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.