Cross-culture, translation and post-aesthetics: Chinese online literature in/as world literature in the Internet era

Abstract

As defined by Michel Hockx, Chinese online literature is “Chinese-language writing, either in established literary genres or in innovative literary forms, written especially for publication in an interactive online context and meant to be read on-screen” (2015, 22). Since its birth in the 1990s, it has grown rapidly to become a new form of Chinese literature, with genre fiction as its mainstream. It not only has a large number of loyal fan-readers in China, but has also become increasingly popular among international readers by being translated into many languages and circulated in different countries.1 Some scholars have even pointed out that, following Hollywood movies, Japanese animation and Korean dramas, it has become the fourth largest cultural phenomenon in the world (Ouyang and He 2019, 180). In order to address the relevance of Chinese online literature to the topic of world literature and national literature, this article will sort out its origin and history, its translation and circulation, and its doings with the concept of canon. It argues that Chinese online literature is a representation of cross-cultural writing in the Internet era, a web-based world literature with translation and circulation as its fundamental premise, and a heterotopian and post-aesthetic model deconstructing the idea of canon, which together creates a literary space of challenging, breaking through and transcending the literary theories and ideological values of traditional world literature, and rewriting the existing order and standards of world literature. The study of Chinese online literature will help us better understand the relationship between world literature and national literature in this changing world.