The Rise of Humanism in 1980s’ China
The 1980s was a decade that saw Chinese intellectuals place great
emphasis on new practices in cultural fields. The wider attempt to push
China into modernization drove the intellectuals to search for the
cultural causes which had led to backwardness in the economy, politics,
science and technology (Gan, 2006: 4). Among the various types of
cultural ethos that exerted the main influence on Chinese intellectuals
and associated musicians were an existing Marxist humanism and the newly
imported existential humanism of Jean-Paul Sartre (Lin and Li, 1994).
Sartre characterizes existential humanism as “the relation of
transcendence as constitutive of man with subjectivity”, adding that
“what is at the very heart and centre of existentialism, is the
absolute character of the free commitment, by which every man realises
himself in realising a type of humanity” (1973: 47). The Chinese
translators of Sartre’s work argued that existential humanism encouraged
and inspired European intellectuals spiritually to recover from the
trauma of World War II (Zhou and Tang 1988: 2), hinting that it might
hold the same function for Chinese intellectuals after their long
suffering during the Cultural Revolution. Much literature produced
during the period, particularly the movement of Scar Literature
(shanghen wenxue 伤痕文学), echoed this ideological trend,
showing a “creative self” and the expression of an “un-alienated”
human nature (renxing ) (Wang, 1996: 32, 34). Instances include
the novels A Teacher in Charge of a Class (Banzhuren )
(Liu, 1979) and Stones in the Wall (Ren a, ren ) (Dai,
1980).
Moreover, the juxtaposition of individualism in existential humanism and
collectivism in Marxism humanism appears as the main characteristic in
the humanist articulation in the field of culture. As pointed out by
Barmé, “during the 1980s, the issue of individualism—the
philosophical and political importance of the autonomous self—enjoyed
only a short period of relatively open contention. And the nature of
doubting the party systems provoked government bans and denunciations
from 1983 onwards” (1999: 239). Chinese readers from the beginning
learned that Sartre’s philosophy was controversial. For instance, it
propagated self-transcendence and self-realization, emphasizing
subjectivity rather than the objectivity of the Marxist humanism
dominant in China (Wang, 1996: 28). Those radical intellectuals who
advocated existential humanism thus aroused severe criticism from those
responsible for orthodox ideological policy. No matter the underlying
difference between Marxist and existential humanist ideologies, the main
tendency was for Chinese intellectuals in this decade to turn to
humanism as a means of helping them relieve their memories of suffering
and to emancipate from their own alienated selves.