The Expectation of Carnival: The “Carnivalised” Writing of China’s 1990s in the Context of Mass Culture

Abstract

Since the advent of the 1990s, the ascendancy of mass culture, buoyed by the burgeoning market economy, has engendered a discernible transformative trajectory in Chinese literature. Mass culture has given rise to a fissure in the value judgment and authoritative definition of literary works, a change that not only responds to the stimulus of the market, but also conforms to the expectation of the masses for revelry under specific historical conditions. This paper looks back at the social background, takes Bakhtin’s theory of carnival as a guide, and explains the literary phenomenon and writings of the 1990s in the context of mass culture, pointing out that the subversion of value and the deconstruction of authority are the prominent features of “carnivalized” writing in this period.