Keywords: cultural studies; Cultural criticism; The autonomy of literature; Vulgar sociology
1. The emergence of cultural criticism and its query
At the historic moment of the turn of the 2th century and the 21st century, the literary research in China and even the whole world (including literary theory, literary criticism and literary history) is facing profound transformation, among which the most striking is the rapid rise of cultural research and cultural criticism. The theory and practice of contemporary western cultural studies were introduced to China in the late 198s, especially in the 199s, and were applied to the study of contemporary China literature and culture, which became one of the main discourse resources of social-cultural criticism in the 199s. On the one hand, it gave birth to the upsurge of cultural research in Chinese mainland, at the same time, it had a great impact on traditional literary concepts and methods, and triggered a major debate on the relationship between cultural research (criticism) and literary research (criticism).
The relationship between cultural criticism and literary criticism is undoubtedly the focus of this debate. People who question or criticize cultural studies and cultural criticism mostly follow the dichotomy originally put forward by new criticism in Britain and the United States, which was popular in China in 198s. They think that cultural studies are an "external study" as opposed to "internal study", and even a resurgence of vulgar sociological criticism. They believe that cultural criticism deviates from the "aesthetic" essence of literature, or even leaves literature at all, and has nothing to do with literature; Some people think that cultural criticism can exist, but it can't replace literary criticism, especially the aesthetic study/internal study of literature. For example, in the 4th issue of Southern Literature in 1999, a long interview was published, in which the first question was, "Why did the current literary criticism gradually turn to cultural criticism? Do you think literary criticism can return to literature? " For this problem, quite a few scholars regard cultural criticism as "external criticism" as opposed to "internal criticism" or sociological criticism as opposed to aesthetic criticism, and they hope that literary criticism will return to "literature".
In the criticism of cultural criticism, the views of Yan Jingming and Wu Xuan are typical. Yan Jingming wrote: "In this way, literary criticism has been replaced by cultural criticism, and it has become an insignificant nagging companion. The specific interpretation of the writer's works has become a poor act that is out of fashion and lacks ideological edge." The author appeals that literary criticism should return to "self" and "text interpretation". "This is the only way for literary criticism not to be subservient to literature and not to be overwhelmed by cultural criticism." Wu Xuan's article lists the "five major problems" of cultural criticism, the first of which is "the current cultural criticism dispels the modernization trend of literary independence" In the author's view, "literary independence" not only conforms to the requirement of human independence in cultural modernization, but also becomes a logical extension from "people-oriented" to "text", which reflects the promotion of culture to literature, and also becomes an effort of new literature to bid farewell to the tradition of "literature carries Tao" and seek its own independent form-this effort should be understood as a revolution in the relationship between traditional literature and culture. For a hundred years, China scholars have always taken the nature and form of western independent literature as a reference, or put forward modern ideas of "art for art's sake" and "freedom of creation", or relied on modern western literary independence concepts such as "literature subject theory" and "art form ontology", thus exposing the problem of artistic weakness or cultural dislocation. However, this kind of effort itself has practical significance in getting rid of literature as a tool of politics and culture, and far from exploring China. In the author's view, such a process of literary modernity seems to be hindered by cultural studies: "Cultural criticism not only no longer pays attention to the problems of literature itself, but has been treated as' today's literary criticism' by many scholars with the truth in their hands." It can be seen that cultural criticism is a non-modern form or anti-modern criticism form, because it "no longer pays attention to the problems of literature itself." The author's logic is shown here: the modernity or modernization of literature is the autonomy of literature, and violating it is a reasonable historical process of defying modernity.
