On the Space Construction and the Exploring of Sun Shengxi’s Identity of Son of the Darkness

Son of the Darkness is the debut full-length novel of the post-90s writer Lu Xu from Zhaoqing, which bears a strong allegorical hue. Son of the Darkness refers not only to Sun Shengxi of unknown identity but also serves as a metaphor for human destiny. The metamorphoses from human to animal and the shape shifts among objects that occur in the work both imply the marginalized situations of the characters and constitute an allegory of human fate. In the novel, Lu Xu constructs the family space, the space of biopolitics, and the utopian space as the domains for Sun Shengxi’s identity exploration. Sun Shengxi’s vulnerable situation in the family space and the city theater as the workspace is similar to that of the homo sacer in the space of biopolitics. The transformation in the utopian space embodies the subject’s exploration and pursuit of art and freedom, as well as the resistance to the supreme power.