Author ｜
David Der-wei Wang
Abstract ｜
By tracing the tension between qing 情 (emotion, sentiment, or affect) and li 理 (principle, coherence, or rationality), this essay reconsiders a set of key concepts that have shaped Chinese literary history over the past three centuries. Since early China, questions concerning the origins of qing and the meaning of li have remained central to both literary and intellectual inquiry. In the Qing dynasty, an era marked by pervasive imperial censorship and the early stirrings of modernity, traditional understandings of “heavenly principle” (tianli 天理) and “human desire” (renyu 人欲) came under unprecedented strain. Against this backdrop, Zhen Dai’s re-problematization of the dialectic between qing and li marked a turning point of profound significance. This essay identifies this “Zhen Dai moment” as a crucial watershed in Chinese literary history and traces how later writers and thinkers—from the Qing through the Republican and People’s Republic eras—returned to this moment as an intellectual and affective resource for negotiating the relationship between qing and li. Grounded in a reflection on this interaction between emotion and principle, the essay seeks an alternative to the conventional narratives that frame Chinese modernity through the dialectic of enlightenment and revolution. It proposes instead that Chinese modernity may be understood through a different genealogy: one rooted in a lyrical exegesis of qing and li and a discourse of dark consciousness.
keywords ｜
Zhen Dai, in-between qing and li, dark consciousness, Chinese literary history over the past three centuries, the lyrical tradition of Chinese literature