Wendy Larson's new book takes its title from two exemplars of spirit: the fictional character Ah Q, created by Lu Xun in the early 1920s and well-known for his “spiritual victory method,” and the famous cultural icon of the Maoist era, Lei Feng, who is an idealized symbol of revolutionary spirit. Both embody the primary cultural and social construction of their times. Ah Q represented a negative incarnation of China's national character, while Lei Feng symbolized the optimistic translation of Maoist discourse or revolutionary culture into subjectivity. By investigating these negative and positive cultural models, Larson aims to study two powerful discourses in the Chinese context, namely, the Freudian approach that centers sexual desire as the most important aspect of modern mentality, as well as a spirit for revolutionary subjectivity as socially positioned and developed. As such, the book makes a major contribution to the rethinking of sexual desire and revolutionary culture. It reflects the originality, careful research, analytic rigor, and erudition that once again confirm Larson as one of the leading scholars in the modern Chinese literary field.
The book begins with a historical tracing of how Freudian theory gained prominence within the cultural field more than a century ago, as well as recent Western attacks on the universal applicability of Freudian thought. It then investigates the introduction of modern psychology and Freudian theory in China and how such an introduction encountered resistance from both traditional intellectuals and revolutionary psychologists. By tracing the genealogy of Freudian influence in the West and in China, Larson attempts to explore what lies behind the seemingly familiar imbrication of revolution and sex. She is not content with the well-received scholarly paradigm on revolutionary culture, established by scholars such as Ban Wang, which regards revolutionary passion as sublimated sexual passion and privileges sexuality as an interpretive strategy to explain revolutionary aesthetics and passion. Instead, she seeks to forge a new and oppositional approach that centers the revolutionary spirit in subjectivity. To Larson, both representations of jingshen (often translated as “spirit”)—the fictional figure Ah Q and the historical figure Lei Feng—were formulated not by a deeply sexualized unconscious, but by social position and embodied spirit with which a subject may identify. With this analysis, Larson convincingly puts revolutionary culture in a broader social context, arguing for a deeper understanding of revolutionary mentality, mind, and spirit.
Given this orientation, it is somewhat surprising that From Ah Q to Lei Feng does not contain a more thorough discussion of the literature produced during the revolutionary period. In the second part of the book, Larson turns her attention to stories and films produced by Mang Ke, Wang Xiaobo, Jiang Wen, Anchee Min, and He Jianjun, three writers and two filmmakers who emerged during the post-Mao era. Because their stories and films were set in the Cultural Revolution period, Larson believes that they provide a context within which she can continue to evaluate these two discourses—Freudian and revolutionary. Through a deep analysis of the aesthetic strategies of these stories and films, Larson argues that, even if the primary focus of the narratives is sexual desire, the post-Mao writers and directors pay more attention to the definition of subjectivity or consciousness in Chinese revolutionary culture than to Freud's sexual mind or sexual unconscious.
Larson's focus on the revolutionary spirit that constitutes the complexities of revolutionary subjectivities vigorously challenges the established scholarly paradigm on revolutionary literature and culture, which sees Chinese revolutionary culture as sexually charged. However, the idea of revolutionary spirit represented by Lei Feng raises many interesting questions that deserve more theoretical discussion: To what extent can we separate spirit from sexual desire? Do sexual desire and spirit belong to two clashing and contrasting models within Chinese revolutionary culture, or are they simply entangled with each other? As Lei Feng enthusiastically and selflessly followed the Maoist notion of “serving the people,” and his image was frenetically propagandized, idealized, and elevated as the perfect revolutionary icon for people to follow, isn't this revolutionary subject consumed not only by the revolutionary mind but also by revolutionary passion? Without taking exuberant revolutionary passion into consideration, how can we explain Lei Feng's romantic emotion toward revolutionary spirit, and how can this icon be implemented on such a large scale and attract so many followers? Aren't revolutionary spirit and passion two sides of the same coin?
Presented as a typical screw bolt of the revolutionary discourse, Lei Feng meticulously followed the party's orders and completely lacked his own subjective thought. In this case, isn't the mind of this revolutionary subject only the carrier of revolutionary ideology? What is the difference between revolutionary spirit and revolutionary ideology? Tackling these questions would allow us not only to discuss revolutionary spirit and passion in a dialectical light, but also to understand the construction of revolutionary culture and revolutionary subjectivities in a more complicated way. Further analysis of novels and films produced and fashioned within the revolutionary period would also help in that regard.
The significance of Larson's study lies especially in the tracing of the introduction, acceptance, and resistance of Freud in China, and in breaking a new theoretical ground—the revolutionary spirit—to discuss China's revolutionary culture. Presented as a case study of sexual desire and revolutionary culture, From Ah Q to Lei Feng at the end raises a challenging question about the field of modern Chinese literary studies in the United States: What does it mean to be a Chinese literary researcher? As prevailing Western theoretical trends such as new historicism, cultural studies, and postcolonial studies gradually turn literature into the footnotes of historical, political, or social justice inquiry, Larson proposes both a renewed emphasis on aesthetics that defines literature as primary and a return of Chinese literary studies to its own field with disciplinary boundaries, and she challenges us to begin a new and intriguing conversation with Western theories in a global context. Her call for a return to aesthetics or formal analysis rings a cautious bell for those who are overwhelmed by Western theories and who are ignorant of the basic facts of Chinese literature.
