Nostalgia as Method: Contamination of Blood and Familial Ethics in Yan Lianke’s Dream of Ding Village

Abstract

ABSTRACT The notion of nostalgia always implies a sense of discontinuity and dissatisfaction with the present, but it does not always move towards resistance. Based on a close reading of Chinese writer Yan Lianke’s novel Dingzhuang meng 丁庄梦 (Dream of Ding Village), this paper identifies a latent counternarrative of nostalgia, working against the novel’s dominant narrative, which mourns the collapse of familial and social ethics in the wake of socialist developmentalism. Specifically, it argues the novel invokes a nostalgic imagining of traditional Confucian familial ethics, manifested both in Ding Hui’s ambiguous filial piety and the paradox of Ding Liang and Lingling’s adultery and desire for mingfen 名分 (normative status). This latent nostalgic imagining works as a form of depoliticization that subtly undermines the dominant narrative of the piece, implicitly dilutes the potency of the socio-political critique surrounding the AIDS scandal, and suspends a definitive interpretation of Yan’s critical position. This undermining of socio-political criticism and tendency toward nostalgic longing places Yan in a self-contradictory position, implying an unresolved conflict between his desire for withdrawal from a fallen world and his uncertainty about the capacity of traditional values to reshape the moral fabric of the post-socialist society.