Foreign Literature in Network Literature

Zhang Yongqing: Literary Strategy in the Age of Visual Culture

Source: Aesthetic Research Date: March 2006 16 Author: Zhang Yongqing Reading: 1475.

In the face of our social and cultural situation, researchers have given many names, such as the era of picture reading, visual civilization, visual culture, image culture, film and television culture, mass culture, cultural industry and so on. Accordingly, the rise, wide spread and practice of cultural studies. Undoubtedly, among these different names, there is a similar value judgment, that is, traditional literature and literary research are declining or even ending. It should be pointed out that for the same cultural phenomenon, the emergence of various concepts, on the one hand, shows the vitality of theoretical research and the diversity of cutting-in perspectives, on the other hand, shows that the use of concepts and terms is arbitrary to some extent. Therefore, before discussing problems, it is necessary to strictly define and standardize the connotation and scope of application of some concepts, such as image culture and visual culture, literary research and cultural research. We will follow the concept of visual culture to refer to our current social and cultural reality. Personally, I understand contemporary visual culture as image culture relative to traditional language culture, mainly represented by movies, television and other arts.

Some western scholars divide human culture into several major historical stages from different angles. There are mainly the following ways: first, oral culture, handwriting culture, printing culture and virtual culture. Second, the oral media culture, print media culture and electronic media culture defined by Mark's posters. Thirdly, from the perspective of media, harold Inis divided western culture into two periods: writing and printing, and then subdivided it into nine periods: Egyptian civilization; Greek and Roman civilization; Medieval period (parchment and manuscript); China's paper and pen period; Printing cycle; Enlightenment (the birth of newspapers); Machine printing period (printing machine, engraving machine, stereotype, machine-made paper); Film period; The broadcasting period. Fourthly, in Vision and Man at the beginning of the 20th century, the barrage thinks that human culture has experienced a spiral development process of visual culture, reading and writing culture, and then visual culture, and our culture will usher in an era when visual spirit replaces reading spirit and conceptual culture is replaced by visual culture. Closely related to this, other western scholars, such as Nick Stevenson, divide the theoretical schools of cultural studies from many media perspectives into three methods: one is various critical research methods, such as Frankfurt School, which mainly discusses various systematic forms of media ideological distortion and the relationship between media and broader ownership, power and authority systems; Secondly, the research methods or audience research of various symbols and cultures mainly discuss the symbol richness of the media, which is mainly reflected in the related research of McLuhan, Jameson and Baudrillard. Third, examine the influence of the media itself on our common vision. Stevenson believes that these three research methods are conducive to our understanding of modern electronic culture, printing culture and oral culture.

The key problem lies in how to understand visual culture and its relationship with traditional literature research theoretically. This problem is very important, because different breakthrough points and different research focuses will inevitably lead to different research models and completely different theoretical thinking. There are two interrelated research directions and fields. First of all, the research focuses on the study of traditional literature and art, mainly examining its series evolution from literary production, dissemination, text to acceptance in the visual cultural context, as well as the corresponding new aesthetic character and artistic characteristics. Secondly, the contemporary visual culture represented by film and television culture is studied, and the artistic function, aesthetic characteristics and narrative strategy of language as an important element of its overall art in film and television culture are mainly investigated. Personally, I think it is more important and urgent to discuss the former. This theory requires us to answer an unavoidable question: in an increasingly graphic and visual society, does traditional art, especially language art with high abstract ability, still have vitality and will it end? From a realistic point of view, the situation of literature is already very embarrassing, and the visualization and visualization of culture has just begun. Will language art eventually die out? If the answer is yes, then it is necessary to explain theoretically what factors contributed to this result. If the answer is no, it is necessary to explain theoretically what changes it should make to cope with the severe challenges of the visual culture era, so as to expand and prosper literature itself. All these require researchers to give convincing answers.

The study of traditional literature in the era of visual culture should explore new research perspectives and methods, the most important of which is to cut in and break through from the perspective of media. Specifically, we should look at the replacement of language media in the process of human technological evolution and its great influence on the production, dissemination, text structure and acceptance of literature from a historical perspective. In traditional literary research, people often ignore the aesthetic attribute of language art as a medium and the profound changes in the way of communication and acceptance caused by the characteristics of the medium itself. The most representative thing in this respect is Croce's related claim that art activities have nothing to do with the media. On the contrary, the media is so important because artistic creation is a high-tech media activity. As Bao Sangkui, a scholar of aesthetic history, said, any artist is particularly happy with his own media and appreciates his special ability to the media. Artists rely on the media to think and feel; Media is a special body of his aesthetic imagination, and his aesthetic imagination is the only special soul of media. In fact, it has a long history to discuss literature and art from the perspective of media. For example, when Aristotle classified art, he regarded media as one of the criteria, and thought that tragedy was an imitation of a serious, complete and long action, and its media was language. As we all know, the historical evolution of the media itself depends on the emergence of new technology, and the influence of technology does not occur at the level of consciousness and concept, but unswervingly and irresistibly changes people's feeling proportion and perception mode.

