Ma Yuan: The Chinese Avant-Garde, Metafiction, and Post-Postmodernism

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Ma Yuan: The Chinese Avant-Garde, Metafiction, and Post-Postmodernism in the works of Ma Yuan provides the most comprehensive study to date on one of China’s most influential contemporary authors, Ma Yuan. By engaging in close readings of narratologically complex works of metafiction, the author offers a reappraisal of the role Ma Yuan played within the rise of postmodern fiction within China and offers new interpretive possibilities for the Chinese Avant-Garde movement of the 1980s through demonstrating that rather than being predominantly ‘formalist word games’ or ‘narrative traps’, Ma Yuan’s works of metafiction functioned as Foucauldian ‘heterotopias’ which allowed for the creation of distinctly Post-modern and Post-socialist ‘possible worlds’. This book also analyses Ma Yuan’s recent post-2000 output and in doing so explores the shifting dynamics of literary self-reflexivity and the ‘Post-postmodern’ within the contemporary context of ‘Xi Jinping era modernity’. This book argues that Ma Yuan’s recent works display a distinct movement towards ‘metamodern’ aesthetics alongside a rising anthropocenic awareness and eco-consciousness which offer key insights into the post-postmodern condition within a Chinese context. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Contents Introduction Notes Chapter 1: Early Works Notes Chapter 2: High (Altitude) Metafiction: Self-reflexivity and Polyvocality in Tibet The Goddess of Lhasa River 拉萨河女神 Ma Yuan, the “Author” and the “Reader” The Allure of the Gangdisê Mountains 冈底斯的诱惑 The “Anatomy” of a Polyvocal Metafiction: Authors, Texts, and Ontological Uncertainty Are “You” the Reader, Lu Gao, Yao Liang or Qiongbu? “Who Is Yao Liang Anyway?” The Yao Liang and Lu Gao “Pseudo-couple” Fabrication 虚构 Love in the Age of Leprosy A Wall Covered with Strange Patterns 涂满古怪图案的墙壁 Mise En Abyme: Narrative Mimesis and Narrative Ontology Intertextuality ad Absurdam The Author(s) within the Text(s) The Death of the/an Author Notes Chapter 3: Later Works Mistakes: Narrativizing Memory, Experience and Writing Narrating Loss and a Lost Hat Old Death: 旧死 Trauma, Text, Violence: The End of the Avant-Garde Chapter 4: Monsters and Demons 牛鬼蛇神 Further Intertextuality Ad Absurdam Chapter “0”: Has “Ma Yuan” Finally Entered the Text? Looking for Kilometer Zero: The Journey from “Da Yuan” to “Ma Yuan” Li Desheng and I: Da Yuan in Tibet Da Yuan after “Ma Yuan” Notes Chapter 5: Entanglement 纠缠 and The Huang Tang Family 黄堂一家 Entanglement: “Kafka + Raymond Chandler: Philosophy + Suspense” Ma Yuan’s “New Realism” Notes Chapter 6: Guniangzhai 姑娘寨 “Teacher Ma” in Nannuoshan Metafictional Mythologies along China’s Border The Priest and the Shaman: The Narratives of Bie Yangwu and Bei Ma Notes Chapter 7: Conclusions Ma Yuan’s Textual Landscapes: An Intertextual Cartography Ma Yuan and the Avant-Garde Ma Yuan after the Avant-Garde: Metamodernism? Post-postmodernism? Notes References List of Sources in Chinese Index About the Author