From Ah Q to Lei Feng : Freud and revolutionary spirit in 20th century China

337 Pages·2009·3.94 MB·English

by  Larson

From Ah Q to Lei Feng

From Ah Q
to Lei Feng
freud and revolutionary spirit
in 20th century china
Wendy Larson
stanford university press
stanford, california
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
©2009 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, elec-
tronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage
or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press.
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Larson, Wendy.
From Ah Q to Lei Feng : Freud and revolutionary spirit in 20th century China / Wendy
Larson.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8047-0075-7 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Chinese literature—20th century—History and criticism. 2. Psychoanalysis and litera-
ture—China. 3. Psychoanalysis and motion pictures—China. 4. China—History—Cul-
tural Revolution, 1966-1976—Literature and the revolution. 5. China—History—Cultural
Revolution, 1966-1976—Motion pictures and the revolution. 6. Literature and history—
China. I. Title. II. Title: Freud and revolutionary spirit in 20th century China.
PL2303.L365 2009
895.1'09353—dc22
2008011827
Typeset by Bruce Lundquist in 10.5/14 Adobe Garamond
In Memory of
Donald Martin Larson
1957–2002

Contents
List of Illustrations ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 1
1. Freudian Obsessions 13
2. Psychology and Freudian Sexual Theory
in Early 20th Century China 31
3. Revolutionary Discourse and the Spirit:
From Ah Q to Lei Feng 77
4. The Spirit of the Countryside: Mang Ke’s
Wild Things and Wang Xiaobo’s The Golden Years 115
5. Extracting the Revolutionary Spirit: Jiang Wen’s
In the Heat of the Sun and Anchee Min’s Red Azalea 155
6. The Workspace of a New Age Maoist:
He Jianjun’s The Postman 197
Conclusion: History and Literary Aesthetics
in the Study of Modern Chinese Culture 223
Chinese and Japanese Character List 239
Notes 259
Bibliography 287
Index 311

Illustrations
Figure 1. Westharp’s “Female-Male Power Intercourse Chart”
(Nünan liliang jiaohe tu) 45
Figure 2. The Modern (Xiandai) cover, 1931 71