Leaving aside some emotional remarks, a more academic question is also raised: What is the relationship between cultural criticism and literary criticism? Is the transformation from literary criticism to cultural criticism a turning point or a loss of literary criticism? Will cultural criticism replace literary criticism? Is cultural criticism a sociological criticism or so-called "external criticism"? If so, what is its relationship with aesthetic criticism? Is it a retrogression to vulgar sociological criticism? Wait a minute. Therefore, it is necessary to clarify the relationship between "cultural criticism" and "literary criticism".
second, the relationship between cultural criticism and so-called "internal criticism"
If we want to elaborate the relationship between cultural criticism and literary criticism, we must first sort out the relationship among the three concepts: literary criticism, cultural research and cultural criticism. In the west and China, the unique academic-cultural activities of "cultural research" and "cultural criticism" are generally defined from the perspectives of their criticism, interdisciplinary, marginal position and practicality, and rarely from the perspective of research objects. However, as far as the literary circles in China are concerned, people often use "cultural studies" to refer to those studies beyond the scope of literature, and limit cultural criticism to the scope of literary studies. I'm going to follow this division here and divide cultural studies into broad and narrow ones. The broad sense of "cultural studies" takes almost all cultural phenomena as the object, and its research scope has almost no boundaries, and of course it goes beyond literature. It involves almost all aspects of culture, and its focus is what Williams called "as a whole way of life" ("culture" in anthropological sense). Williams once traced the history of the concept of "culture" and distinguished its three modern meanings: 1. Culture as art and art activities. "Culture" in this sense is considered as a word to describe music, literature, painting, sculpture, drama and film. In this sense, culture is widely considered to involve "refined" undertakings that "cultured" people are engaged in; 2. As a symbolic culture of "lifestyle", whether this lifestyle belongs to "a nation, a period, a group, or human beings in general". Williams believes that to study culture in this sense is to explore: what is the meaning of a clothing style, a set of behavior norms, a place, a language, a set of action rules, a belief system, an architectural style, etc. 3. Culture as a developing process. [1](p.9) The "cultural research" we are talking about today, which originated from Birmingham Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies, refers to the "culture" in the second sense, which was first put forward by anthropologist Taylor, and Williams, the founder of British cultural research, developed this concept and introduced it into early British cultural research. This anthropological definition of culture points out the permeability and daily nature of culture in social life. Because of this, the scope of cultural research in a broad sense often focuses on popular culture or the culture of daily life, and all advertisements, costumes, hairstyles, popular books, popular TV dramas and so on can be its research objects. Obviously, cultural research in this sense is a bigger concept than "literary research" or "literary criticism", and its prosperity is an indisputable fact, but it belongs to two departments at least in terms of objects, and it is impossible to replace literary research (as long as literature still exists).
At the same time, there is also a narrow sense of cultural research, which takes literary phenomena as its own research object. It is a kind of literary criticism method and should belong to the scope of literary criticism. For the sake of distinction, we might as well call it "cultural criticism". Cultural criticism is a unique perspective to study, interpret and criticize literary phenomena in literary criticism (although sometimes the boundary of "literature" is not easy to determine), and it is not "literary criticism" but "aesthetic criticism" or "internal criticism". If we define "cultural criticism" as a perspective and method of literary criticism, it is just as illogical to say that it will replace literary criticism as poetry will replace literature. We may say that within literary criticism, cultural criticism is now more active than aesthetic criticism, but we cannot say that cultural criticism will replace literary criticism.
Of course, since they are both "cultural studies", the broad sense and the narrow sense must have their internal similarities. I think this kind of connection or intersection is reflected in their research purport, research method and value standpoint, that is, cultural research (in broad sense and narrow sense) has outstanding political purport, interdisciplinary method, practical character, marginalized position and critical spirit. Cultural criticism can be regarded as the embodiment of these characteristics of cultural studies in the field of literary studies.
