Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-04T19:00:57.030Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Life as Form: How Biomimesis Encountered Buddhism in Lu Xun

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Lydia H. Liu
Get access

Abstract

The fraught encounters between biological sciences and religions such as Buddhism have raised philosophical issues for many. This essay will focus on one of them: Can form ground the truth of life? The author suggests that, along with the introduction of evolutionary biology from Europe, literary realism in China has emerged as a technology of biomimesis, among other such technologies, to grapple with the problem of “life as form.” Focusing on Lu Xun's early interest in Ernst Haeckel and science fiction, especially his translation of “Technique for Creating Humans” and his narrative fiction “Prayers for Blessing,” which drew extensively on a Buddhist avadāna, the essay seeks to throw some new light on the familiar as well as unfamiliar sources relating to Lu Xun's life and works and to develop a new understanding of how the debates on science and metaphysics have developed in modern China.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 68 , Issue 1 , February 2009 , pp. 21 - 54
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

List of References

Alberts, Bruce, et al. 1994. Molecular Biology of the Cell. 3rd ed.New York: Garland.Google Scholar
Anderson, Marston. 1990. The Limits of Realism: Chinese Fiction in the Revolutionary Period. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Auerbach, Erich. 1953. Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. Trans. Trask., Willard R.Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Bray, Francesca, Vera Dorofeeva-Lichtmann, and Métailié, Georges eds. 2007. Graphics and Text in the Production of Technical Knowledge in China: The Warp and the Weft. Leiden: Brill.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bingyue, Dong 2002. “‘Xiantai shenhua’ de beimian” [Behind the “myth of Sendai”]. Lu Xun yanjiu yuekan 10:54–59.Google Scholar
Editorial Committee on the Centennial History of Overseas Students at Tōhoku Daigaku. 2004. Ro Jin no Sendai [Lu Xun and Sendai]. Sendai-shi: Tōhoku Daigaku Shuppankai.Google Scholar
Furth, Charlotte. 1970. Ting Wen-chiang: Science and China's New Culture. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zhigang, Gan 2002. “‘Zhufu’ gushi yuan kao” [Querying the sources of “Zhufu”]. Lu Xun yanjiu yuekan 12:25–28.Google Scholar
Yingfei, Ha 2001. “Lu Xun, Nicai yu fojiao” [Lu Xun, Nietzsche, and Buddhism]. Lu Xun yanjiu yuekan 1:20–27.Google Scholar
Haeckel, Ernst. 1929. The Riddle of the Universe. Trans. Joseph, McCabe. London: Watts & Co.Google Scholar
Heinrich, Larissa. 2008. The Afterlife of Images: Translating the Pathological Body between China and the West. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Huntington, Rania. 2003. “The Weird in the Newspaper.” In Writing and Materiality in China: Essays in Honor of Patrick Hanan, ed. Zeitlin, Judith T and Liu, Lydia H, 341–96. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huters, Theodore. 1984. “Blossoms in the Snow: Lu Xun and the Dilemma of Modern Chinese Literature.” Modern China 10 (1): 49–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huters, Theodore. 1994. “Ideologies of Realism in Modern China: The Hard Imperatives of Imported Theory.” In Politics, Ideology and Literary Discourse in Modern China: Theoretical Interventions and Cultural Critique, ed. Kang, Liu and Tang, Xiaobing, 147–52. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Jones, Andrew F. 2002. “The Child as History in Republican China: A Discourse on Development.” positions: east asia cultures critique 10 (3): 695–727.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ko, Dorothy. 2005. Cinderella's Sisters: a Revisionist History of Footbinding. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kwok, D. W. Y. 1965. Scientism in Chinese Thought, 1900–1950. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Ledderose, Lothar. 1998. Ten Thousand Things: Module and Mass Production in Chinese Art. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Lee, Leo Ou-fan. 1987. Voices of the Iron House: A Study of Lu Xun. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Lee, Leo Ou-fan. 1995. “Some Notes on ‘Culture,’ ‘Humanism,’ and the ‘Humanities’ in Modern Chinese Cultural Discourses.” Surfaces 207:5–29.Google Scholar
