Please wait a minute...
Frontiers of Literary Studies in China

ISSN 1673-7318

ISSN 1673-7423(Online)

CN 11-5745/I

Postal Subscription Code 80-982

Front. Lit. Stud. China    2020, Vol. 14 Issue (2) : 306-329    https://doi.org/10.3868/s010-009-020-0014-1
SPECIAL ISSUE ARTICLE
“Elder’s Dual Vector Foil” and the “Spectre” of Karl Marx: The Imagination of Social Form in the 21st Century Chinese Science Fictions
CHEN Shujie()
Institute of Literature, Fujian Academy of Social Sciences, Fuzhou 350001, China
 Download: PDF(467 KB)  
 Export: BibTeX | EndNote | Reference Manager | ProCite | RefWorks
Abstract

The imagination of the social form has been an important theme in the 21st century Chinese science fictions. The imagination of a social form on the model of “Elder’s dual vector foil” contains a logical asymmetry—high-level technology and a primary social form. From the perspective of historical materialism and dialectics, this imagination and other imaginations of the social form, such as intelligent algorithms, that internally dominate or distort the social form through technology, reveal its flaws and limitations. Compared to the imagination of specific technology, the imagination of social form emphasizes the entirety and connection of multiple social factors, and it is hard to thoroughly dispense the invisible dominance of existing human experience. Marxist theory and methodology are indispensable to the imagination of social form in science fiction. Reigniting the Marxist critical imagination of future social form and activating the aesthetic power of this imagination are the future directions of the development of science fiction.

Keywords science fiction      social form      The Three-Body Problem trilogy      Marxism     
Issue Date: 16 July 2020
 Cite this article:   
CHEN Shujie. “Elder’s Dual Vector Foil” and the “Spectre” of Karl Marx: The Imagination of Social Form in the 21st Century Chinese Science Fictions[J]. Front. Lit. Stud. China, 2020, 14(2): 306-329.
 URL:  
https://academic.hep.com.cn/flsc/EN/10.3868/s010-009-020-0014-1
https://academic.hep.com.cn/flsc/EN/Y2020/V14/I2/306
[1] CHEN Qi. The Clash of Civilizations and Cultural Self-Consciousness: Science Fiction and Social Reality in The Three-Body Problem Trilogy[J]. Front. Lit. Stud. China, 2020, 14(2): 275-305.
[2] LUO Yalin. The New Liu Cixin Literature: Science Fiction and the Third World Experience[J]. Front. Lit. Stud. China, 2020, 14(2): 254-274.
[3] Chiara Cigarini. Hearing (Technological) Anomalies: An Analysis of Han Song’s “The Rebirth Bricks”[J]. Front. Lit. Stud. China, 2020, 14(2): 228-253.
[4] JIANG Zhenyu. Contributions and Misunderstandings: Zheng Wenguang and “Science Fiction Realism”[J]. Front. Lit. Stud. China, 2020, 14(2): 202-227.
[5] LI Guangyi. The Decision of Luo Ji: The Existentialist Connotation and the Cultural Revelation of The Three-Body Problem [J]. Front. Lit. Stud. China, 2020, 14(2): 181-201.
[6] WU Yan. Imagination in Chinese Science Fiction[J]. Front. Lit. Stud. China, 2020, 14(2): 161-180.
[7] FAN Yilun. Between History and Fiction: The Possibility of Historical Science Fiction—Narrative Device and Conceptual Experiment in Qian Lifang’s Mandate of Heaven (Tianming )[J]. Front. Lit. Stud. China, 2020, 14(2): 330-355.
[8] LUO Xiaoming. The Divided City: Imagining the “Urban” in Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction*[J]. Front. Lit. Stud. China, 2018, 12(4): 583-609.
[9] Veronica Hollinger. Anxiety and Utopia in the Anthropocene[J]. Front. Lit. Stud. China, 2018, 12(4): 565-582.
[10] PI Kyunghoon. Science and the Rebuilding of the “Rational Subject” in 1980s China[J]. Front. Lit. Stud. China, 2016, 10(4): 623-645.
[11] YANG Qiong. Tales of Encounter: A Case Study of Science Fiction Films in Greater China in the 1970s and 1980s[J]. Front. Lit. Stud. China, 2015, 9(3): 436-452.
Viewed
Full text


Abstract

Cited

  Shared   
  Discussed