Academic literature on the topic 'Shi tiesheng'

This article approaches the contours of contemporary intellectual faith through the work of Shi Tiesheng (d. 2012). Shi is best known in China as a “disabled writer,” while the theological depths of his writings on fate, life, and faith have rarely been the focus of attention. The article focuses on Shi’s representation of the human across his fiction and nonfiction writings, arguing that the more explicitly religious nonfiction toward the end of his career offers a philosophical commentary on his earlier stories, and that his non-orthodox interpretations of Christian ideas provide important insight into the spiritual quests of Chinese intellectuals.

Le roman philosophique, de par son ambiguïté et sa complexité, demeure un champ de recherche ouvert suscitant sans cesse intérêt et réflexion. En quoi la philosophie influe-t-elle sur l’écriture romanesque ? Existe-t-il une philosophie propre au roman, une pensée que seul le roman est susceptible de développer ? Comment résoudre la tension entre narration et argumentation, qui est à la base du genre hybride qu’est le roman philosophique ? Pour répondre à ces questions, nous tentons de retracer brièvement l’histoire du roman philosophique dans le contexte occidental et chinois, d’en analyser les caractéristiques fondamentales et de proposer une typologie de ce genre romanesque aux contours encore indécis. Afin de caractériser plus spécifiquement le roman philosophique moderne (XXesiècle), nous analysons les oeuvres de Milan Kundera et de Shi Tiesheng (史铁生), notamment Notes sur des questions abstraites (务虚笔记) de ce dernier. Nous précisons comment les emprunts à la tradition mêlés à diverses innovations (langages, personnages, structure), permettent de réconcilier la tension interne propre au roman philosophique, et de repousser les frontières narratives et génériques afin d’offrir au lecteur matière à réflexion sans néanmoins sacrifier le « plaisir du texte ». Enfin, à partir de considérations associées à l’expérience corporelle, exilique et créative de nos deux auteurs, nous observons comment leur oeuvre fait écho à des pensées philosophiques telles que le taoïsme, le scepticisme et la phénoménologie sans s’inscrire dans un courant de pensée spécifique. Au-delà de son rôle traditionnel de relais du savoir, d’instrument de pédagogie ou d’allégorie de la pensée, le roman philosophique moderne devient un laboratoire où se développe une pensée spécifique au roman. Cette pensée de nature subversive, paradoxale et « inutile », associée à la subtilité de l’art romanesque, s’aventure dans la fiction pour atteindre sa complexité et sa richesse
The philosophical novel, by its ambiguity and complexity, remains an open field of research which continually arouses interest and reflection. How does philosophy influence novel writing? Is there a philosophy proper to the novel, a thought that only the novel is likely to elaborate? How to resolve the tension between narration and argumentation in the philosophical novel, a hybrid genre ? To answer these questions, we retrace briefly the history of philosophical novels in the Western and Chinese context, analyze its fundamental characteristics and propose a typology of philosophical novels whose boundary is still undefined. In order to characterize more specifically the modern philosophical novel (in twentieth century), we focus on the work of Milan Kundera and Shi Tiesheng (史铁生), especially Notes on Abstract Questions (务 虚 笔 记) of the latter. The novelists combine traditional practices with various innovations in terms of languages, characters and structure. Their practice helps not only to reconcile the internal tension, proper to the philosophical novel, but also to push the narrative and generic boundaries in order to nourish reflection without sacrificing the “pleasure of the text”. Finally, from a reflection associated with the experience in terms of body, exile and creation of two authors, their novels echo philosophical thoughts such as taoism, scepticism and phenomenology without being part of them. Beyond its traditional role as a relay of knowledge, an instrument of pedagogy or an allegory of an idea, the modern philosophical novel becomes a laboratory where a thinking proper to the novel develops. Subversive, paradoxical and « useless », it ventures into fiction to reach its complexity and richness

