published_or_final_version / Comparative Literature / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

The following paper will deal with the actantial place of memory and history in the works of Ge Fei, a so-called avant-garde writer in China. Analyzing his three major novels published in the nineteen-nineties, as well as an earlier short story, the paper will discuss how Ge Fei renegotiates the status and place of the literary subject as configured through the act of writing, and its close relationship with the medium of memory and history. Contrary to the prevailing opinion, the avant-garde experiment in Ge Fei's works does not intimate the dissipation of the subject, but rather assists in reconfiguring it in an entirely new and dynamic conceptualization. Instead of a figural e/End and vulgarization of literature in the nineties, Ge Fei's experimentation with the acts of writing and reading, as well as his play with language, open up new possibilities for the writing of new literatures in contemporary China.

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