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Poetry of Labour and (Dis)articulation of Class: China's worker-poets and the cultural politics of boundaries

2012; Routledge; Volume: 21; Issue: 78 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/10670564.2012.701036

1469-9400

Wanning Sun,

Chinese history and philosophy

Abstract ‘Dagong’ means ‘working for the boss’, and bespeaks the commodification of labour. Over the past two and a half decades, a minor literary genre has emerged from this dagong community, documenting the crushing effect of the industrial machine on the body and soul of rural migrant workers. This paper considers the paradoxical process of class formation and class dissipation through the prism of the debates and commentaries surrounding workers' poetry from elite cultural institutions and worker-poets themselves. This discussion suggests that these commentaries and debates constitute both class articulations and disarticulations, and together they point to the precariousness of the formation of working-class consciousness in contemporary China. Notes *Wanning Sun is Professor of Chinese Media and Cultural Studies at the China Research Centre, UTS. She researches in a number of areas, including Chinese media and cultural studies, gender, migration, and social change in contemporary China, and diasporic Chinese media. Wanning is the author of two single-authored monographs: Leaving China: Media, Migration, and Transnational Imagination (Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), and Maid in China: Media, Morality and the Cultural Politics of Boundaries (Routledge, 2009). She is now completing a monograph on the cultural practices of China's rural migrant workers. The author can be reached by email at Wanning.Sun@uts.edu.au. 1. Sun Qingfeng, ‘Xieshi: yu wenhua wuguan’ [‘Writing poems has nothing to do with culture’], in Xu Qiang, Luo Deyuan and Chen Zhongcun, eds, 2009–2010 Zhongguo dagong shige Jingxue [2009–2010 Selection of Dagong Poems in China] (Shanghai: Shanghai wenyi chubanshe, 2010), p. 106. The translation of this poem and all other poems quoted in this paper is mine. 2. Jacques Ranciere, The Nights of Labor: The Workers' Dream in Nineteenth-Century France (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1981). 3. Jacques Ranciere, The Nights of Labor: The Workers' Dream in Nineteenth-Century France (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1981), p. vii. 4. Jacques Ranciere, The Nights of Labor: The Workers' Dream in Nineteenth-Century France (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1981), p. 8. 5. Leung Pak Nang and Pun Ngai, ‘The radicalisation of the new Chinese working class: a case study of collective action in the gemstone industry’, Third World Quarterly 30(3), (2009), pp. 551–565. 6. For works which consider the formation of dagong identity, see Rachel Murphy, How Migrant Labor is Changing Rural China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Pun Ngai, Made in China: Women Factory Workers in a Global Workplace (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005); Tamara Jacka, Rural Women in Urban China: Gender, Migration, and Social Change (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2006); and Yan Hairong, New Masters, New Servants: Development, Migration, and Women Workers (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008). 7. Li Qiang, Nongmin gong yu zhongguo shehui fenceng [Rural Migrant Workers and Social Stratification in China] (Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press, 2004). 8. Pun, Made in China; Pun Ngai and Lu Huilin, ‘A culture of violence: the labor subcontracting system and collective action by construction workers in post-socialist China’, The China Journal 64, (2010), pp. 143–158; Jenny Chan and Pun Ngai, ‘Suicide as protest for the new generation of Chinese migrant workers: Foxconn, global capital, and the state’, The Asia–Pacific Journal 37(2), (13 September 2010), available at: http://japanfocus.org/articles/print_article/3408 (accessed 28 March 2011); Wanning Sun, ‘Narrating translocality: dagong poetry and the subaltern imagination’, Mobilities 5(3), (2010), pp. 291–309. 9. Ranciere, The Nights of Labor, p. xi. 10. Michele Lamont, Dignity of Working Men (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000). 