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The Politics of Cultural Capital: China's Quest for a Nobel Prize in Literature
In the 1980s China’s politicians, writers, and academics began to raise an increasingly urgent why had a Chinese writer never won a Nobel Prize for literature? Promoted to the level of official policy issue and national complex, Nobel anxiety generated articles, conferences, and official delegations to Sweden. Exiled writer Gao Xingjian’s win in 2000 failed to satisfactorily end the matter, and the controversy surrounding the Nobel committee’s choice has continued to simmer.
Julia Lovell’s comprehensive study of China’s obsession spans the twentieth century and taps directly into the key themes of modern Chinese national identity, international status, and the relationship between intellectuals and politics. The intellectual preoccupation with the Nobel literature prize expresses tensions inherent in China’s move toward a global culture after the collapse of the Confucian world-view at the start of the twentieth century, and particularly since China’s re-entry into the world economy in the post-Mao era. Attitudes toward the prize reveal the same contradictory mix of admiration, resentment, and anxiety that intellectuals and writers have long felt toward Western values as they struggled to shape a modern Chinese identity. In short, the Nobel complex reveals the pressure points in an intellectual community not entirely sure of itself.
Making use of extensive original research, including interviews with leading contemporary Chinese authors and critics, The Politics of Cultural Capital is a comprehensive, up-to-date treatment of an issue that cuts to the heart of modern and contemporary Chinese thought and culture. It will be essential reading for scholars of modern Chinese literature and culture, globalization, post-colonialism, and comparative and world literature.
Julia Lovell’s comprehensive study of China’s obsession spans the twentieth century and taps directly into the key themes of modern Chinese national identity, international status, and the relationship between intellectuals and politics. The intellectual preoccupation with the Nobel literature prize expresses tensions inherent in China’s move toward a global culture after the collapse of the Confucian world-view at the start of the twentieth century, and particularly since China’s re-entry into the world economy in the post-Mao era. Attitudes toward the prize reveal the same contradictory mix of admiration, resentment, and anxiety that intellectuals and writers have long felt toward Western values as they struggled to shape a modern Chinese identity. In short, the Nobel complex reveals the pressure points in an intellectual community not entirely sure of itself.
Making use of extensive original research, including interviews with leading contemporary Chinese authors and critics, The Politics of Cultural Capital is a comprehensive, up-to-date treatment of an issue that cuts to the heart of modern and contemporary Chinese thought and culture. It will be essential reading for scholars of modern Chinese literature and culture, globalization, post-colonialism, and comparative and world literature.
- GenresChina
280 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2006
About the author
Julia Lovell
24 books157 followersJulia Lovell is a British scholar, author, and translator whose non-fiction books focus on China.
She is professor of Modern Chinese History and Literature at Birkbeck, University of London, where her research has been focused principally on the relationship between culture (specifically, literature, architecture, historiography and sport) and modern Chinese nation-building.
Lovell's books include The Politics of Cultural Capital: China's Quest for a Nobel Prize in Literature (University of Hawaii Press, 2006); The Great Wall: China Against the World 1000 BC – AD 2000 (Atlantic Books, 2006); and The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams and the Making of China (Picador, 2011).
She is also a literary translator; her translations include works by Lu Xun, Han Shaogong, Eileen Chang and Zhu Wen. Zhu Wen's book I Love Dollars and Other Stories of China, which Lovell translated, was a finalist for the Kiriyama Prize in 2008. Her book The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams and the Making of China won the Jan Michalski Prize for Literature. It was the first non-fiction book to win the prize.
Lovell was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize in 2010 in the category of Medieval, Early Modern, and Modern History. These prizes are given to young scholars who have made a significant contribution to their field.
She has written articles about China for The Guardian, The Times, The Economist and The Times Literary Supplement.
She is married to author Robert Macfarlane.
She is professor of Modern Chinese History and Literature at Birkbeck, University of London, where her research has been focused principally on the relationship between culture (specifically, literature, architecture, historiography and sport) and modern Chinese nation-building.
Lovell's books include The Politics of Cultural Capital: China's Quest for a Nobel Prize in Literature (University of Hawaii Press, 2006); The Great Wall: China Against the World 1000 BC – AD 2000 (Atlantic Books, 2006); and The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams and the Making of China (Picador, 2011).
She is also a literary translator; her translations include works by Lu Xun, Han Shaogong, Eileen Chang and Zhu Wen. Zhu Wen's book I Love Dollars and Other Stories of China, which Lovell translated, was a finalist for the Kiriyama Prize in 2008. Her book The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams and the Making of China won the Jan Michalski Prize for Literature. It was the first non-fiction book to win the prize.
Lovell was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize in 2010 in the category of Medieval, Early Modern, and Modern History. These prizes are given to young scholars who have made a significant contribution to their field.
She has written articles about China for The Guardian, The Times, The Economist and The Times Literary Supplement.
She is married to author Robert Macfarlane.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 29, 2020
How odd, I seem to be the first person to write a review here on GR. Well, it is a rather obscure book -- but what it's about obsessed many people for many years, and at various points irritated (tens of?) millions of people, even if only briefly. There is some irony there, surely.
Hmmm, I don't think I can do justice to this book, or the myriad thoughts it set off in my mind. So, I will just throw out some grumpy things at this point in lieu of a proper review...
