘Diary of a Mad Man’ to Notes of a Desolate Man: On Zhu Tianwen, Hu Lancheng and Eileen Chang” written by the editor himself, which is an overview of Zhu’s literary development, and one which bears the same title as the collection but with an important subtitle: “Remembering Hu Lancheng in Eight Essays” (Ji Hu Lancheng bashu) written by the writer herself. From this article we learn how decidedly and deeply Hu Lancheng has shaped Zhu Tianwen as a writer and a thinker. Huang’s solid critical analysis at the end of the collection, “Descendants of the Sun Goddess—the Last Forty Chapters? The (Post)Modern Revelation ?” (my translation; Shenji zhi wu—hou sishihei? houxiandai qishilu?), traces precisely how the central thought of Notes of a Desolate Man can be attributed to Hu’s lasting aesthetic, philosophical, ideological, and moral influence on Zhu Tianwen.
The Dialogic of Imagination, ed. by Michael Holquist, trans. by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas, 1992), 101.
See Zhu Weichen, “A Desolate Man Trapped—A Gender Reading of Zhu Tianwen’s Notes of a Desolate Man” (Shoukuen zhuliu de tongzhehuangren— Zhu Tianwen Huanren Shouji de tongzhi yuedu). Chung-wai Literary Monthly (Taipei: Taiwan daxue waiwenxi), vol. 24, no. 3 (Aug. 1995): 142–59.
See Liu Liangya and her article, “Swinging between Modern and Postmodern: Issues of Nationality, Generation, Gender, and Desire in Zhu Tianwen’s Recent Fiction” (Baidong zai xiandai yu hoxiandai zhijian: Zhu Tianwen jinqizuopinzhong de guozhu, shidai, xingbie, qingyu wenti ). Chung-wai Literary Monthly, vol. 24, no. 1 (June 1995): 7–19.
T’ientven Chu, Notes of a Desolate Man (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999).
The idea here is closely linked with my earlier discussion of l’objet petit a. For detailed analysis, please see Slavoj Zižek, “The Undergrowth of Enjoyment: How Popular Culture can Serve as an Introduction to Lacan,” New Formations, vol. 9 (1989): 7–29;
later collected in The Zižek Reader, ed. by Elizabeth Wright and Edmond Wright (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999).
I am borrowing this term developed by Emily Apter in her study of women and fetishism in Feminizing the Fetish: Psychoanalysis and Narrative Obsession in Turn-of-Century France (Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press, 1991).
Aesthetic Theory, ed. by Gretel Adorno and Rolf Tiedemann (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 172.
“Enigmaticalness, Truth Content, Metaphysics,” Aesthetic Theory; Lambert Zuidervaart, Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1994).
The historical degradations surrounding hybrid/hybridity is clearly delineated and analyzed by Robert J. C. Young in his Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race (London & New York: Routledge, 1995).
Debating Cultural Hybridity: Multi-Cultural Identities and the Politics of Anti-Racism, ed. by Pnina Werbner and Tariq Modood (London & New Jersey: Zed Books, 1997), 5.
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© 2006 Lingchei Letty Chen
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Chen, L.L. (2006). Globalizing the Self: The Aesthetics of Hybridity. In: Writing Chinese. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403982988_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403982988_8
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