11. Murphy, How Migrant Labor is Changing Rural China; Pun, Made in China; Yan, New Masters, New Servants. 12. Ranciere, The Nights of Labor, p. 19. 13. Luo Deyuan, an editor of Dagong Poets periodical, in discussion with the author, November 2008. 14. ‘Dagong shi yi mai’ [‘Dagong poems for auction’], Gusu Wanbao [Gusu Evening Post], (29 May 2009), posted on Sina blog, available at: http://blog.sina.com.cn/u/5ee108be0100dlj5 (accessed 29 March 2011). 15. Quite a few worker-poets have given me complimentary copies of their collections during the past few years. 16. Jack Linchuan Qiu, Working-Class Network Society: Communication Technology and the Information Have-Less in Urban China (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2009). 17. Ranciere, The Nights of Labor. 18. E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (London: Victor Gollancz, 1963; London: Penguin Books, 1991). Reference here is to the Penguin edition. 19. I am grateful to Jack Qiu for a discussion of this point. 20. Sun, ‘Narrating translocality’. 21. Liu Dongwu, Chong xiangcun dao chengshi de jinsheng taiji—Zhongguo dagong shige yanjiu [The Spiritual Birthmark in the Rural-to-Urban Transition: Research on China's Dagong Poetry] (Guangdong: Huacheng Chubanshe [Huacheng Press], 2006), p. 150. 22. See, for instance, Ngai Pun and Lu Huilin, ‘Unfinished proletarianization: self, anger, and class action among the second generation of peasant-workers in present-day China’, Modern China 36(5), (2010), pp. 493–519; and Chan and Pun, ‘Suicide as protest for the new generation of Chinese migrant workers’. 23. Raymond Williams, Culture and Society (London: Chatto and Windus, 1958); Raymond Williams, The Long Revolution (London: Chatto and Windus, 1961; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965); Raymond Williams, The Country and the City (London: Chatto and Windus, 1973); Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (London: Oxford University Press, 1977). 24. Liu, The Spiritual Birthmark in the Rural-to-Urban Transition. 25. Yang Honghai, ‘Dagong wenxue bushi biaoqian de wenti’ [‘Dagong literature: it's not a matter of labelling’], in Yang Honghai, ed., Dagong Wenxue Zhongheng Tan [An Overview of Migrant Worker Literature] (Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press, 2009); Nie Wei, Wenxue Dushi Yu Yingxiang Minjian [Literary Metropolis and Cinematic Suburb] (Gulin: Guangxi Normal University Press, 2008). 26. I am not at liberty to disclose the details of funding sources or the reasons behind the recent withdrawal of funding. 27. Huang Yurong, ‘Dagong wenxue de wenhua jiangou’ [‘The cultural structure of dagong literature’], in Yang, ed., An Overview of Migrant Worker Literature, p. 110. 28. Huang Yurong, ‘Dagong wenxue de wenhua jiangou’ [‘The cultural structure of dagong literature’], in Yang, ed., An Overview of Migrant Worker Literature, p. 124. 29. Li Shengge, in discussion with the author, June 2010. 30. Huang, ‘The cultural structure of dagong literature’, p. 109. 31. Wu Shanzeng, ‘Dagong wenxue de huayu kunjin’ [‘The discursive dilemma of dagong literature’], in Yang, ed., An Overview of Migrant Worker Literature, p. 71. 32. Chen Jiangong, ‘Dagong wenxue shi dangdai wenxue buke huoque de chengguo’ [‘Dagong literature is an integral part of contemporary Chinese literature’], in Yang, ed., An Overview of Migrant Worker Literature, p. 1. 33. Liu, The Spiritual Birthmark in the Rural-to-Urban Transition, p. 150. 34. Wu, ‘The discursive dilemma of dagong literature’, p. 72. 35. Wu, ‘The discursive dilemma of dagong literature’, p. 73. 40. Zheng Lihong, ‘Dagong wenxue shi dagong zhe xinlin de nahan’ [‘Dagong literature is the migrant worker's cry from the soul’], in Yang, ed., An Overview of Migrant Worker Literature, p. 352. 36. Deng Shaolin, Yi Zheng and Min Fan, ‘Dazao dagong wenhua bingpai, chujin shehui hexie jingbu’ [‘Creating the brand name of dagong literature and promoting social harmony and progress’], Zhongguo Wenhua Bao [China Culture Daily], (12 December 2005). 37. He Mang, ‘Dagong wenxue: zai shehui xiaoyin yu meixue hefa xin zhijian’ [‘Dagong literature: between social impact and aesthetic legitimacy’], in Yang, ed., An Overview of Migrant Worker Literature, p. 93. 38. He Mang, ‘Dagong wenxue: zai shehui xiaoyin yu meixue hefa xin zhijian’ [‘Dagong literature: between social impact and aesthetic legitimacy’], in Yang, ed., An Overview of Migrant Worker Literature, p. 94. 