Man and Beast: Mo Yan’s Details and Politics

Abstract

ABSTRACT Focusing on slaughter scenes, this article studies the aesthetics and politics of details in Mo Yan’s novels. It argues that the Chinese Nobel Laureate’s detailing of violence, especially violence against animals, became a crucial part of his literary observation and moral critique of the excess and injustice that emerged in China’s modern pursuit of wealth and power. Mo Yan’s sensuous approach to the subject, however, is non-moralistic and non-anthropocentric. In emphasizing the “flesh” that diminishes the difference between men and animals, and in accommodating the perceptual-ethical ambiguities associated with details, his writing deviates from the humanist tradition of modern Chinese literature. Depicting the body – human or animal – that suffers from hunger and violence through minutest visual and aural details became Mo Yan’s peculiar way of “soul searching.” The flayed animal carcass and violated human flesh reveal what is not there, the spirit that has been annihilated and obliterated together with the body. No less important, the author’s very early grasp of the connection between decimated animals and the disturbed ecological environment – driven by human avarice and intensified by China’s fast-growing economy – is prescient.