Western scholars have made fruitful theoretical explorations on this issue. For example, the core of McLuhan's theory is to explore the ways in which technical media affect human perception, which constitutes the most important theoretical issue in media research today. Contrary to McLuhan's optimism on media issues, Baudrillard is pessimistic, and the exploration of simulacra and surrealism is the core of his theory. The originality of Harold kiness's theory lies in discussing the role of media in the rise and fall of western civilization, which is different from McLuhan's division of media into cold media and hot media. He focuses on the relationship between media and space and time, and its influence on human civilization and social organization structure. As far as our literary research is concerned, we should focus on the significant differences and internal relations in the production, dissemination, text structure and acceptance of language art in three different historical stages: oral media, printed media and electronic media. In short, from the perspective of language as a medium, the culture of oral media is mainly auditory culture or listening and speaking culture, and auditory life suppresses visual value. For example, manuscripts and early books in the Middle Ages and Renaissance were used for reading, while poems were used for chanting and singing, which were closely related to music. The culture of print media is mainly a reading and writing culture. Different from the repetitive dialogue thinking mode commonly used in oral communication period, the printed media can organize events in an orderly, logical and objective way, which leads to a linear and serialized causal thinking mode. In addition, compared with the materiality of page words and fleeting words in oral culture, printing culture has enhanced the authority of authors, intellectuals and theorists in an opposite but complementary way. Print media has also greatly changed the way literature is produced and accepted. People no longer talk about books-listen to books, but write books-read books, thus creating a cultural environment that encourages people to think more and cultivating the concept of self-reflection. In the process of reading quietly, the aesthetic concept of aesthetic meditation and aesthetic meditation has also been formed. As some researchers have pointed out, oral tradition contains spirit, but the inherent attribute of writing and printing is the pursuit of material. The decline of oral tradition means relying on words (and therefore on eyes rather than ears).

From printers to modern imagers, the symbol of this important change is the invention of photography. Since then, with the rapid development of science and technology, movies and television have appeared one after another. At the same time, with the vigorous development of film and television culture, it shows that our society has entered the stage of electronic media culture. Electronic media culture is not listening and speaking culture or reading and writing culture, but audio-visual culture or visual culture. How to survive and develop the traditional reading and writing culture at this stage is a theoretical problem that needs our special attention. Language arts can use not only paper media, but also electronic media as carriers and modes of communication. Great changes have taken place in its artistic characteristics and aesthetic character, which requires us to explore theoretically. This is because the emergence of new media and new technologies has not only changed people's way of life, but also changed people's way of feeling and aesthetic psychology about the world and real life, and naturally changed the cognitive way of the original literature, such as the profound changes in the narrative way of novels from 19 to the 20th century. Modern people demand a fast and intuitive pace and way of life, which is in sharp contrast with the tranquility and peace required by printing culture. For most modern people, even when reading literary works of art, it is impossible to chew, taste and meditate on art in a carefree mood as before, but to browse and scan at will, which requires not eternal aesthetic experience, but an instant understanding. This internal demand of modern people will inevitably lead to the change of literary writing mode, communication mode and acceptance mode. Literary research needs to think about the challenges faced by literature from the dominant pattern of contemporary visual culture.

Facing the dilemma of literature in the era of visual culture, literary researchers should not turn to cultural studies one after another, or even replace literary studies with cultural studies, thus eventually canceling literature and literary studies; We should not only study pop culture such as advertisements, clothes, movies and TV. These really need us to study, but at present, what needs us to study more is how literary research faces the comprehensive challenge of visual culture. One possible direction that literary research needs to break through is to think about the linguistic and artistic characteristics of oral media, print media, especially electronic media in different historical stages from the perspective of media. At every stage of language art, there are fundamental differences in its literary production mechanism, communication mode, text structure, narrative mode and acceptance mode, which requires corresponding changes in the research paradigm of literary researchers, taking media factors as the core, fully considering social organizational structure, social system and other factors, and raising literary research to a new historical height.

Author brief introduction Zhang Yongqing, associate professor of China Renmin University, doctor of literature.

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Judging from the "production tool" of art, the "production tool" or medium of literature is "language". China's traditional literature works, from ancient tortoise shell bamboo slips literature to modern paper literature, language is the basic form of its existence; Network literature also exists in the form of language, but it is a special computer language, which we call digitalization, that is, the conversion and decoding of "bits" and "bytes". From humanized language to intelligent language, great changes have taken place in literary production tools, changing the scope of writers and readers, reflecting the interactive relationship between literary production and literary consumption, thus establishing a new literary sociology. In a sense, the transformation of cultural production tools and cultural communication system is often an important condition for building a new society.

As a new media literature, does online literature rewrite the established norms of traditional literature? Some writers believe that the network is only a new channel for the dissemination and publication of works, and its literary characteristics have not changed, so the concept of network literature has no meaning. Some people assert: "for literature, whether it is network communication or printing and publishing communication, it is only the way of communication, not the essence of literature." Others think that unrestrained online creation constitutes graffiti art and enriches people's reading habits, but many of them can't enter the art category, let alone replace traditional literature.

Literature is the product of different historical periods and consists of many social factors. Writing tools and communication channels in different periods always have different influences on the nature of literature. At the beginning, the invention of papermaking made an indelible contribution to the spread of literature, and the intervention of the network will also bring some changes to literature. However, as far as the development of online literature in China is concerned, there is no essential difference between online literature and traditional literature, but their fundamental characteristics are the same. Literature pays attention to society, history, people in social history and people's hearts and emotions. As long as it is real literature, it is all the same, and online literature is not beyond this category. Technically speaking, the network, as a carrier, is a new type of media after newspapers, magazines, radio and television, and network communication is more convenient and faster than other media. Due to technical reasons, online literature is different from traditional literature in terms of rules and forms. There are a lot of foreign letters, words and symbols in the text, but these have not yet become the essence of literature. Network literature and traditional literature should be consistent in the internal spirit of literature.