FutureofFeminist_省略_mResearchinChina_盛美兰.docx

科技信急、 人文社科 Future of Feminist criticism Research in China 金华职业技术学院国际商务学院盛美兰 Abstract As one indispensable part of the twentieth century western literary criticisms, Feminist Criticism has shown its charming feature and affected the world greatly. This paper briefly introduces the past, present and future of Feminist Criticism in China, showing that the research and application of it will have its bright future. Key words western literary criticism feminist criticism research and future Only through literary criticisms working on both literature creation and appreciation can productivity of literary be improved. Among all the literary criticism in the new age, none but Feminist Criticism has closely related to ontology. As one part of human beings - the mother, wife and daughter, women are the endless topic for both women and men. As long as the human society exists, women problems will always be the core of social discussions. So it * s quite necessary that women should have their own works of art and writers in which shows the women s world in women s own language. l. Theories 1.1 Literary criticism: Literary criticism is a scientific activity to look into the general phenomenon of literary art. Long before 150 years, the great Russian poet Pu- sizin said in one of his article： 44 criticism is science, it is the science to expose the excellence and default of works of art/* Engles also mentioned UI put the drama aside after finishing reading the first time, and lent it to my friends of good literary appreciation to read and ask them for advice, I didnJ t comment it until I had the same opinion when I read the third and fourth times.” His remarks show that the founder of Marxism considers lit- erary criticism to be the scientific activity and never deal with it according to his likes and dislikes. In a word, literary criticism is the basic requirement for the development and prosperity of the literary. 1.2 A brief introduction of 20th western critical theories: Looking back on the past 20th century, especially the history of literary criticism, though there are various groups of criticism, Terry Eagleton has made a summarization: modern literary criticism has undergone toughly three periods: focusing on authorship (romanticism ); focusing on text(new criticism) and the third periods transferred to Audience-oriented Criticism. Since 1960s , Structuralism, Deconstruction, New Historicism, Feminism, Marxism and the emergence o f Post-Colonial Studies has created a picture of modem western literary theories. Here lets just have a brief look through the development of Feminist Criticism in China. 1.3 Feminism: Background: The word “feminism” was introduced into China from the western countries, it shows womens political and cultural attitude. Here “women” do not refer to the physical women but the ones of sex consciousness and cultural significance. The historical implication of “feminism” usually means “ movements for recognition of the claims of women for rights (legal, political, familial, etc.) equal to those possessed by men.” Women have never ceased to fight for their rights, though feminist movement in the west didnJ t take any visible shape till the nineteenth century in the name of women' s liberation movement. This liberation movement began to subside in the twentieth century as women had gained most of these political and legal rights. Womens writing, especially Feminism Criticism closely combined with womens liberation movement. In 1920, English famous woman writ- erVirginia "Woolf published “A Room of Ones Own”(perhaps the first important feminist document in the west). In a speech, she calls on women to kill the Angle in the House， the traditional image of women - charming, unselfish, pure, and above all mindless. This document received great attention from the society. In 1949, Simon De Bonva wrote her the Second Sex *. And these two books are considered to be the spiritual direc tion of world womenJ s liberation movement, meanwhile, the specific result of the movement greatly promoted the development of Feminist Criticism. The feminist movement has experienced three phase: 1) earlier feminism (the end of 1960s 一 1970s) asking for equal opportunities of job, economy and law. 2) The second phase western women laid stress on the difference between male and female. And 3)the post feminism (1990s). The first and second phases adopted the ideas and methods of modem criticism such as Marxist Criticism, Psychoanalytical Criticism, Structuralism and New Historicism, whose thoughts lies in th ree aspects as follows: firstly, the eco- nomicbaseofMarxism,thephallocentrismofFruedandtheoriesofStructuralisni Marx saysintheCapitaiy one willneverbeindependentwithoutindependenceof economy. Economic base determines ones position in the social relations”. Since the break-up of the Mother Society, women have been in the position of being oppressed