Modernism and Postmodernism in Chinese Literature

Modernism and postmodernism are highly contested terms, both in theory and in academic practice. Both are understood here primarily as a mixture of literary styles and agendas, of times and/or areas of flourishment, and of canon (i.e., a selection of typical texts and authors through journals, criticism, or the academy). While the advent of modernity in China can be traced back to the second half of the 19th century, modernism as such does not gain momentum in Chinese literary discourses until the second decade of the 20th century and was adopted in a relatively short time. Therefore, the scope of literary techniques and attitudes deemed “modernist” was usually broad and included competing, sometimes oppositional, trends, but is often characterized by a sense of individualism and of crisis, and by a critique of the concepts of realism, progress, and linear time, as well as by a self-referential style. Aspects of both linguistic and formal playfulness opened modernism to influences from traditional literature and thus brought modernist literature into contact with other realms than in the West. Modernism flourished at different times and in comparable but different environments in various localities in the Sinophone world. Postmodernism was introduced to Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China around the mid-1980s, whereas postmodern literature and discourse emerged primarily in the 1990s. Postmodernism rejects the claims to legitimacy of modern logocentrism, stable identities, essentialism, and linear and developmental conceptions of time, as well as concluding ideologies and power structures. In literary practice, it is characterized by techniques such as metafiction, fabulation or hyperreality, fragmentation, bricoleur, pastiche, playfulness, nonlinear or spatial arrangements, intertextuality, parody, and dark humor. It highlights multiple interpretations, or even no coherence, in a single literary text. In China, modernism and postmodernism are simultaneous and overlapping phenomena. Various scholarly debates have evolved regarding chiefly the adoptability of both West-originated terms. They are critically negotiated as (semi-, neo-)colonial, as nationalist literature, as independent and own developments of both concepts, and as an indigenization. The question remains whether these Western terms can be meaningfully applied to describe Chinese, Taiwanese, or Hong Kongese cultural/literary phenomena. In any case, different sociohistorical settings resulted in an adaptation of these highly conscious and independent Western styles. (Post)modernism in the Sinophone world has boundaries different from those of its Western counterpart. It often comprises other forms and own manifestations.