Minjianhas long existed as a common linguistic sign and as a
literary concept. Minjian wenxuehas been used in the twentieth
century to refer to folkloreKL, popular legendsMN, songs
O,
local drama 地QRS, and historical tales历U故W, and the like.
After 1949, its usage is commonly limited to literary writings created
by nonprofessional writers, for example, by anybody who does not
carry a membership card from the official Chinese Writer’s Association.
However, a precise definition of minjian wenxueis nearly impossible,
for it is a question of many conflated issues ranging from genre,
authorship, and sentiment, to position, attitude, and subject matter.
In this sense, minjian wenxue is not unlike many other literary
concepts—always elastic but still communicable.
In the 1990s, minjiandropped its linguistic companion “wenxue”
and became a critical concept unto itself. This “economization”
delinked minjianfrom its particular historical context and gave it an
expanded range of meanings whose circulations dominated the
Chinese critical discourse in the 1990s. The elevation of, or rather,
the invention of minjianas a current and meaningful critical concept
has much to do with the work of Chen Sihe陈XY(b. 1954), a
professor of modern Chinese literature from Fudan University.
His 1987 book A Macrocosmic View of New Chinese Literature
1文 整[\gives a sweeping overview of modern Chinese
literature based upon the very construction of minjianas a new
critical instrument, whose “restoration” becomes a focal point for
collecting divergent literary phenomena and cultural narratives. In
describing minjian, Chen differentiates it from the concepts of “civil
society” ,- and “public sphere” ]^_- as commonly
understood in the West and gives it a narrower definition: “Minjian
is a concept in opposition to the central government; minjian’s
cultural patterns refer to the cultural space existing on the margins
beyond the power center of the governmental control mechanism...
It makes up the third discursive space along with power, and
intellectual and elitist consciousness” (Chen 1987: 112). Riding on
the strengths of minjian’s oppositional thrust and its referential
elasticity, Chen manages to present an insightful overview of Chinese
literature from the 1930s to the present day, covering fromminjian’s
“suppression” to its “restoration”—a refreshingly different narrative
from the familiar and the official version of the history of modern
Chinese literature.
However, there are apparent problems with the construction of
minjianas a critical instrument, chief among them are its ahistorical
188 Dian Li