A Case of Pandemic Narrative and the End of Post-Cold War

Abstract

The topical book Wuhan Diary, authored by the Chinese writer Fang Fang during the COVID-19 lockdown of Wuhan, is not so much a diary as a “becoming-diary,” given its performative practices. Wuhan Diary’s emphasis on the individual or private nature of its writing activity is attributable to its characteristic realistic conception of authenticity, which resulted historically from the humanist trend within Chinese literature in the 1980s as a significant element of post-socialist realism. Insofar as Wuhan Diary claims an overarching authorship that does not cohere with—or is, indeed, utterly subverted by—its textual complexities, it can be interpreted as a dual allegory of neoliberalism. In 2020, when the established pattern of globalization was in crisis and the post-Cold War state of affairs seemed unprecedentedly unstable, the post-socialist realism implicit in Wuhan Diary proved ineffective in representing the epidemic, as well as in justifying, by its (mis)representation, the conditions that have contributed to the general crisis.