while men become the dominator of both the family and the society. Secondly, from psychological mind and ideology, women have been feeling themselves inferior because of the sex difference, which strength ened the development of Father Society and the culture system ofmens rights. Thirdly, the deconstruction which claims “ decentralized” provides methodologyfordoingawaywithrightsofmenandseekingforfemalesindepen- dence.SotheFeministCriticismresultedfromthewomen， sliberationmovement hasaclearpoliticaltendency,whichrequiresanewanalysisofworksofart from the viewpo int of female and protest against the “male centralized” traditional culture, providing a new writing way of Feminist. The representative writers are Kate Millett and Elaine Showalter and Virginia Woolf etc. In China, the rights mentioned in the first phase was given to women after liberation, and women went to do heavy labor work as men because of the idea of equality but never thought of the physical difference between men and women. In the new period, women began to realize the sex difference between men and women, and came to change themselves but went into another extreme, i.e. laying emphasis on appearance. These two opinionsneglecting the sex difference between men and women or standing out the distinguished features of women are both the alienation of women. The third phase started from the 1990s till now. After experiencing the above mentioned two periods, women began to speculate their own position. They began to deconstruct the center authority and used the tact of dualism to account for the world from the edge. 2. Feminist Criticism in China 2.1 Past In the case of Chinese historical conditions, the words “ women s lib- eration” emerged in the revolutionary remarks around 1911, which shows Chinese women * s desire to change the evil world and do away with the superstructure of it. But as Chinese women have never made a n independent liberation movement which has social and cultural significance, just followed the remarks of Feminist criticism in western countries, which make Chinese women fail to found the base of criticism theories of themselves and put Chinese feminist literary research in a trouble. Chinese feminist criticism not only meets the demand for the development of women literature but also is the voice questioning and challenging the discourse of men s rights which emerged in the air of reform andliberationofmindinl990s,meanwhile, it*s also one part of the world feminist criticism The adoption of Feminist Criticism in literary and other field shows women*s determination to develop themselves, fight for equality and lead a more civilized life. 2.2 Present and future 509 雛信急、 人文社科 2.2.1 Nowadays the research and application of Feminist Criticism in China is facing the trouble because of the two reasons as follows: 1) Firstly, the introduced feminism does not go with the Chinese conditions well, that is, people doubt whether Chinese women have the subjectivity of female consciousness, so that women writers are reluctant to admit that there is really feminism in China. They may think, “we are women, but not the feminism”. 2) Secondly, compared to the enthusiastic attitudes of the national academic circles towards the twentieth century western critical theories, Feminist Criticism received weaker reaction and less transmission. There exists another apparent and unique case, i.e. when people respond strongly to certain theory, they will leave out or decrease some female * s remarks of importance and center. Take the transmission, research and statement on Post Modernism, Post Structuralism and Post-Colonial Studies by national academic circles for example, they are tend to neglect the voice and remarks of women. Of course, they want to show their advanced mind but forget that without the equality between women and men, humanism is just a joke. 3) Thirdly, Feminist criticism lacks of selfexamination and scientific theory. They just protest againstmensrightsandcentralizationfromtheview- pointofwomenandtheconceptionof womenareanglestheyignoretheindivid- ualandsexfactors and consider men culture to be the origin of the problems, which makes the interpretation of many problems lack of conviction. 4) Fourthly, the feminism research in China hasnt formed into a perfect subject It just begins with the women writers experience and understanding not includingtheother women s experience.FromthissenseChinesefeminismre- searchshouldgobeyondliteratureartbyvirtueofsociology,psychologyandfolk- lore. The above- mentionedreasonsputChineseFeminismintoacomparatively difficult position to develop well, but women are the indispensable part of the hu- manbeings.Womenareboundtohavetheirownvoiceandtheories. 