There are some similarities between Chinese and American literature and cultural studies:

(1) The academic conferences I attended and the classes I taught were very similar to those in the United States. The arrangement of academic conferences is the same. Various papers are discussed in groups, followed by tea breaks and group meals. I can hardly see any signs of ideological control, nor can I see that these teachers and students are Marxists in the strict sense. The only round-table discussion is free. To my surprise, I heard my colleague China's sharp argument about whether there is freedom of speech in China. The old scholar said, "Of course it exists." And several young people retorted: "No!" This is extremely rare and atypical.

My hotel is also very similar to an American hotel. The university classes in China are the same as those in the United States, and there is time for questions and discussions after class. The classrooms and students are the same as those in America. I can hardly feel the mystery or exoticism of the East. Although people eat with chopsticks, the food is a little different. Articles published by China scholars, such as the study of foreign literature in Wuhan Huazhong Normal University, are the same as those published in similar magazines or collections in Europe and America. For example, Volume 28, No.6, June 5438+February 2006, such as the analysis of dreams in Shakespeare's plays, Proust and Balzac, Flaubert's game: the narrative analysis of Madame Bovary, and some obviously theoretical articles, such as Pound as a new historian. Poetry and poetics in the era of globalization "sounds familiar.

(2) From my first visit to China to my recent visit, I was deeply impressed by the enthusiasm of Professor China and his students for knowledge. The academic circles and students in China are very good. Professors and students show amazing self-confidence: what they do is very important and they have the ability to do it well. The implication behind this is to assume that China people are the best. I vaguely feel that China is one of the few places in the world, and everyone is friendly, respectful and polite. 1987 came to China for the first time and was sent by American College of Arts and Sciences. I came to Beijing with scholars from different disciplines, such as history, business, philosophy and sociology, and discussed the future of our respective disciplines with my colleagues from the famous China Academy of Social Sciences.

They want me to talk about western literary theory. To tell the truth, those people from the Institute of Foreign Literature who attended the seminar at that time didn't leave much impression on me. Most of them are very old. Except Russian, they obviously don't understand other western languages, and they are all influenced by China left by the Soviet Union. Now, all this has long ceased to exist, replaced by talented young scholars, who are usually trained in places like Harvard University. Changes in the Institute of Foreign Literature of China Academy of Social Sciences have also taken place in political and academic institutions in China.

I emphasized the similarities between Chinese and American higher education, and I didn't feel any discomfort at universities and academic conferences in China. Now let me talk about the differences between Chinese and American literary studies.

Universities in both countries are rooted in the politics, economy and culture of a single nation state. At present, American universities are facing some problems. The decline of American economy will inevitably affect American universities. In the past 20 years, American universities have become increasingly dependent on corporate funding. Government agencies, such as the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and the National Humanities Foundation, are allocating less and less funds. The research funds of American universities come from big pharmaceutical companies, big oil companies and telecom companies. Universities are operating more and more like companies, and the president's salary is surprisingly high. Everything is done according to the accountability system, that is, according to the profit rate. Many teaching jobs are undertaken by part-time teachers, who can only get the lowest living wage, have no chance to get tenure, and have little or no benefits. Tuition fees have risen rapidly, and many undergraduate and vocational college students owe hundreds of thousands of debts borrowed from banks after graduation. Due to the rapid change of disciplines, the courses in the literature department are chaotic, and there is no consensus among universities on what to teach and how to combine various courses coherently, without any * * * knowledge. I used to think that if California legislators came to visit the English Department or the Comparative Literature Department in Irvine and saw the courses offered, they would ask us to explain why the various courses were mixed. I don't think we can explain it clearly. The freedom to teach your favorite courses is an unparalleled privilege, which I have benefited a lot from in the past, but it may be better if some colleagues teach courses related to you and reach a general agreement on the teaching objectives of this subject.

