China Social Science Review

No.2, 2023

A Reflection on the Naming of the Discipline of Overseas Chinese Literature: Centered on “Huayu Yuxi Wenxue” and “Hanyu Xin Wenxue”

(Abstract)

Shen Qingli

The debate on the naming of overseas Chinese literature has never been separated from the positioning of the discipline itself, and refers to the various entanglements of Chinese cultural psychological affiliation at home and abroad. The term “Hanyu yuxi wenxue,” translated from the English term Sinophone literature, not only is linguistically unsustainable, but also intentionally evades and obscures the “sameness” and “universality” of Chinese. The proposal of the term “Hanyu xin wenxue” (Chinese language new literature) is intended to be the most powerful rebuttal and “resistance” to “Sinophone literature” in the form of theoretical construction, and at the same time emphasizes the cultural and historical significance and value of the “New Literature” tradition since the May Fourth New Culture Movement. Although the concept of “Hanyu xin wenxue” has opened up a new way of theoretical dialogue in the Chinese critical circles at home and abroad, it is still difficult to replace the disciplinary name of “modern and contemporary Chinese literature”; “world Chinese literature,” which features a “cosmopolitan” character, and the lengthy “Chinese literature of Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau and overseas” will also coexist for a long time. Behind the complicated naming of the discipline, there is the vitality of academic innovation and the “blossoming of a hundred flowers” in the academia.