Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No. 11, 2024

Reflections on “Thingness” in Literary Aesthetic Ideology

(Abstract)

Li Yanfeng

In the realm of traditional humanistic literary criticism, literature is seen as the study of humanity with a focus on theoretical interpretations of the humanistic spirit, highlighting its aesthetic and humanistic attributes, while downplaying its “thingness.” On the basis of historical materialism, Marxist literary criticism regards literature as an aesthetic ideology originating from the complex and integral structure of social history, human practice and ideology. As an aesthetic form of ideology, literature carries profound implications of “thingness.” The “humanity” and “thingness” of literature achieve a dialectical synthesis of materialism through aesthetic practice. To truly unleash the material vitality and cultural value of literature as a form of aesthetic ideology, Marxist literary studies must reflect upon the discourse paradigms of humanistic criticism and formal aesthetic criticism, and emphasize the material structural connotations of ideology in order to reaffirm and reconstruct the poetic dimension of “thingness” within literary aesthetic ideology.