Notes for Little Literary Workers

It has been my eighth year since I returned to Malaysia to work in a Chinese-speaking environment. After seven years of full-time work as a publisher editor, this year I embarked on my long-delayed master's degree program. A few years ago, I was thinking about going to college, but it was not related to solving my ambition or career. I just felt that the knowledge system was not perfect enough and needed more training. The powerlessness and internal wear and tear caused by labor made me want to give up and escape from writing work all the time. Now I am resolutely devoting myself to literary research because I want to struggle again before saying goodbye completely.

Literary careers almost have no chance of generous treatment, and it is extremely difficult for writers and literary and artistic workers in small literature to escape a life of poverty in both worldly and spiritual pursuits. This is not a dilemma that can be overcome by one's own ability, but the past is not deserted either. Many discussions talk about authors and works, but I also want to know how editors who have been working alone for a long time can break through and be limited. The subject of my research is a young literary man who stayed in Taiwan and returned to Malaysia in the 1980s. I hope to see some inspiration from him. Because no matter how the content of work changes in the future, there will always be an endless to-do list in the situation of small literature: how to comment, how to respond, and how to choose should be the responsibilities that young writers cannot avoid. (What’s even more worrying is that as I watch my predecessors go away one by one, I still have no judgment when I reach literary middle age.)

Why do literary workers here fall into a double poverty situation? Let’s talk about small literature first. The first time I read the term Minor Literature was from "Malaysian Chinese Literature" (2011). In the early part of the short book, Zhang Jinzhong borrows "Kafka: Writing for Minority Literature" written by Deleuze and Guadaci in 1975, and uses the concept of minority literature to compare the attributes of Malaysian Chinese literature. Why is Kafka an example of minor literature? We must understand his origins and the language in which he was written.

Kafka was born in Prague in 1883, but the regime at that time was the Kingdom of Bohemia. Growing up before and after the cracks that emerged in the modern country, this situation is not difficult to understand. For example, Lu Xun (1881) of the same era was born in the Qing Empire and died (1936) in the Republic of China. When we look at the identity of a writer now, we automatically understand Kafka as a Czech writer. Nowadays, when you visit Prague, you can see traces of "K" everywhere, such as street sculptures, posters in subway stations, portraits in museums, and cultural and creative souvenirs.

The young man who painted the alienation of human body and mind at the end of the 19th century grew up in a Jewish business family and used German as his writing language. His letters and diaries left a discussion about Judeo-German literature , inspiring Deleuze and Guardasi to think about minority literature. Prague has always been a multi-lingual and multi-ethnic city in history. In 1774, in order to facilitate management, the Austro-Hungarian Empire vigorously implemented the popularization of German (a compulsory course in primary schools and the only teaching language in middle schools and above), and devalued other ethnic languages. Before the formation of the Judeo-German community, the Jewish people in this area spoke Yiddish.

In the second half of the 19th century, Prague attracted more Czechs due to industrialization, and the local population structure and economic structure changed. Regime changes and ethnic ratios have had a profound impact on the language they use. Czech and German are gradually becoming rivals. The Prague German used by Kafka, mixed with local Czech and outside the German center of Germany, is not so much a rival but an organic mixture that leads to alienation and does not belong to any mainstream language. Kafka might have felt that German could not be his “homeland” (mother tongue?), but neither was Czech. Neither. He himself was not a "German-speaking child" and could only spend his life "dancing on a rope."

Isn’t Malaysian Chinese “on a rope”? Putting aside the dialects that have been abandoned by the system (Cantonese, Teochew, Hokkien, Hainanese...), Malaysians whose mother tongue is Chinese all know that the language they speak and the written characters are consistent with those of China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. There is an insurmountable distance between languages. It is quite a new dialect and is often regarded as incomplete and incorrect. The literature produced in this language environment is a minority among the minority. In Huang Jinshu's words, it is a potted plant situation - it is not recognized by the country, must serve the rising nationalism of the Chinese community, and has to compromise with the immigrants who are striving for food and clothing. Merchant culture. If one slips into the original predicament, one will not pursue the production of outstanding literary works and will only be content with existing (all literary works are good works).

Returning to Deleuze and Guadaci, the characteristics of minor literature are (1) deterritorialization, (2) everything in literature is political, and (3) collective value. The difference between Chinese minority literature and minority literature in other languages, such as German and English, is that Chinese is not the language of the colonizers or the governing political power of the immigrant areas, nor does it exist in places where a large number of Chinese live. Nonetheless, these three characteristics can still be used to explain the characteristics of Malaysian Chinese literature.

First, the contrast between Chinese and Chinese is not in Chinese-speaking countries or their cultural centers (Beijing, Taipei, Hong Kong). It is not Mandarin or Mandarin. Chinese is the language of a minority group, and cultural identity and political identity are separated. In addition to literature, other forms such as movies, songs, purely literary and commercial popular productions cannot avoid the influence and crowding out of other developed countries due to their limited audience. It’s hard to imagine a Malaysian Chinese director making a series of purely lyrical films similar to Shunji Iwai’s. Because of the difficulty in accumulating cultural resources, the masses generally expect content that is easy to understand or that reflects political demands and the living situation of the nation, and are often unable to appreciate and distinguish the advantages and disadvantages of technical skills. In Malaysia's Chinese-speaking world, where the cultural industry is barren, literature and art is just a side job with no interest in economic benefits.

The collective value that De-Guard mentioned refers to the difficulty in producing classics and great writers, but "the lack of talent is beneficial, and it makes people think of literature other than the masters." This means that if the outside world wants to understand small literature, it is difficult to start with a huge representative. Huang Jinshu raised objections to this and took the example of Kafka, who wrote the second theory. He spoke Prague German, but he was a representative writer who embodied existentialism and modernity. However, it cannot be denied that Kafka, who came from a middle-class background, had a doctorate in law, and was familiar with various original classics, had a Jewish identity from the Bohemian Empire, and the cultural capital of the Malaysian Chinese, who are mostly descendants of labor immigrants, cannot be compared.

If we refuse to settle for collective values, is it possible for a small number of literatures that are technically mature and prioritize literary values ​​to emerge? Where is the way out? Huang Jinshu pointed out another point of view, the problem of minority literature can also be replaced by the problem of literary modernity - the principle of literature is innovation and creation, the pursuit of replenishment and reproduction of reality and experience, which should reject the constraints of history but cannot be without the language of history. Without cultural capital, it is impossible to trace the traces of ancestors and above, and it is impossible to embrace and belong to the birthplace of culture. For third world literary youth and intellectuals, the way out may be to study abroad in modern metropolises and return or to be separated again. For example, the trip to Taipei of Malaysian Chinese novelists such as Li Yongping and Zhang Guixing.

In order to overcome the gaps in background and cultural resources, to avoid being co-opted by the birthplace of culture, and to withstand the suppression of the country’s official culture, writers have to retain an external perspective and experience the swings and limits among various tensions. People engaged in literature and art often have no place to stand , and they have clearly seen various restrictions and conditions. They still need to have a sense of history and give full play to their personal talents. Perseverance in confidence can be likened to a candle in the wind.

References and citations:
Zhang Jinzhong "Malaysian Chinese Literature"
Huang Jinshu "The Malaysian Case of Chinese Short Literature"
Zhang Lijun "The Exchanged Child: Kafka and Jewish German Literature"
Lai Yiwei〈Why did Kafka and Rilke in the Czech Republic speak German? Also talk about what German/what kind of German are we learning (I)〉