Fredric Jameson

“Demonic Realism” and the “Socialist Market Economy”: Language Game, Natural History, and Social Allegory in Mo Yan’s The Republic of Wine

for those who strive in vain for a definition or a mere coherent description of post-Tiananmen China, Mo Yan’s Jiuguo (The Republic of Wine) offers an imaginary solution, aesthetic pleasure, and even moral catharsis. This, of course, does not mean that one sees a clear picture of what China actually is in Mo Yan’s fiction. Rather, in The Republic of Wine, all the murkiness, contradictions, and chaos associated with contemporary China that prove so frustrating to analytical reason become the poetic norm within the confines of a narrative artifice and thus reach a state of autonomy in the world of the probable (as opposed to the actual)—the more philosophical in the Aristotelian sense. The novel, which is grotesque, hilarious, nauseating, and seductive all at once, is an experiment of literary coarseness and stylistic boundlessness. In this experiment, the sheer energy, variety, and playfulness of the writing open up new possibilities for representation while constantly driving the very form of the narrative to the brink of collapse. Within this fictitious space, which borders on the fantastic at one end and reportage on the other, there is always something thrillingly “realistic” both in terms of the familiar and recognizable and in the stronger sense of historical truth and value judgment. All this makes the reader wonder if the intense languageand formalistic game in The Republic of Wine is mobilized just to provide an aesthetic sanctuary from which to launch the most ruthless and irreverent social satire and moral-allegorical assault vis-à-vis the social landscape of the “socialist market economy.” One must observe from the onset, however, that Mo Yan, a modernist with a peasant background, has never been explicitly associated with the realist penchant for social analysis, moral critique, and political engagement; nor has he committed himself to any entrenched position with regard to the