The situation at China University is very different. On the one hand, as we all know, China's economy has achieved one success after another, and its annual gross national product is growing at a high speed. This means that the state obviously has a lot of money to fund, expand old universities and establish new ones. Although the competition to enter the best university in China is fierce, just like in the United States, I infer that once you enter the university, the cost is still quite low. As far as I can see, China students are still very simple. Almost all teachers have tenure. I was told that every class has a "monitor", and a young teacher from China University assured me that there was considerable freedom in teaching within the prescribed curriculum, and the teacher encouraged students to innovate their ideas. He said, "In order to facilitate teaching, teachers usually follow a certain literature history book, but its goal is not to realize collective knowledge." Teachers encourage and attach great importance to innovation and original explanations, as long as students can prove themselves. In my literature class, I told my students that we should have different views on the interpretation of literary texts, not the same views. Different views really help to enrich literary texts. Academic journals only accept articles with new ideas. "

Most university courses, such as English literature, are set by the National Committee, the Foreign Language Steering Committee of the Ministry of Education. At the same time, it is hoped that professors can teach according to the bibliography listed in the list. In my opinion, the overall arrangement of the English Department is to cover a coherent and obviously conservative classic work and topic. Compulsory courses include basic English, advanced English, phonetics, listening, reading, English writing, English grammar, interpretation and translation, as well as English linguistics, English literature, American literature and academic writing. Elective courses include English prose, English drama, English poetry, English novels, teaching methods, rhetoric and so on. I listed the extracurricular reading list of the Ministry of Education in the footnote. People familiar with the situation told me that not all the writers on the list should mention that the English department of each university chooses different writers. He said, "Foreign literature courses usually cover important literary schools or representative works of writers in the literary age. I don't think there is a strict agreement among universities on which works to choose. What is marked in red is likely to be chosen by all university teachers. Teachers can also choose contemporary writers, such as John Bass and Dolis Lessing. Only a few chapters of a novel are required to be read and discussed in class, not the whole work. But students should know the overall outline of the novel before reading the selected chapters carefully. Not many universities offer Australian and Canadian literature. Our Australian literature courses include Australian literature history, Australian contemporary novel studies, and patrick white studies. "

There are six differences, which are considered as a convenient way to describe American literature and cultural studies.

(1) Relatively speaking, China scholars obviously lack interest in putting forward new ideas. Generally speaking, they are more concerned about reaching an understanding or putting forward existing views. In the west, on the contrary, we are taught that we must put forward some new ideas and something that no one has said before, so that we can publish a paper or a book properly. Folkmar was the only western scholar in this period. At the beginning of his long thesis "China's Postmodernism Novels", he pointed out that "China's postmodernism is different from that of the United States and Europe." This means that before him, no one understood the relationship between China's modernity and postmodernism. Gu Mingdong, who teaches in the United States, may misappropriate some of our viewpoints, and when discussing Lu Xun, he will put forward some viewpoints different from previous comments. Westerners believe that there is no reason to repeat what has been said before in literary research. China people, at least China scholars in this issue of Modern Language Quarterly believe that if it is true, it should be said repeatedly, from generation to generation, from scholars to students. Like all my comparisons, these are just some trends, not absolute differences. I'm interested in your views on this issue. I wonder if what I know is true. Or is this issue of the newspaper not typical?

(2) China scholars in this issue are very concerned about the correctness of literary stages, naming and feature generalization. This may be part of Wang Ning's important instructions to them. We in China and westerners said confidently, "I'm reading a postmodern work" or "a modernist work", and we didn't feel any discomfort. Staging, no matter how big the problem is, gives readers a sense of security. However, it only satisfies the function of a classification and replaces the works actually read. For example, "Aha! That's a postmodern feature. Its function is only to prevent readers from asking the meaning of a paragraph, what's so special about it. This simple classification cannot stand the test. Staging is an important part in the study of Chinese and western literature. For westerners, the present is relatively unimportant, and everyone agrees. Even if it is suspected that staging will be over-generalized, staging will eliminate important differences between writers in a certain period or place. We, at least I am, are more interested in the particularity of a writer's works and whether he/she is suitable. It is easy to list the characteristics of postmodern style, like Jameson, the most influential theorist. For example, I once talked about Cervantes in an article, and the characteristics listed by Folkmar in this issue have existed in western novels (including China's novels mentioned in this issue) from the beginning, such as Cervantes' Dog Dialogue (16 13) and Cao Xueqin's Dream of Red Mansions. In the chapter "Dream of Red Mansions" of China's novel theory, Gu Mingdong mentioned that this masterpiece has many postmodern features. This issue of Gu Mingdong's authoritative paper "Lu Xun and Modernism/Postmodernism" reveals that Lu Xun's creation combines the themes and style characteristics of modernism and postmodernism, although Lu Xun has never been exposed to western modernist works when writing novels, prose poems and essays, let alone postmodern works (which did not exist at that time). His conclusion is that, on the one hand, Lu Xun saw the post-modernism features in China's traditional literature, on the other hand, he also fell into the predicament of his own experimental new form creation.

