Abstract:

This article discusses ways in which Pierre Bourdieu's literary sociology has inspired scholarship on modern Chinese literature, helping it to move away from overly politicized paradigms of literary historiography. The article also asks the question to what extent the use of a Bourdieusian model has resulted in an overemphasis on the ‘relative autonomy’ of a literary field that, at various times during the twentieth century, has been operating under conditions of strong direct state interference. After giving a general overview of the use of Bourdieu's ideas in the study of modern Chinese literature, the article focuses especially on the question of autonomy and the state, arguing for the study of state censors as specific ‘agents’ within the literary field. The article ends with a brief discussion of the rapid rise of online literary communities in China, their practices and their relation to state institutions.

Keywords: Pierre Bourdieu, China, literary field, field of power, socialism, censorship, internet literature

Bourdieu's theory provides an interesting dimension through which to consider the emergence of revolutionary literature, involving an analysis of the historical development of the available possibilities in literature within the broader field of power on the one hand and an account of the individual and class habitus that engenders strategies of competition on the other. However, Bourdieu's Francocentric observation of the literary field that is based on cultural capital or symbolic capital cannot fully explain the utopian desire, the nationalist implication, the semicolonial sentiment, or an individual's sensuous and bodily experience that are implicated in the movement of ‘revolutionary literature’.