The Absence of the Intellectual: Alternative "Discourses" of Modernity in the Works of Xiao Hong

Modern Chinese intellectuals held the discursive leadership of cultural and social development. Modern Chinese writers' portrayal of intellectuals is also a way of establishing their leadership and participation in national development. The utopia envisioned in the mainstream narratives from the May Fourth Enlightenment literature to the revolutionary literature is in fact the artificial "meaning design" of the intellectuals as narrative subjects. The keywords in this design include binary oppositions (enlightenment-being enlightened, salvation-sickness, the collective-the individual), rationality, evolution, etc. Under this premise, Xiao Hong, as a female writer, almost avoids the intellectuals in her works. Xiao Hong is concerned with how the voiceless peasants and other underclass cope with their "being modernized" situation and being swirled into the "modernization" process. In her works, the poor, women and children replace the intellectuals as the narrative and lyrical subjects, and they are equal to the characters they sympathize with and reflect on. The protagonists in her works rarely have a clear sense of "individuality" and rational thinking; they are mostly rooted in the concrete survival and living experience, with emotions and physical feelings as their driving force. This paper will use a close reading of the text to explore four representative characters in Xiao Hong's works. And it argues that Xiao Hong’s "non-speaking" is actually her way (or strategy) of speaking, demonstrating her unique perception of and participation in the mainstream "enlightenment" and "survival" discourse.