True stories: Contemporary Chinese reportage and its ideology and aesthetic.

摘要

This dissertation makes general arguments about the genre of modern and contemporary baogao wenxue (reportage) and specific arguments about contemporary reportage writers and texts. Baogao wenxue emerged in the 1930s, when domestic efforts to create a vernacular nonfiction for China's newspaper industry came under the influence of what were perceived to be politically progressive foreign models. Baogao wenxue's lineage lies in both "objective" journalism and in engage proletarian reportage. The conventional definition takes baogao wenxue as dissident, but this is based on a selective reading of the genre's history. Traditionally, baogao wenxue has stressed allegiance to the Party line of the moment and has emphasized panegyric at the expense of expose. From the late 1950s to the early 1980s, Liu Binyan constituted a one-man subgenre of critical reportage. After 1985, a new generation, led by Su Xiaokang, followed Liu's lead, but also reached for an objectivity beyond that practiced by Liu; instead of relating tales with specific heroes and moral points, Su and his colleagues disseminated information and expanded the generic boundaries of baogao wenxue.;The aesthetics and ideology of reportage are major concerns in this dissertation. During the modern period, reportage borrowed its aesthetic from other forms of critical realism. In the 1980s, reportage was driven by an aesthetics of "reason" (lixing), which devalued imagination in favor of a purported scientific detachment. As a genre, reportage advanced a generally humanist ideology in the 1980s, but close readings of numerous texts show that baogao wenxue facilitated the expression of a variety of ideological positions. For example, the move from Liu Binyan to Su Xiaokang is a move away from faith in the power of moral force to a belief in law and reason.;Ideology congeals around assumed truths and preconceptions, but in reform era China, all assumptions were subjected to scrutiny and few emerged intact. In the last chapter, to better theorize reportage's place in ideological debate, this dissertation's findings are considered in light of discussions over the appropriateness of applying notions derived from the work of Jurgen Habermas to the study of China. The conclusion is that the institutions, associations, and activities of reportage did contribute to the formation of what may be called a "public sphere" in post-Cultural Revolution China; it was this contribution that was truly "dissident" and that led to the dismantling of reportage's institutions after the spring of 1989.