What can literature teach us about the democratic experience of China in XXe century ? In an ambitious book, Sebastian Veg explores the ties that unite fiction and democracy, looking for a critical reflection by the reader-citizen.
Can fictions be an object of studies for the social sciences and for the history of politics ? This is the question posed by Sebastian Veg in a work, resulting from his doctoral research, on the fundamental links between literature and politics. The author tries to define what he calls the “ democratic fictions “Through the study of five works: the two canonical Chinese works” The truthful story of A-Q »Of Xun and The tea house de Lao She, René Leys by Victor Segalen, “ The China Wall »By Franz Kafka and The good soul of the setchouan by Bertolt Brecht.
VEG has chosen these works because they are linked to the democratic question in two ways: on the one hand because they look at the question of political modernity, on the other hand because they develop an open conception of literature. The interest of these authors for political developments in China, and the scarcity of European texts dealing with political change in Europe at that time, can be explained by the fact that China then appeared as the laboratory where new political forms were to be invented, from representations which gave the image of an archaic and total power, at the same time religious, administrative and local. Indeed, at the end of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), the Chinese Empire, shaken by Western intrusions and internal economic, demographic and social crises, begins to reform to survive. The inertia and resistance of the Imperial Court to the reforms – constitutional in particular – nevertheless lead to the Foundation of the Republic of China in 1911. The works chosen by Veg are part of the spirit of the movement of May 4, marked by a reflection on the world, the nation, and the best means to save China from the corruption of politicians, the rapaacity of the foreign powers and traditional.
Five “ democratic fictions »»
“” The truthful story of A-Q »Traces the setbacks of an agricultural employee who dreams of a revolution. AQ, who likes to humiliate the weakest and fears those whose rank, strength or power are superior, has the distinctive line of mentally persuading himself when he wipes the worst outrages and humiliations. Through the satirical description of the character’s faults, read Xun tries to expose the “ national character »Chinese of the time. The tea house is a play that follows the fate of the owner of a Beijing tea room, Wang Lifa, and its customers in 1898 under the Empire, in the 1910s at the time of the warlords, and around 1946 after the Second World War. The play conceals an anti-imperialist discourse. It presents the internal division of the Chinese which makes them easy prey for foreign invaders XIXe century then for foreign companies at XXe century. In René LeysVictor Segalen describes the emergence of the revolutionary events of 1911 in the immutable center of the prohibited city while marginalizing this impossible and distant revolution with irony. The five short stories grouped in “ The China Wall Use the figure of the Chinese wall, an unfinished empirical construction, and that of bureaucratic power proliferating to show how archaic representations weigh on the modern state and how the myth of Chinese power influences European democratic modernity. In The good soul of the setchouanShen Té is rewarded for agreeing to accommodate three gods. She thus abandons prostitution to open a tobacco flow. But she must pretend to be an alleged cousin, Shui TA, to maintain the profitability of the establishment, threatened by the complaints of unscrupulous beggars and traders. Brecht demonstrates in the room that it is impossible to apply moral principles in the face of a misery that grows in malice.
Literature and democracy
What do we call democratic fiction ? The first two chapters of the book provide a first element of response: a democratic fiction is first defined by the choice of democratization as theme. Veg is working to go beyond the two poles of Orientalism (Edward Said) and the national allegory (Fredric Jameson), which “ have in common to withdraw all autonomy from the production of fictions, subordinating it to a general political context rather than an individual political project of the author ». He shows how the authors studied rely on exotic shots to better subvert them, thus opposing the stereotypical representations of culturalist essence of China. The bias of fiction allows each work to universalize reflection on the process of political modernization. The process of appearance of modern democracy at the start of XXe century serves as a common referent for the five works studied. Their questioning of the sense of modern rupture, which calls into question the myth of the revolution and of mechanical accession to a new political principle, leads to a disenchanted observation: the loss of the sacred aura of traditional power is not compensated by an emancipation of the individual.
