applications and its signifying instability, of which even Chen himself
is acutely aware. He writes,
“Minjian” is not a historical concept, for various subcultures defined
by their distances from state power centers exist in any forms of
societies governed by any shape of governmental system. At the other
end of the power center is minjian. If we use a pyramid to describe their
relationship, the bottom level is minjian; in-between the bottom level
and the top there exists a variety of cultural forms. What’s more, the
bottom level naturally supports the top. Therefore, minjianmust be
containing the ideologies of the state power. This is to say, minjian
always prides itself for its inclusiveness so as to collect everything from
the good, the bad, and the ugly. (Chen 1987: 112)In this age of uncertainty and excess when critical discourses often
valorize extreme positions and unsubstantiated neologism, it is quite
remarkable for Chen to be self-conscious of the potentials and the
limits of the very concept he has invented. On the one hand, the use of
minjianto highlight some major trends and issues in the development
of modern Chinese literature is productive and meaningful, which
becomes an important part of the collective efforts to rewrite modern
literary history in the last two decades, and as a result, the establishment
of minjianas a third discursive space in relation with that of state
power and intellectuals has had far-reaching influence among Chinese
critics ever since. On the other hand, the imperfection of minjianas a
critical instrument, particularly its theoretical deficiencies in its
entangled relations with state power and intellectuals that it avowedly
opposes, becomes a point of endless debate, which many a minjian
poetry advocate seems to gloss over.
First of all, even though the lapse of time tempts one to establish a
link between Chen Sihe’s theorizing of minjianand minjianpoets’
promotion of the same concept, their connection remains tenuous at
best. If the ideas of minjianexisted in poetry writing and criticism
since the aftermath of Misty Poetry, they were expressed in substitu-
tive terms such as “rude man” `a, “they”bc, and “college
students”大 e, all names of poetry schools that proliferated in the
mid-1980s to demonstrate desirable anti–Misty Poetry sentiments.
Even well into the 1990s, minjianwas mainly used as a convenient but
undeveloped critical vocabulary to poke fun at “intellectual poetry” so
as to highlight the latter’s alleged showmanship in language plays and
its unwise disconnection from the ordinary life and the reader. Only
after the Pan Feng Conference has the construction of minjianas a
Poetic Debate in Contemporary China 189