Although Gu Mingdong's paper accepted the established stage, and its goal was to divide the stages of Lu Xun's works, his paper inadvertently exerted great tension on the stages. If the postmodern style can be found in Chinese and foreign works for hundreds of years, it seems that the classification of 1) is extremely unreliable; 2) The stylistic features, conceptual features and narrative features we use to name "postmodernism" may actually have nothing to do with the history of the language used in literature.

This issue of Folkmar's article focuses on distinguishing three different forms of post-modernism in culture, and puts forward that any of these three post-modernism assumes that "the traditional relationship between the signified and the signified is no longer applicable." The stage used by Folkmar is different from that used by China scholars, and the characteristics of the stage are more complicated, and a large number of examples are cited to prove his point.

(3) China scholars believe that the historical context almost completely determines a writer's creation. This may be a residual Marxist concept, but many European and American cultural studies also have the same idea. Chen's paper is such an example. His model of historical determinism is complex and elaborate, but he firmly believes in this presupposition. Readers will notice that Chen uses a vague organism or naturalistic metaphor ("Modernist poetry, as a new form of poetry, will not be born out of thin air." ), he explained in detail two different reasons for the emergence of modernist poetry: one is the social and historical conditions in China, and the other is the influence of the inflow of western knowledge. The impact of these reasons is twofold and unpredictable. However, when these two reasons are mixed together anyway, they all play a decisive role.

Foucault's views on the relationship between postmodern writers and historical and social context are quite different, which is beyond my expectation. I say "unexpected" because most western cultural researchers (and literary researchers) have different views and are very close to Chen's position. Compared with Jameson and Lyotard, as a literary style, postmodernism is more obviously different from postmodernism as an economic, social and historical condition. Fokma said, "I regard postmodernism as a literary trend of thought, a literary social dialect used by writers, critics and readers, and distinguish it from postmodernism as a contemporary social and political situation. Ronald gerhardt has made extensive empirical research on post-modernity, and Lyotard, david harvey, Bertens and others have also made specific analysis. " Folkmar realized that historical conditions would play a role. "We must consider geographical, cultural and historical differences." But he thinks that the change from modernism to postmodernism (just like any other style change) is just because the writer is tired of a style, and now he wants to change it. "Social dialects of any style or literature, including modernism and post-modernism, will be exhausted, so people want to hear different things ... The new generation thinks that the existing concept of social life and economic conditions are no longer suitable and outdated, and should be replaced by new social explanations." Yeats said in a different tone, "Everything a man admires can last for a moment, or a day's pleasure/love drives away his love/painter's pen and erodes his dream. ("Two Songs in One Play" Fu Kemal explained the change of style with physiology. " Repeated stimulation of the same neuron will lead to a gradual decline in results. "His concise statement is somewhat similar to harold bloom's anxiety about influence. In Folkmar's view, changes in styles and conventions are controlled by internal logic and have little to do with history. The new generation yearns for and needs different styles. A social dialect is exhausted by the repetition of neurons. In a sense, this is good, although it is exaggerated, but the dialect of the new literature society is indeed "born out of thin air." Folkmar's more moderate statement is also surprising. "People want to hear different things. "Anyway, his views remind me of this issue of the magazine.

