From Ah Q to Lei Feng: Freud and Revolutionary Spirit in 20th Century China

From Ah Q to Lei Feng: Freud and Revolutionary Spirit in 20th Century China, by Wendy Larson. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009. xii + 322 pp. $55.00

When censorship relaxed in the early 1990s, Chinese novels and films began to highlight sex, which for some cultural critics automatically called for a Freudian analysis. Wendy Larson's From Ah Q to Lei Feng argues that it would be a mistake to assume that works of this era simply import from the West either a Freudian understanding of revolution in terms of a sublimated sex drive, or the view of some of Freud's followers that sexual liberation brings political liberation. Specifically, Larson argues that in five works from 1992-95, mostly set during the Cultural Revolution, the literary role of sex is to help present various perspectives on a Maoist and distinctly non-Freudian psychology, although much of their content may harmonize with Freudian views as well. Larson reads each of the five works as speaking to the fact that although Maoism' s spiritual appeal is neither ephemeral nor shallow, the specifically Maoist "revolutionary spirit" was a relationship to a historical context and ideology now unavailable. In very useful background chapters she recounts how Chinese academic and literary texts from the past century have adopted or opposed the relevant Freudian and non-Freudian psychological ideas. She concludes with a compelling analysis of how current Western literary theory can impede Western understanding of Chinese literature and thus miss opportunities to improve theory. Particular strengths of Larson's study include the extraordinary breadth of her research, her focus on the devices by which the novels and films construct meaning, and her attention to the views of Chinese critics.

Chapter 1, a brief history of Freud's reception in the West, emphasizes his critics and his shortcomings, perhaps to suggest that Freudian psychology as a...