Well, for starters you can definitely tell this was based on JL's PhD. It has been softened and matured, but it still has that flavour pretty strongly. So it was rather sweeping in places and rather obscure and academicesey in others. But her introduction to various ideas of 'world literature' and political undercurrents and Eurocentrism were interesting, as was what she had to say (albeit largely based on a couple of books by Swedish scholars) about the occasionally murky history of the awarding of the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the various contradictions swirling about its founding charter and its practical outworking and the seemingly inescapable condescension that is shown or at least perceived by some whenever it goes to anyone outside the Anglophone (and possibly Francophone) literary worlds.
For the main, how sad, how sad, how sad. So much ink spilled over pride and various forms of nationalist anxiety. Laid out for the reader with sometimes concealed contempt on the part of JL. And then in the end how pathetic (in every sense of the word) that once Gao Xingjian was awarded the Nobel Prize his work was definitively banned in China and no public discussion was permitted of him, his work or the prize. Just let that sink in for moment... whatever the merits and demerits of his works and of whether or not or to what extent he could or could not be considered to represent what sort of China on a world literary stage (and is that even an important question for grown-ups?), and whatever the motivations and biases in the decision of the Nobel Committee in 1999-2000, some muppet decided that if you are in the PRC you are not allowed to talk about that. That's how much they worship their bizarrely constructed self-image. So JL's friends and contacts were kept anonymous in her work when they gave their reactions to the prize. Yes, a literary prize. Afraid to speak openly about a literary prize being given to a citizen of another country (Gao is French, though born in China and lived there till his 40s, so it's hard to say he's not 'Chinese') by people from yet another country (Sweden). Good grief, I don't even know if any English person since Kipling has ever won the Nobel Prize for Literature, and I'm not sure I care. (Though I will go and look on wikipedia in a minute.) But how very sad. Public discourse here in China is so obsessed with itself. How exhausting it all is. And how slightly annoyed I am with JL raking through it, and yet grateful for the record being there. Well, most of academia is about raking through stuff that's not all that important or interesting, I suppose.
For dessert, I was not convinced by all of JL's criticism of Gao Xingjian's work, in particular her pigeonholing of Soul Mountain as "Romantic". She certainly didn't back up the claim with quotations that were convincing. Maybe I am just a bit dim. I wasn't a big fan of Soul Mountain myself, as my review on GR will testify, but JL's rather rushed lit crit bits didn't really seem fair.
Hmmm, I don't think I can do justice to this book, or the myriad thoughts it set off in my mind. So, I will just throw out some grumpy things at this point in lieu of a proper review...
Well, for starters you can definitely tell this was based on JL's PhD. It has been softened and matured, but it still has that flavour pretty strongly. So it was rather sweeping in places and rather obscure and academicesey in others. But her introduction to various ideas of 'world literature' and political undercurrents and Eurocentrism were interesting, as was what she had to say (albeit largely based on a couple of books by Swedish scholars) about the occasionally murky history of the awarding of the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the various contradictions swirling about its founding charter and its practical outworking and the seemingly inescapable condescension that is shown or at least perceived by some whenever it goes to anyone outside the Anglophone (and possibly Francophone) literary worlds.
For the main, how sad, how sad, how sad. So much ink spilled over pride and various forms of nationalist anxiety. Laid out for the reader with sometimes concealed contempt on the part of JL. And then in the end how pathetic (in every sense of the word) that once Gao Xingjian was awarded the Nobel Prize his work was definitively banned in China and no public discussion was permitted of him, his work or the prize. Just let that sink in for moment... whatever the merits and demerits of his works and of whether or not or to what extent he could or could not be considered to represent what sort of China on a world literary stage (and is that even an important question for grown-ups?), and whatever the motivations and biases in the decision of the Nobel Committee in 1999-2000, some muppet decided that if you are in the PRC you are not allowed to talk about that. That's how much they worship their bizarrely constructed self-image. So JL's friends and contacts were kept anonymous in her work when they gave their reactions to the prize. Yes, a literary prize. Afraid to speak openly about a literary prize being given to a citizen of another country (Gao is French, though born in China and lived there till his 40s, so it's hard to say he's not 'Chinese') by people from yet another country (Sweden). Good grief, I don't even know if any English person since Kipling has ever won the Nobel Prize for Literature, and I'm not sure I care. (Though I will go and look on wikipedia in a minute.) But how very sad. Public discourse here in China is so obsessed with itself. How exhausting it all is. And how slightly annoyed I am with JL raking through it, and yet grateful for the record being there. Well, most of academia is about raking through stuff that's not all that important or interesting, I suppose.
For dessert, I was not convinced by all of JL's criticism of Gao Xingjian's work, in particular her pigeonholing of Soul Mountain as "Romantic". She certainly didn't back up the claim with quotations that were convincing. Maybe I am just a bit dim. I wasn't a big fan of Soul Mountain myself, as my review on GR will testify, but JL's rather rushed lit crit bits didn't really seem fair.
September 10, 2025
I should have read this one in my first year of my PhD (not the last). May feel a bit outdated today (like, let's say, discussing Szymborska), and taking Nobel too seriously is passe too, but it's a very thorough work from times when literally no one, apart from a bunch of sinologists, knew anything about Chinese literature.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews