Hu Yamin is a prominent Chinese scholar specializing in comparative Marxist literary criticism. Her recent work, The Contemporary Construction of the Chinese Form of Marxist Literary Criticism, offers a historical-geographic comparative analysis of Western and Chinese Marxist literary theories.

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/6735406

I plan to read this book myself.

Here’s an excerpt from the review:

Hu Yamin is a prominent Chinese scholar specializing in comparative Marxist literary criticism. Her recent work, The Contemporary Construction of the Chinese Form of Marxist Literary Criticism, offers a historical-geographic comparative analysis of Western and Chinese Marxist literary theories. Her previous translated work includes a two-volume edited set titled Keywords in Western Literary Criticism and Contemporary China (Routledge, 2020).

The new book revisits these theoretical systems with a fresh reading of classical Marxist literary theory. It systematically examines Chinese Marxist literary criticism, highlighting the unique historical and cultural trajectories that have influenced its development in China’s revolutionary process over the past century.

The Contemporary Construction is organized into seven chapters, each concentrating on a fundamental term or concept essential to contemporary Chinese theory: “the people,” “the nation,” politics, praxis, technology, the capitalist market, and value theory in literary criticism. Hu argues that China’s historical traditions and evolving social conditions cannot be fully comprehended through Western Marxist frameworks. She explains that these frameworks fail to capture the complexities of China’s anti-colonial roots, revolutionary era, and socialist-oriented modernization.

Although she does not provide a specific definition of Western Marxism, the context suggests it refers to the body of Marxist thought produced by individuals whose political and intellectual work primarily occurs in imperialist or imperialist-adjacent countries. In fact, Hu discusses the work of prominent academics who associate themselves with Marxian thought but generally distance themselves from Communist Parties and the numerous workers’ or socialist parties that exist in imperialist countries. (This particular flaw in the book’s argument reinforces vogue academic designations of Western Marxism as purely a theoretical stance uninterested in political struggle.)

Hu positions Chinese Marxism as historically and ideologically distinct from Western Marxism, challenging the idea that Western theoretical models can be universally applied to all societies. In her comparative approach, Hu engages with Western Marxism but situates it as a foil for understanding the particularities of Chinese Marxist thought. In drawing this comparison, she notes the significant shift in Western Marxism in the early 20th century from focusing on class and revolution to emphasizing culture and technology. This shift, she argues, diverges from the concerns that have shaped Chinese Marxist literary theory, which remains focused on revolutionary and social struggles.

Hu also distinguishes her work from earlier models of the “Sinification” of Marxism, which sought to adapt Western Marxist ideas to Chinese conditions. Instead, she contends that Chinese Marxist literary criticism has developed unique problems and frameworks separate from Western thought that no longer qualify as simple adaptations. Chinese Marxist literary criticism possesses its own identity. Hu’s analysis highlights the critical role of Chinese literary criticism in supporting socialist construction in China, urging vigilance against capitalism’s corrupting values while balancing aesthetic, social, and economic values in the market context. As China begins the process of socialist construction, Hu argues, the Chinese form’s critical role is to study literary developments to maintain “vigilance against the hegemony of capital and pursuing the contradictory unity of aesthetic value, social benefit, and economic benefit, while fully considering market factors and understanding market mechanisms” (7-8).

  • AmoxtliEnglish
    11·
    4 days ago

    Chinese Marxism or Chinese Communism is just collectivism. Marxism uses Christian existential precepts. Chinese are just nationalist with collectivist culture. That’s it. Chinese were agrarian during the Cultural Revolution, therefore, there was no revolution against the rich, or the elites. Marxism takes its tropes from the Christian Bible of the rich, and powerful oppressing the poor, and downtrodden; The rich neglecting the poor, and takes the same existential dualism of the Bible. Americans misunderstood and failed to differentiate between Communism in Europe, and that of Asian and African communism during the Cold War. Vietnamese Communism was really collective nationalism with strong centralized governing; the same nationalism that defeated the French at Dien Bien Phu. To understand communism at its root is to be saturated in Christian assumptions of existence. It is no wonder that foreign communism became just a variant of nationalism. They have no rooted understanding of why communism began.

    Collectivism in layers: Culture and governance

    Japan: Collectivist culture, market economy, government that mimics Western democracy.

    South Korea: Collectivist culture, market economy, government that mimics Western democracy

    China: Collectivist culture and collectivist government. Communism the Chinese way, simply means collectivism, the Chinese way. Collectivism can involve militarism, capitalism, socialist, or any variation of things, as long it is nationalist.

      • AmoxtliEnglish
        11·
        3 days ago

        Doesn’t matter if you disagree. Marxism, like The Reformation, was based on a Christian understanding of how the world should be. Christian interpretation of the good life was what made peasants confront the feudal system. It pitted the nobles against the peasants, because the peasants were asking for equity or egalitarian treatment. Luther himself only wanted to reform the Church, but ordinary Christians had a much deeper idea of reform that was beyond what Martin Luther advocated. Christianity is subversion of hierarchy and dominance. Marxism, therefore the Bolshevik Revolution, is the same pattern. There is no similar historical pattern between Europe, which was dominated by Christianity, and that of non-Christian lands. There was no revolution against any class of people in Asia or Africa. They were simply anti-colonialist and nationalist. It is a false equivalency to equate communism with liberation from colonialist who were capitalist. Capitalism itself isn’t a state. You can’t call it communism by having billionaires and millionaires permitted to exist, and nurtured, in a totalitarian system that claims it is communism. It simply isn’t communism. Nationalism isn’t universal. That is why communism was said to fail, and created off-shoots like fascism, a socialist variant that was anti-communist, and nationalist. Even the original concept of socialism was a universal cause, not based on nation states. The US thought that the communist ideology would coalesce into a unified alliance, but nothing of the sort happened. Communist Vietnamese fought the Communist Chinese. Even US and the USSR division is argued as something based on security competition, not ideology. The USSR itself was under the control of Russia over nations of people such as Hungarians, Czechs, Poles, etc. The USSR had to control rancorous peoples who did not identify as communist, even less, Russian.