A democratic fiction is also defined by the presence of a discourse on democratic norms. The following two chapters start from the hypothesis that pragmatic use specific to fiction and power is at the origin of their historical proximity. On the one hand, (literary) fiction can only work if it arouses the belief of its reader. On the other hand, traditional power is based on “ Master fictions “(Master Fictions) which give a narrative form at the center of the political order, and which request the adhesion of subjects to this type of stories.
In this central part, VEG explores the duality of fiction linked both to power and the dispute of power. The five works studied have a democratic character in the sense that they denounce the instrumentalization of fiction: they refuse to transmit a simple normativity, break the belief of the reader and invite him to decide between polyphonic speeches, in order to allow him to become aware of his own receptivity to the discourse of power. VEG recalls that at the time of May 4, 1919 fiction was perceived as an instrument for training the critical consciousness of the reader since it stimulates its reflection. His micro-readings call into question the legitimacy of the writer-prophet to represent the world and establish the essential role of the reader, called upon to develop a critical reflection himself. Veg associates this refusal by the authors to enhance a political ideal with the analyzes of Claude Lefort on the legitimate power in democracy, which supposes the existence of an empty space. Democratic power, not holding the principle of law, or that of its own foundation, “ sets up and keeps itself in the dissolution of the benchmarks of certainty ».
Readers freedom
The last chapter deepens the references to the indefinite democracy of Lefort and the observation of Pierre Rosanvallon on the importance of disenchantment and consubstantial aporia to the establishment of democracy. These themes are found through the search for a democratic fiction practice which must spare the freedom of readers, in particular by questioning the outcome, the choice of circular, fragmentary, even contradictory structures. Writers invest in a new political meaning the “ pragmatic force »From the fiction that is based on the reader’s support, but also on” Cognitive brakes (Jean-Marie Schaeffer) which prevent complete membership. The texts all have a figure of the critical reader which emerges from this tension. Veg summons Habermas to suggest the possible role of the reader as a starting point for a kind of “ civil society “, In the sense of an intersubjective democratic community. Reading being intimate, “ The public space that fiction can bring about is therefore uncertain, and its links with democracy are always suspended from reading that each reader chooses to make each text ».
This amazing work therefore makes us discover the fictional texts from a new angle. René Leys It is read there as the novel of the quest for an unprecedented exoticism, which questions the specific power of fiction: the final suspension works as a warning against blind belief in history. Kafka, fascinated by the functioning of the archaic power of which China is the symbol, describes an infinite process of democratization whose appearance of a law would be the term impossible. Aq is read as a question on the idea of revolution. The final impasse symbolizes the writer’s refusal to impose a political reading on a situation where the just and the unjust mingle and cancel themselves. In Brecht, China is the symbol of a political system based on government by morality. The completeness of the fiction is broken in order to deprive the spectator of a fully made judgment on action, in favor of a confrontation between different orders of legitimacy. For his part, Lao She devotes a cyclical conception of history and authorizes an allegorical reading which enters into tension with the dominant political order, questioning some of the conventions of the propaganda piece. He rejects a conception of democratization as a rupture always pushed and rather envisages it as a way of reconnecting with the democratic spaces of the pre -modern world represented by the tea house.
We thus find in each text a common matrix of critical reflections on the democratization of societies and on the role of the writer, which Veg attributes to the mixed influences of romanticism, Nietzsche, of Stirneran anarchism or Marx. These texts are the expression of a conception of democratization as renunciation, in this sense that everyone refuses to state principles and dictate standards.
Veg tries, with this ambitious book, to breathe new life into literary studies by putting an end to the absorption of literature in history. He proposes to approach the question of democracy by “ another way »Than that of the study of representations. As the status and the pragmatic force of fiction make it symbolic objects apart, he wants to study how the act of writing and reading of these fictions is part of intellectual, social and historical space.