avant-garde poetry from china 57coming and complimentary to the deprecatory and hostile, by “native”
and “foreign” commentators alike;^65 the latter distinction is of course
increasingly problematic. Optimists emphasize that the sinologists ad-
vance cultural exchange, sometimes classifying their work as support-
ing a cause called Chinese literature’s “march toward the world” (䍄
Ϫ⬠). Pessimists believe that the sinologists’ command of Chinese
is insufficient and they work from a Western perspective, and that this
disqualifies them for judging literary works in Chinese and producing
responsible and effective translations. Occasionally, the pessimists will
cast doubt on the integrity of the sinologists and that of the authors
they translate, suggesting that Chinese writers’ success in “connecting”
(䔼) with a globalizing literary market and more generally their ties
of allegiance (㋏݇) with the scholar-translators ultimately determine
who ends up in world literature and who doesn’t. Chapter Eleven of
this study contains examples of avant-garde poets engaging in such
sinologist-bashing and Chinese-author-bashing.
For poetry, some academics have hyperbolized the sinologists’ role
and that of the foreign audiences they create, in a way that leads to
association with an overly literal reading of Bourdieu’s production for
producers and doesn’t reflect the realities of the poetry scene. Writing
in 1996, Gregory Lee claims that in the early 1990s, “internal clamp-
downs and enforced exile ma[d]e the West the [Chinese poet’s] main
audience,” although he later notes that in China, “there [was] still a
significant readership of poetry... not a negligible readership either
in terms of size or influence.”^66 Zhang Xudong holds that^67
the aesthetic institution of “pure poetry” or “global poetry” has proven
to be the last refuge of this ephemeral high modernism [i.e. Obscure Po-
etry], now surviving as an endangered species outside China, thanks to
the “academic” interest of Western universities and foundations.This is a stark exaggeration clad in questionable rhetoric, as Haun
Saussy has pointed out.^68
Western literary and academic institutions have paid much less at-
tention to modern Chinese literature than to literatures in European
languages. Chinese studies are on the rise throughout the world, but
(^65) Cf Yeh 2007a: 33.
(^66) Lee (Gregory) 1996: 13, 38.
(^67) Zhang Xudong 1997: 136.
(^68) Saussy 1999.