A Reform within the Official Literary Field

Abstract Avant-garde fiction (xianfeng xiaoshuo 先鋒小說) in the 1980s People's Republic of China was published almost exclusively in official literary magazines before they were canonized. This seems to go against the classic conceptualization of European avant-garde as in opposition to the institution (Peter Bürger) and able to exist only in liberation and capitalist societies (Renato Poggioli). Why did official magazines become the major venue for the primary publication of Chinese avant-garde fiction in the 1980s? How did Shanghai Literature initiate the publication of avant-garde fiction? Starting with the discussion of these two questions, this article investigates the publication of avant-garde literature in the reform era, when the cultural production was still state controlled and the cultural market was not yet established. With a special focus on Shanghai Literature's vice chief editor, Li Ziyun 李子雲 (1930–2009), this research inspects the important roles that chief editors of major official magazines played in the ideological, aesthetic, and disciplinary reforms of literary production in the 1980s. By examining the relationship between avant-garde fiction and official literary magazines, this article reveals the complexity of cultural debate, negotiation, and reform in China's 1980s, in which the state and intellectuals established a counterbalancing complicity in bringing about a profound cultural and social reform.