experience pq, things that are fundamental and permanent.
Ideologies always use and distort common sense, but after all the dust
settles down, what emerges from the waters is still the face of minjian,
ordinary but forthcoming. Minjiandoes not want to change the world;
it is only a foundation. Minjianbelieves in the world’s constancy but not
its changes. Which is precisely the foundation of all literatures.
Literature of true value must be of minjian. Or at least it is created
against the background of minjian. What Kafka’s lifelong writing
activities demonstrate is a minjianposition because his so-called avant-
garde quality exposes precisely “the fundamental absurdity” of the
world, but not “the absurdity of a certain era.” (Yu 2004a: 553)The keywords in Yu Jian’s argument are obviously “common sense”
and “experience.” Their precise meanings are undefined—perhaps Yu
Jian does not feel the need for it because they are so familiar and
conventional. Nevertheless, they are cornerstones of his overarching
minjianpoetics, for they work as self-containing aesthetical categories
in separation from ruling ideologies and systems of knowledge. We
seem to be hearing an echo of Chen Sihe in Yu Jian’s separation of
minjianas a third aesthetic space. Unlike Chen Sihe, however, Yu Jian
empties minjianof its political and ideological contents, making it
“fundamental and permanent” in the process of literary creation,
which points to a vision of universal humanity beyond time and
particular historicity within the Chinese context.
“Opposition”rsis a distasteful word for Yu Jian. While the
intellectual poet is always self-conscious of his oppositional status, the
minjianpoet in Yu Jian’s version wants to preclude any traces of
opposition from his poetry. “Minjiandoes not oppose anything,” Yu
Jian says (Yu 2004a: 552), in his characteristically authoritative tone.
Yet for minjianto be a credible and executable alternative critical
position, it has to be differentiated from existing ones such as official
literature and intellectual poetry. Yu Jian’s way of arguing for this
differentiation is to “separate”; to separate but not to oppose, that is,
to separate not to challenge or subvert, but to conserve and to restore.
The object for this conservation and restoration finally emerges as the
attractive but nebulous signifier: Chinese tradition, which returns Yu
Jian to the center of the familiar and time-honored debate about
Chinese tradition, Western values, and modernization. “Minjian
society always keeps company with conservative and traditional
thoughts,” Yu Jian writes. “In this time of radicalism, minjianmeans
a conservative position. It is minjian but not the state nor the
mainstream culture that has protected the foundation of traditional
China” (Yu 2004a: 552). It is here that we see a pronounced difference
192 Dian Li