[Keywords:] Contemporary; Unexpected construction; Diversity of time; Regional diversity
[China Library Classification Number] I 106 [Document Identification Number] A [Document Contribution Number]1004-518x (2012) 06-0084-06
Shi (195 1-), male, researcher and doctoral supervisor, Institute of Foreign Languages, China Academy of Social Sciences. His main research interests are western literary theory and comparative poetics between China and the West. (Beijing 100732)
In recent years, a number of famous scholars in Europe and America have written monographs, such as Education in a Problem World by French scholar Michel Fable, Post-modernity Paradox by Claude Yavo, Faith, Desire and Action by Pierre Marie, On Problems by Belgian philosopher Michel Meyer, Essays on Subject Citizenship and Philosophical Anthropology by Etienne Baribal, and David Lewis, an Anglo-American scholar. In particular, Jean Bayssiere, a professor of comparative literature at New Sorbonne University and honorary president of the International Society of Comparative Literature, has accumulated a contemporary concept. This is a new trend of thought. The author has seen these thoughts and scholars' solutions to the crisis factors of modernity.
The centralized generalization of modernity from the ideological level began in 2008, the year of financial crisis and economic crisis in the west.
The first reflection of contemporariness in literary creation, or the first characteristic of contemporary thought, is to replace the individual anthropological vision and anthropological production of traditional novels from realism to postmodernism with super-individual anthropological vision (anthropological vision) or anthropological production (anthropological production).
People in academic circles often talk about the anthropological turn of literary creation, which is vague. In fact, from the realistic novels in the19th century, the novel creation has been based on the humanistic vision and humanistic education system, while the novel creation before the contemporary era was based on the individual humanistic vision and humanistic education system. For example, realism regards novels as the narrative of life, and the characters are personalized heroes who come from life and are higher than life; Modernism regards novels as the main problem, and the characters in modernist novels are subjective and personalized problem characters; The new novel hopes to find another way, and the characters are still individual characters under the appearance of material desires; Postmodernism regards novels as the display of super individualism, and there is always a super personality in postmodern novels who subverts all his previous values through reflection. The transcendental anthropological vision and anthropological production of contemporary novels have their own sources, especially from ethnographic novels, post-colonial novels and non-western novels. This is an answer to the limitations of anthropological production of western novels since19th century. It forms a triple contrast with modernism, modernism, new novels and post-modern novels, that is, the contrast between prototype processing, unexpected processing, uniqueness and paradigm processing. This triple contrast completely updates the display of anthropology and also leads to the display of differences.
Contemporary novels disassemble the anthropological production of personality, which is not confused with the epistemological implication and interpretation restriction of anthropological production of personality. The characters it provides are no longer heroes of realistic novels (but retain heroic fantasies), nor problem characters of modernist novels, but ordinary people, ordinary people and anyone. The reflection of contemporary novels is also different from post-modern novels. It is no longer an isolated super-subject activity, but a reflection of many personalities and a society. Reflection is no longer just subverting traditional values, but giving many possibilities. Contemporary novels also give up the concept of equating novels with literature and language, which is the real decisive factor of modern, modernist and post-modern novels and the main means to construct novels into a prototype, and the anthropological production of individuality is ultimately associated with and surrendered to this prototype. The so-called super-individuality, that is to say, from the characters in contemporary novels, we can certainly see the other and the other, the collectivity, the culture of our own nation, the culture of other nations, the past and the future besides the present. The images of modern, modernist and postmodern novels, which pursue distinctive personality, reflect on personality problems and express super-individualism, have been replaced by the super-individualism of contemporary novels, which integrates multiple people, multiple cultures and multiple time and space. In this sense, super-individuality is the subversion and resolution of individualism.
Since ancient Roman times, individualism has become one of the basic elements of western civilization. The origins of individualism advocated by western modernity are multiple, such as the private law and sculpture art in ancient Rome, Descartes' excessive publicity of personal importance when he broke away from Plato's transcendental metaphysical thought tradition, Calvin's Protestant reform's extensive influence among the people, Locke's individualism and liberalism, the French bourgeois revolution from 65438 to 0789 and the Declaration of Human Rights and Citizenship, and the influence of British sociologist Spencer. Individualism is the foundation for westerners to settle down. Westerners must control everything. He will not let a political party, his boss or the country decide his future and destiny, and decide anything related to himself. He must exercise his right to decide. Socialism envisioned by the founders of Marxism has been realized in Eastern Europe and some eastern countries, but it has not been realized in Western Europe, the hometown of Marxism. In addition to capitalism not giving full play to its own energy, individualism is an important factor. Therefore, socialism in western Europe did not develop according to the design of the founders of Marxism, but because of the constant struggle between the working class and the people, many socialist factors were accommodated under the authority of capitalism. It is right to fight for individual freedom and democratic rights. However, excessive and even extreme individualism and extremely inflated personal desires are also one of the factors leading to the crisis of modernity. Calvin's view of responsibility is closely related to fatalism. The so-called "duty view" is to redouble our efforts in secular work, which is a duty and the best reward for God's holy election. The so-called "fatalism" means that the salvation of a person's soul is predetermined by God, and all religious ceremonies such as sacraments and confessions are not the way to be saved. So Calvin's Protestantism despises religious ceremonies. Because every parishioner is worried that he will be abandoned by God, he tries to determine God's favor with his secular professional achievements. Therefore, under the background of free market, Calvin's concept of obligation and fatalism made the parishioners completely put down the burden of traditional religious ethics, made money and sought personal interests unscrupulously, and led individualism to some extreme.
The second characteristic of contemporary novels is that the duality of contingency and inevitability replaces the dominant position of uniqueness and paradigm duality in traditional novels in plot and overall structure. Western novel theory basically explains the duality of cases and types with uniqueness and duality of paradigms, which can be read from Lukacs' works to Thomas Parvel's works. Mikhail Bakhtin also failed to get rid of this understanding. In the above duality, the relationship between individuality and typicality, paradigm and rule, individuality and universality should obviously be constructed. However, there are often two kinds of emptiness in this duality, that is, uniqueness lacks universality and regularity, while universality and regularity lack positivism. When western critics talk about novels, especially modern, modernist and post-modern novels, they discuss the uniqueness of lack of universality and the lack of demonstration universality. The contemporary novel view holds that the novel is actually an accidental and arbitrary genre. Reality is full of contingency and arbitrariness. Chance does not rule out inevitability; It even presupposes the inevitability that there must be unexpected externalities. The word Fortuit itself has two meanings: accident and necessity. Any exhibition organized according to contingency and inevitability is acceptable, because in any case, contingency and inevitability are observable, and when they are observable, they become a practical problem of people's behavior. Any exhibition arranged according to contingency and inevitability is a problem of action itself, and novels form their own media characteristics according to this problem. In this way, contemporary novels show the duality of contingency and inevitability with their own narratives.