心灵革命：现代中国的爱情谱系

by Haiyan Lee, 李海燕, 修佳明 (Translator)

本书重点探讨了“爱情”作为一个词汇、一种观念在近现代中国的言说历史。作者主要通过晚明至当代的一些重要文学作品，勾勒了爱情在中国文学叙述中的历史。作者还把爱情放在情感这一更大的背景之下进行考察，提炼出儒家的、启蒙的、革命的三种感觉结构，用以深度描述中国人情感的复杂结构 和互动演变，呈现了近现代中国人如何利用爱情以及情感的话语构建身份、道德、性别、权力、群体乃至国族与世界。本书以其新颖的主题、卓越的分析获得了2009年美国亚洲研究学会的列文森奖。

Genres: China, Nonfiction

396 pages, Hardcover

First published December 7, 2006

Reviews

[Jeri · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this book, Lee argues that discourses about what emotion is and how it operates in society are crucial to the formation of modern, national subjects. By showing how conservative and liberal discourses depart and reunite with each other on the issue of emotional, modern subjects, this book is a foundational work for theorizing modern subjectivities in China. My dissatisfaction with the book is two-fold: 1) while the decision to engage mainly with canonical work allows her a place to engage in conversation with existing literature, it remains in an “elite readers talking about high-brow literature” scenario which is ultimately not very satisfactory; 2)the focus on literary and theoretical works also fails to address how such discourses were actually at play in the social life at the time, or how expected audience of these writings reflexively shape the meaning of such texts. Overall, this is a decently researched book with valid theoretical ambition. Although there isn't much too surprising for me, I think it is a significant theoretical contribution to the field of China studies that deserves the valorization it receives.

[Ting · Rating 4 out of 5]

298 Love is anything but the native language of the heart, and that whether it whispers or wails, the heart always speaks in borrowed tongues.

308 the regime of authenticity undermines the project of civility by locating the source of political virtues in the heart. While the state discourse of civility seeks to construct a new public composed of cultured, hygienic, decorous, disciplined, law-abiding, productive, and cosmopolitan citizens, the regime of authenticity demands that they be first and foremost red-blooded Chinese whose structure of feeling is circumscribed by national sympathy.

309 the politically and commercially driven privatizing trend is worrisome only because when all experiences, with the world as well as with other human beings, have been reduced to the all-consuming activity of the care of self, what is lost is what Hannah Arendt calls 'the enjoyment of the world.'... 'world alienation, and not self-alienation, as Marx thought, has been the hallmark of the modern age.' It remains to be seen whether the post-Mao rush to reconnect with the heart will give rise to a public sphere in which the political is not personal, in which biology or nationality is not destiny, and in which self-expressions animate the art of civility and the ideal of worldliness.

[Jessica Zu · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful read. recommend to anyone interested in modern China.