effect, especially in the eyes of ambitious newcomers to the Second
World. This is, in fact, the political element touched on only briefly in
the Western-oriented model constructed by Bourdieu. To an extent,
this situation mirrors the Western avant-garde’s reaction against the
accumulation of popularity and economic capital through art, which
in post-Mao China is often overshadowed by the accumulation of the
sociopolitical capital necessary before anything else. As in the West,
there is little money to be made in being an avant-garde poet in China
today.
Given the inherent instability of the unofficial Second World that
arises from the pressurized, borderline illegality and the economic
uncertainty of these poets’ publication activities, as well as fragile
interpersonal relations, internal legitimizing agents and a resultant
“establishment” cannot enjoy more than a fleeting existence. What
cultural legitimacy can be attained is therefore tenuous and fre-
quently reliant on external sources, such as, during the 1980s in
particular, translated foreign poetry and critiques that may be soon
destabilized by translations of newer, antagonistic poetical tenden-
cies and critiques as thrown up through the mechanisms of the
Western avant-garde, as described by Bourdieu. A further paradox
results from the universal desire for recognition that leads avant-
garde poets in the PRC to seek or accept publication in official
media, which thereby potentially undermines their own moral
authority and position-takings against the CCP-dominated literary
establishment. (In recent years, numerous print anthologies of poetry
specifically culled from Internet sites have been published in
China, and official poetry journals have taken to online solicitation
of the work of Internet poets for publication.) Furthermore, the
more ambitious the grouping, the more liable it is to internal divi-
sions and, in the case of the Internet, the establishment of offshoot
Web sites.
The Internet gives newcomers unprecedented, direct access to
publication and avant-garde status. Poets can publicly challenge estab-
lished positions and liaise more easily with like-minded poets than was
the case heretofore in the Second World in China. An example of this
is the “Low Poetry Movement” 8?|, which involves several
poetry forums and associated poets and paper journals. The “move-
ment” is not only an attack on establishment poetry and the recog-
nized avant-garde, but also on the emergent Internet avant-garde, such
as the Poem LifeWeb site, which is considered to be weighted toward
“intellectual” poetry or poetry in the received “Western” metaphysical
tradition (Zhang 2004).
Online Avant-Garde Poetry in China Today 205