39. Xie is quoted in Duan Yabing and Zhang Hong Hua, ‘Dagong wenxue yu jiangong hexie shehui’ [‘Dagong literature and the building of harmonious society’], in Yang, ed., An Overview of Migrant Worker Literature, p. 72. 41. The suicides at Foxconn, which Luo referred to, took place two weeks before the poetry conference. By the end of May 2010, 13 migrant workers—nine men and four women—had committed suicide by jumping from the top of the factory buildings at Foxconn Technology, a Taiwanese-owned electronics manufacturer in Shenzhen. See Chan and Pun, ‘Suicide as protest for the new generation of Chinese migrant workers’. 43. Zheng Xiaoqiong, quoted in Niu Jiaoli, ‘Shige de di ceng shuxie’ [‘Writing poetry about the bottom of society’], posted on Sina blog, (21 June 2010), available at: http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4a8fc3f20,100jbih.html. 42. Zheng Xiaoqiong, quoted in Meng Yifei, ‘Shi shei zhizao le Deng Xiaoqiong?’ [‘Who has manufactured Zheng Xiaoqiong?’], Shige bao [Poetic Magazine], (8 July 2008), available at: http://www.shigebao.com/html/articles/12/2745.html (accessed 30 March 2011). 44. He Yanhong, ‘Dagong shige bingfei wo de quanbu’ [‘Dagong poetry is not all there is to me: interview with Zheng Xiaoqiong’], posted on Sina blog, (30 November 2007), available at: http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_45a57d30,01000d9 l.html (accessed 30 March 2011). Allen Ginsburg is one of the prominent writers of the so-called Beat writers, a group of American writers who came to prominence after World War II. His hallmark works include Howl (1956). 45. Zheng Xiaoqiong, quoted in Niu Jiaoli, ‘Writing poetry about the bottom of society’. 46. Zheng Xiaoqiong, quoted in Niu Jiaoli, ‘Writing poetry about the bottom of society’, 48. Liu, The Spiritual Birthmark in the Rural-to-Urban Transition, p. 168. 47. Zheng, ‘Dagong literature is the migrant worker's cry from the soul’, p. 355. 49. Jacka, Rural Women in Urban China; Yan, New Masters, New Servants; Wanning Sun, Maid in China: Media, Morality and the Cultural Politics of Boundaries (London: Routledge, 2009). 50. Yan, New Masters, New Servants; Pun, Made in China. 51. Yuezhi Zhao, ‘Chinese modernity, media and democracy: an interview with Lu Xinyu’, Global Media and Communication 6(1), (2009), p. 6. 52. Lisa Rofel, Other Modernities: Gendered Yearning in China after Socialism (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999), p. 138. 53. Ann Anagnost, National Past-times (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997), p. 30. 54. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, ‘Can the subaltern speak?’, in Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, eds, Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1988). 56. Zheng Xiaoqiong, quoted in He, ‘Dagong poetry is not all there is to me’. 55. Meng, ‘Who has manufactured Zheng Xiaoqiong?’. 57. Luo Deyuan, ‘Liu Huangqi, wode dagong xiongdi’ [‘Liu Huangqi, my dagong brother’], in Xu Qiang, Luo Deyuan and Chen Zhongcun, eds, Zhongguo dagong shige Jingxue [Selection of Dagong Poems in China] (Zhuhai: Zhuhai Publishing House, 2007), pp. 61–62. 58. When I expressed interest in attending and was subsequently invited to attend the 2010 Dagong Poetry Festival in Dongguan, the invitation was accompanied with a friendly reminder that the event was about poetry, art, and literature, so ‘no politics, no human rights talk please’. During the two-day festival featuring seminars, talks, and poetry readings, a number of poets told me in private the unpleasant experience of having words from their interviews ‘twisted’ to suit the ideological agenda of some labour rights activist groups or journalists from overseas. 59. Hong is quoted in Liao Jindong, ‘Rang women yi wenxue de minyi kuanghuan’ [‘Let's have a carnival in the name of literature’], in Yang, ed., An Overview of Migrant Worker Literature, p. 366. 62. Guo Jianxun, quoted in Wu Yongkui, ‘Guo Jianxun: rang dagong wenxue zai xuedi li san dian ye’ [‘Guo Jianxun: let dagong literature play like a child in the snow’], in Yang, ed., An Overview of Migrant Worker Literature, p. 339. 60. Interview with this organiser during the poetry festival, June 2010. 61. In historical narratives, the term zhao an carries a strong connotation of the rebels having surrendered to the ruler in exchange for political favours.