In this thesis, a literary analysis and Christian critique is given to the contemporary Chinese writer Shi Tiesheng's philosophical-religious novel "Notes on Abstract Talks" in 1995. It is established in this research paper that Shi Tiesheng's writing manifests his sophisticated literary techniques, reveals his deep interests in fate and salvation, and demonstrates his unique efforts to find a way out of human predicaments through love. At the same time, this research paper also identifies Shi Tiesheng's understanding of love in terms of Eros, which has several unavoidable limitations according to the analyses of the relationships between disability and love, class origin and love, morality and love, and devotion and love in this novel. Several characteristics of Eros and Agape will be then described to show from a Christian point of view that it is Agape not Eros that possesses a salvation capacity to deliver people from suffering and predicament. The general goal of this thesis is to affirm the literary and philosophical value of Shi Tiesheng's "Notes on Abstract Talks", while pointing out its limitations and answer from a Christian perspective its questions about love.

博士
國立中正大學
中國文學研究所
105
Shi Tiesheng (1951-2010), a contemporary writer from China who was sent down to the countryside as an“educated youth” during the Cultural Revolution campaigns and returned in 1971 owing to physical conditions and was paralyzed at the age of 22, was known for his in-depth disability writings since his writing career in 1979. In six chapters, this dissertation attempts to characterize Shi Tiesheng's works as disability writing, focusing on his quest for the meaning of political scars and physical handicap as the general spirit and core metaphor of his creative path, and the interlacing self-questioning and history-searching as the interpretative axis that runs through his narrative experience, in order to explicate the trajectory and multiple meanings of his life and writing. 　　The introductory chapter states the motive and purpose of the present research, reviews literature, and describes the problematics and perspective. Shi Tiesheng's world of creations is traced and underscored through the reference of the writer's view on writing, construction of theoretical framework, sketching of the writer's creative process, and finally the division of individual chapters that will follow. 　　The second chapter focuses on Shi Tiesheng's early works, drawing on disability studies and the context of the Cultural Revolution, and observes the vicissitudes of his not-too-distant life and the dominant trend of his time. It also touches on how the author presents a society ruled by the able-bodied and beleaguered by the extreme leftists and how the disabled experience identity struggles and harbor memories of disasters. 　　Chapter Three highlights Shi Tiesheng's works in the middle and late 1980s. Taking the cue from the narrative course from “a disabled person to a person's disability,” and using Existentialism for interpretation, this chapter unveils the author's exploration into the relationships between humans, the world, and destiny through the philosophical thinking on the dialectic of the absurdity of being and the philosophizing process. 　　The fourth chapter follows the narrative axis of history and wound and probes into two major works that appeared in the 1990s and early twenty-first century: Notes on Ideological Principles and Memory and Impression. The main stress is on expounding how these two works recall memories of contemporary politics, the history of political scars, and the anecdotes of many traumatized individuals, through narration of the growth of the children who were born with the sin of being the offspring of their diasporic fathers or through the memorization of their clans and cities which open up a broader historical horizon for their scars and handicap. 　　Chapter Five discusses My Sojourn in Ding Yi, a long novel written in Shi Tiesheng's later years. Starting from the dialectic between disability and love, it seeks to ponder on how the work pushes the desire for love and thought on drama to the deepest recesses of human soul through the author's quest for ideals and his encounter with difficulties, and subtly brings up the paradox of faith in love and arrogance in love, thus stimulating contemplation on the will to power and the root of violence. 　　The final chapter seeks to offer a macro-perspective to the present research from the aspects of disability rumination, belief reconstruction, and post-revolution spirit. 　　To sum up, Shi Tiesheng's creativity regarding life and narrative lies in his exploration into the meaning of political scars and physical handicap, and his realization of human circumstances, the need for love, the breaking of the spiritual bond, and the ideal position. As a disabled intellectual, he reflects on the change of ideas in the history of modern humanistic thoughts in China and presents the road of self-exploration and history probing taken by an excellent writer.