Snapshots of China's representation in the journal New Literary History.
Zhang Xudong, "Shanghai Image: Critical Iconography, Minor Literature, and the Un-Making of a Modern Chinese Mythology" (2002)
This essay takes its time getting started, but does make a few important points. "Critical Iconography," refers to the set of icons that the author considers, all rather disparate: Shanghai's origins in newspaper articles, photographs, the prose of Lu Xun and Wang Anyi. "Minor Literature" is apparently the collective term for this multiple genre. Nice quote from Qian Zhongshu about this: "to expect Shanghai . . . to be a producer of culture would be to expect ideas to come out of body parts other than the brain;”
Sheldon Lu 盧曉鵬, "Art, Culture, and Cultural Criticism in Post-New China." This is a really nice essay on the art and literature of the age of "global capital," with an extremely leading question:
To intervene or not to intervene" is a choice that all humanists face in post-New China. They have to decide whether they will stay in the academy to perform "pure criticism" or actively participate in social and political events that directly affect the community. It appears to me that to take up either position is bound to be a one-sided choice.
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