Void and Violence: Some Thoughts on the Value of Active Pessimism in Yu Hua’s Early Fiction

“Void and Violence: Some Thoughts on the Value of Active Pessimism in Yu Hua’s Early Fiction”Birgit LinderCity University of Hong KongStorytelling is always after the fact, and it is always constructed over a loss. J. Hillis MillerAccording to most critical literature, Yu Hua’s prolific oevre is divided into two phases, the rather short-lived early phase of so-called avant-garde fiction during the 1980s, and the later phase of narrative realism and the novel. Most critics have welcomed his turn to storytelling in the 1990s. Yet there is a particular merit in his earlier short fiction that reflects a paradigm shift in literary history and highlights a sensitivity common to most post-totalitarian experiences. Juergen Nieraad’s categorization of symbolic violence in literature and Juergen Wertheimer’s notion of an aesthetic of violence show that the writing of violence constitutes an important critique of contemporary existence. While many readers might consider the descriptions of inhumanness in Yu Hua’s and other 1980s fiction “language harassment” (Lyotard), it is exactly this symbolism of violence, fragmentation, and void that allows the author to represent a depth of human alienation that would otherwise remain unrepresentable in literature. If such writing is “constructed over a loss,” it also embodies the voice that articulates this loss and opens it up to further dialogue. It is not a reflection on or of destructiveness, but rather a manifestation of an active pessimism that puts important human dilemmas at issue and exposes a certain Zeitschmerz (anguish of the times) that needs to be addressed in order to continue the quest for a better understanding of our own times and motivations.