In this way, what people who are critical of cultural criticism are really worried about is whether and whether cultural criticism will replace "aesthetic criticism". However, because they often understand and express "aesthetic criticism" as vague terms such as "literary criticism itself" and "literature itself", only cultural criticism can replace the specious formulation of literary criticism, and give people the feeling that only aesthetic criticism or internal criticism is the real literary criticism or literary research, and the others are irrelevant. Here, it is necessary to state that the methods of literary criticism have always been varied, and aesthetic criticism or internal research is only one of them. Aesthetic criticism is not synonymous with literary criticism. It is contrary to historical facts and lacks tolerance to exclude cultural criticism, social and historical criticism and moral-ethical criticism from literary criticism.
after clarifying the above issues, let's look at the relationship between cultural criticism and so-called "literary criticism"-to be exact, "aesthetic criticism" and "internal criticism". First of all, we must admit that cultural criticism, as opposed to aesthetic criticism, is political, which is different from "internal research" with "literariness" as the object. As different methods and paradigms of literary criticism, both have their own advantages and disadvantages, which can complement each other but cannot be replaced. Cultural criticism can't replace aesthetic criticism or internal criticism, and it can't monopolize literary research. Historically, literary research has never been limited to aesthetic research, nor is it only aimed at revealing "literariness". Conscious aesthetic research or internal research is a critical method that emerged in a specific historical period, rather than a universal or unique method of literary criticism. There is no hierarchy between different criticism methods. We can only say that there are high-level studies in both cultural criticism and aesthetic criticism, and there are also many mediocre and inferior works. However, there is no high or low between the two critical methods, but each has its own strengths. In fact, it is very boring to compete between different criticism and research methods and argue authenticity. The desirable research orientation should be to restore the evolution of criticism methods to the issue of sociology of knowledge, so the question really worth discussing becomes: Why does a particular criticism method occupy a dominant position in a specific historical period? What kind of social and cultural forces and the interests of critics play a role here?
It is worth pointing out in particular that cultural criticism is not aimed at revealing the literariness of the text, but it is not a "off-string narration" divorced from the text. Another possible misunderstanding and confusion is involved here: aesthetic research or "internal research" is text analysis, while cultural criticism is divorced from the text. If "internal" refers to the formal aspects of the text (language organization mechanism, structure, narrative mode, etc.) and "internal research" refers to the critics' interpretation of the formal aspects, then cultural criticism with real academic value has never opposed formal analysis, even those generalized cultural studies, but "text" is not limited to literary texts here. In fact, cultural studies (including broad sense and narrow sense) draw lessons from the so-called "internal research" method in literary criticism to a great extent. From the perspective of knowledge pedigree, contemporary cultural criticism came into being in the west after the middle of the 2th century. Besides Marxism, its ideological resources also include the achievements of various literature and other humanities in the 2th century, such as modern linguistics, semiotics, structuralism, narratology, psychoanalysis, cultural anthropology and so on. It is very important for cultural criticism that an important knowledge of western ideological circles in the 2th century is to sublate economic determinism and realize that there is a complex relationship among politics, economy and culture. The achievements of the linguistic turn marked by Saussure's A Course in General Linguistics are fully reflected in disciplines including formalism, structuralism, post-structuralism, new criticism, semiotics and narratology, while cultural criticism benefits greatly from semiotics and narratology, which are considered as "ontological criticism of literature". In fact, many cultural critics are literary critics, who are familiar with the text analysis methods developed in the 2th century. This can be understood from two angles.
First of all, there has always been a branch of cultural studies that focuses on text form analysis, and it relies heavily on linguistics and semiotics. As Johnson pointed out, there are many different paths in cultural research, such as production-based research and text-based research. When talking about "text-based research", he pointed out: "The main humanities, especially linguistics and literary studies, have developed formal description techniques that are indispensable for cultural analysis." [2](p.29) These techniques include narrative form analysis, genre identification, syntactic form analysis, etc. John also followed the distinction between "culturalism" and "structuralism" in stuart hall's article "Cultural Studies: Two Paradigms", pointing out that the latter is "very formalistic and reveals the mechanism of productive significance of language, narrative or other symbol systems". If the culturalism paradigm is rooted in sociology, anthropology or social-history, then the structuralism paradigm is "mostly derived from literary criticism, especially literary modernism. [2](p.19)
Secondly, and more importantly, the influence of linguistics and structuralism on cultural research/criticism is not only reflected in the influence of one branch, but also leads to the understanding of the construction essence of human subjectivity and even the whole social reality. Johnson believes that "form" is cultural research.