Liu, Lydia H. 1995. Translingual Practice: Literature, National Culture, and Translated Modernity—China, 1990–1937. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liu, Lydia H 2004. The Clash of Empires: The Invention of China in Modern World Making. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lu, Xun. 1981. Lu Xun quanji [The complete works of Lu Xun]. 16 vols. Beijing: Remin wenxue chubanshe.Google Scholar
Mair, Victor H. 1993. “The Linguistic and Textual Antecedents of The Sūtra of the Wise and the Foolish.” Sino-Platonic Papers, no. 38. Philadelphia: Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Maruo, Tsuneki. 2006. Ren yu gui de jiuge: Lu Xun xiaoshuo lunxi [The entanglements of humans and ghosts: A study in Lu Xun's fiction]. Trans. Gongm, Qin. Beijing: Remin wenxue chubanshe.Google Scholar
Pan, Shisheng. 2002. “Lu Xun de sixiang gouzhu yu mingzhi riben sixiang wenhuajie liuxing zouxiang de jiegouguanxi” [The formation of Lu Xun's thought in a structural relationship with the intellectual and cultural trend in Meiji Japan). Lu Xun yanjiu yuekan 4:4–14.Google Scholar
Pusey, James Reeve. 1986. China and Charles Darwin. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Richardson, Michael K., et al. 1997. “There Is No Highly Conserved Embryonic Stage in the Vertebrates: Implications for Current Theories of Evolution and Development.” Anatomy and Embryology 196 (2): 91–106.Google Scholar
Ricoeur, Paul. 1984. Time and Narrative. Vol. 1. Trans. McLaughlin, Kathleen and Pellauer, David. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Schmid, D. Neil. 2002. “Yuanqi: Medieval Buddhist Narratives from Dunhuan.” Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Schwartz, Benjamin. 1964. In Search of Wealth and Power: Yen Fu and the West. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shelley, Mary W. 1996. Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. London: William Pickering.Google Scholar
Snobelen, Stephen D. 1999. “Isaac Newton, Heretic: the Strategies of a Nicodemite.” British Journal for the History of Science 32 (4): 381–419.Google Scholar
Strong, Louise J. 1903. “An Unscientific Story.” The Cosmopolitan 34 (4): 411–17.Google Scholar
Suozi, [Lu Xun]. 1963. “Zaoren shu” [Technique for creating humans]. Repr. Wenxue yanjiu 3: 88–90.Google Scholar
The Sūtra of the Wise and Foolish [mdo bdzans blun; in Mongolian]. 1981. Trans. Stanley, Frye. Dharamsala: Library of Tibetan Works and Archives.Google Scholar
Tarumoto, Teruo. 2007. Shinmatsu honnyaku shosetsu ronshu [Collected essays on translated late Qing fiction]. Shiga-ken Otsu-shi: Shinmatsu shōsetsu kenkyōkai.Google Scholar
Taussig, Michael. 1993. Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Wangm, Furen. 2002. “You Fabuer de kunchongji yinfa de yixie sikao” [Reflections on Fabre's Souvenirs entomologiques]. Part 1. Lu Xun yanjiu yuekan 3:29–42.Google Scholar
Wang, Hui. 2007. “Dead Fire Rekindled.” boundary 2 34 (3): 1–21.Google Scholar
Wang, Shijing. 2001. “Lu Xun shougao he cangshu mulu qianyan: jinian Lu Xun dansheng 120 zhounian” [Preface to The Manuscripts and Library of Lu Xun: Commemorating Lu Xun's 120th birthday]. Lu Xun yanjiu yuekan 3:53–56.Google Scholar
Xianyi, Yang and Yang, Gladys trans. 1985. Lu Xun: Selected Works. 4 vols. Beijing: Foreign Language Press.Google Scholar
Zhang Junmai, Ding Wenjiang, et al. 1977. Kexue yu renshengguan [Science and Weltsschauung]. Taibei: Wenxue chubanshe.Google Scholar
Zhou, Zuoren. 1996. “Humane Literature.” Trans. Wolfe, Ernst. In Modern Chinese Literary Thought: Writings on Literature, 1893–1945, ed. Denton, Kirk A., 151–61. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Zou, Zhenghua. 2001. “Women xuyao ‘Fabuer jingshen’” [We need “Fabre's spirit”]. Lu Xun yanjiu yuekan 5:63–67.Google Scholar