2.2.2 bright future: The number of women writers in China has increased, which has constituted the prospect of Chinese future culture. In addition to the writers such as Yang Jiang, Zhang Jie, Chi Li , Tie Ying , Lin Bai and Xu Kun, there are also some talented women scholars such as Cui Weiping , Zhao Yuan , Chen Ran , Xu Xiaobin and Dai Jinhua whose ideas and works of art have greatly pushed Chinese feminism research forward. Ms Xu Kun has confidently predicted that the arising of women writing in 1990s and the prosperity in the end ofthe twentieth century announce the possibility of estab- (上接第 508 页） ried?' “Where are you going?”， “What about your salary?”， “What s your religion?”. The British and Americans prefer to talk about the weather, for example “Nice day, isnt it?” The reason westerners like to talk about weather is that they are reluctant to talk about personal matters with people who are not close friends. Some common greetings used in talking with a foreigner are “Hello” ， “Hi”， “Good morning”， “How do you do”， “How are you”， “How are you getting on”. In oral English teaching, students should be reminded the differences between English and Chinese greetings so as to avoid misunderstanding in communication. 7.3 Appreciation and Apologies The Chinese usually use “ i 射 i 射 to express appreciation, which is in accordance with “Thank you inEnglishButthereisadistinctionbetweentwo languages/i ； |fi|finChineseismainlyusedtostrangersorunfamiliarfriend&It， s seldomusedamongthefamilymembers,relativesandone ， sclosefriends.Whilein English, use of Thankyou * has no limitations. It canbeusedbetween father and son. Chinese, instead, don not think it is necessary to say“ilifilifif what the other did for them belongs to the common job. The English would say thank you no matter what the other did for them. Apologies in common use in English include “Im sorry”， “Sorry to trouble you”， “I apologize to you for， “I beg your pardon”. Apologies in Chinese includes “对不起 ”， “失陪了 and so on. There is no obvious distinction between the using of apology in the two languages. 8. C onclisim One of the important issues in cross-cultural communication is how to avoid pragmatic failure which is caused by the misunderstanding of two lishing local female literary in China Since it has adopted the western theories, it will gradually penetrate into the center of culture through the edge and obtain its own field in the course of adjusting the culture structure. Feminist criticism research will have a bright future considering the following facts: 1) The fourth international women conference held in Beijing directly advanced the coming of Chinese female literary creation and the climax of feminist criticism. Feminism research will have a bright future because of the following causes: 2) With the further penetration of culture research, female research will undoubtedly come into the sight of academic circles. On the other hand, it can be used as the reference to show whether a nation has a deep research of culture. 3) The significance of female in modem society has come to stand out. In the research of so-called modernity， womens consciousness, family structure and children5 s education have gradually become common topics in the society. While the increase of women writers has to some extent quickened the development of culture research. 4) Female research, as one indispensable part of the human art, should be perfected. In fact, Lu Xun, Hu Shi4 s struggling for women * s right of culture and nowadays the setting up of various institutes has laid a solid foundation for female research. 3. Conclusion Owing to the sex differences between men and women, women will necessarily have a long way to realize the co-construction and harmony of men andwomen.Butanyway,asanindispensablepartofthehumanbeings,womenplay an important part in the society. So does the female research and female art literature. Maybe it* s difficult to make this dream come true, but as long as human beings, women in particular try hard, it will someday become true. References 1 Twentieth Century Western Critical Theories, by Zhu Gang , Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 2003 2 A Basic Course of Literary Theories, by Guo Zhengyuan, Zhong- shan University Press, 1996 3 The Present Situations of Female Research in China, by Lin Danya, Guangming Daily, 11/27,2000 4 普希金文艺散论 论批评 .古代文艺理论译 丛第二册 (1961) P153 5 Marx and Engles Collections, volume 4, page 343 kinds of politeness principles. Although English politeness principle is classic and important in linguistics, it can not be applied in every language, such as Chinese because they have obvious distinctions. These obvious differences cause the difference of English and Chinese daily expressions such as different address forms, different ways of greeting, and appreciations. For example, Chinese like to talk to others by names of post while English just talk to others by names directly. Chinese like to talk about age, health, salary while English believe such topics are violation ofpri vacy. Chinese would not say thankyoutofamilymemberswhileEnglishsaythankyouwithoutlimitations.So many differencescanbefoundin our dai