Symbolic inversion and controversial Chinese plays : chiasmus as a literary device for identifying ambiguities in meaning and throwing light upon authorial intention

Abstract

In China as elsewhere, drama has long been viewed as a powerful vehicle for affecting political consciousness in terms of building support for or challenging official ideology. Historically, the CCP leadership has recognised and reacted to the potentially large influence playwrights may enjoy by imposing upon then an elaborate system of administrative and social controls. Prevailing leadership factions within the CCP at different times exercise their powers of discretion to impose their own particular interpretations of Stalinist-Maoist orthodoxies. Playwrights who are vie-wed as "controversial" are obliged to negotiate their productions through this system, always aware of the possibility of being censored, banned, publicly vilified or imprisoned. Yet the system of co-option and coercion that playwrights confront often has a highly ambiguous face. To a large extent this is necessarily so, as it works in conformity with a Stalinist-Maoist system that has historically shown a marked tendency to shift towards political extremes when faced with crisis. Under political conditions that include ongoing factional power struggles at the apex of the Party political definitions constantly shift. A person who is vilified as a bourgeois-liberal today may well be castigated as an ultra-leftist tomorrow. Most playwrights who are labelled as controversial recognise their marginality to the political system and some use this marginality to their own advantage by reflecting, in their plays, the ambiguities inherent in the system. This thesis attempts to answer, in both a general and particular fashion, how this is done. The thesis argues that it is possible to use different strategies to understand controversial Chinese drama than has often been the norm. It may sometimes be possible for those of less direct "China experience'' to utilise (or "substitute'', if you will) certain structural analyses of literature in order to ''discover" the literary strategies which controversial playwrights may employ in presenting their socio-political critiques. This use of structural analysis has a certain advantage in that it offers a testing ground for the political assumptions that literary critics sometimes bring to bear when dealing with highly ambiguous plays and playwrights who may find it necessary to be at times less than open about their own motives in producing their work. The thesis employs the strategy of examining closely a wellknown controversial play of the 1980s - one that caused a literary storn1 when it was banned after only a few performances in 1985. Wang Peigong's play WM is examined in relationship to several other controversial plays which share with it the character of having a high degree of ambiguity. Show more