(4) The fourth feature is that they are very much like Americans, at least like me, and their description of a writer or school (such as kuya School) is highly abstract. Of course, Folkmar also used abstract expressions when expressing China's post-modernism characteristics, such as "flashy novels", "metalinguistic criticism" and the coexistence of modernism and post-modernism. Like most western literary studies, Folkmar thought it necessary to illustrate these abstract usages with examples to prove their correctness. He discussed the specific works in detail and quoted many, such as Wang Shuo's Please Don't Call Me Human (1989) and the analysis of several other works. Although Chen's article deals with China's poems in the whole 20th century, there are only two short quotations.

China scholars' papers usually rely on triple abstraction. The first is abstraction: a work, besides being identified by its name, will occasionally discuss China's novels in other papers, and use the most easily translated content, such as plot summary and character description. The second abstraction: almost no emphasis on the characteristics of a single work. The discussion of all the works of a certain genre or group (such as Nine Leaves School) seems to be the same, and it seems that the most important thing is to have characteristics with each other or with writers of the same period. The third abstraction: define these * * * features with conceptual statements, such as the misty poems mentioned by Chen and the two quotations I mentioned above (one is Beidao and the other is Shu Ting). "Between strong desire and useless form, these young poets have to express themselves desperately on the one hand, and have to hide themselves on the other. Therefore, non-traditional images are used to express hazy artistic strategies, and direct words and instinctive expressions are used to strengthen their emotions. In addition, those fragmented, unconventional and incomplete images, such as the binary opposition between self and society, history and the present, reality and fantasy, reason and absurdity, transience and eternity, have achieved unity in the unrestrained venting of the poet's passion. " I don't doubt the truth of what Chen said. His paper made me anxious to know the poems he mentioned, even through English translation. I want to see how they illustrate his views of "reality and fantasy, rationality and absurdity, transience and eternity" and how obscure their use of "non-traditional images" is. One of the greatest advantages of this paper is that it makes readers eager to read the works mentioned in the article. I am glad to find many English versions of China's modern literature on the Internet, such as many works of Lu Xun (http://www.Marx.org/archive/lu-xun/index.htm).

(5) Due to the lack of citations, the papers from China scholars are hardly accompanied by stylistic or formal analysis, nor do they pay attention to what westerners call "rhetoric" or "narratology". Recently, there are more and more such examples in American cultural studies. Folkmar has some formal analysis. For example, he said, "There are very few styles and techniques that Wang Shuo has never used. He tried to repeat long sentences without punctuation and absurd reasoning, and magnified political terms to absurd levels, thus producing a hilarious story, which he called the Cultural Revolution. Fat people have become a joke, at least in a more tolerant era, they don't make political mistakes. "It would be better if you could give examples of these styles and techniques. However, Folkmar secretly realized the significance of "style technique". However, although China literary scholars worship roland barthes, Derrida and others, at least in this issue of the paper, they have almost no style analysis. The works of other China scholars I know, such as Shen Dan, have style analysis in her narrative cases. For us, the new criticism and the subsequent "deconstruction" are decisive, even for those cultural critics, despite their hostility to it. People keep claiming "the death of deconstruction", but somehow it refuses to die. It may die out, but it will haunt our cultural criticism in broad daylight like a ghost. As a China scholar working in the United States, Gu Mingdong did notice the subtle linguistic devices, such as Jin Ping Mei and A Dream of Red Mansions, two traditional novels of China mentioned in his On China's Novels, and discussed the metaphorical meaning of the names of characters at considerable length.

(6) Finally, on this issue, China scholars are very concerned about the decisive role of Chinese translation of western works in the development of modern literature in China. However, they pay little attention to the differences between Chinese and western languages, which may have a decisive impact on a certain language, thus limiting translation. They seem to assume that China literature can be translated into English, and western literature can be translated into Chinese, without great loss. They have no doubt about the great differences between the cultures of China and China and the western languages and cultures. I doubt whether this is the case. I know nothing about Chinese. I have long been told that the literary form and writing meaning of Chinese are different from those of English, German and French. Therefore, it is necessary to compare the Chinese and western versions of The Same Text side by side and discuss their differences in semantics, grammar, syntax, rhetoric and genre assumptions. Gu Mingdong's On China's Novels has such a statement. I don't know much about it, but I can see the translation and the loss in translation from his works. American China literary scholars, such as Huan Suoxi, are more interested in the influence of the characteristics of spoken and written Chinese on meaning.