Keywords

The relationship between literature and science and technology is tied to the current circumstances faced by the Chinese form. With China’s unprecedented transformation toward industrialization and modernization, the profound changes brought about by high technology become one of the burning issues. High technology refers to the modern scientific theories and technologies that have emerged since the twentieth century.Footnote 1 In the present era, modern technology has invaded all aspects of human society, including literary activities. Traditional literary research could ignore this issue because technology had not been applied in people’s everyday lives at the time, and its role was obscured or suppressed back then; besides, people have still not attached enough importance to the impact of science and technology on literary activities. With growing might, science and technology has now penetrated every aspect of social life, even the fields of literature and art, literary theory, and Marxist literary criticism. Therefore, for literary criticism, research on the relationship between literature and science and technology is particularly indispensable and urgent. The influence and impact of science and technology on literature, literary criticism, and how Marxist literary criticism responds to such an impact have become new issues requiring serious study.

The study of the relationship between literature and science and technology should be conducted drawing on a wide range of intellectual resources. Marx and Engels’ position and insight on the study of science and technology provide a theoretical basis for the study of the relationship between literature and science and technology in the Chinese form today. Western Marxism’s reflections on the problems arising from high technology can also serve as beneficial references. More importantly, the Chinese form should also put forward targeted critical theories and perspectives based on in-depth studies of newly emerging literary creation and reading phenomena, and engage in new interpretations of the relationship between literature and science and technology in the Chinese form through constant adjustment and sublation.

1 Marxist Literary Criticism and Science and Technology

The study of science and technology occupies a prominent position within the ideological sphere of Marxism. Although Marx and Engels were primarily concerned with capital and the proletariat class, their intellectual thought necessarily involved surplus value and the transformations in the relations of production brought about by large-scale industrial production, particularly by science and technology. Marx and Engels’ discussions on science and technology and its relationship with literature and art can be found in The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, The German Ideology, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy Manuscripts of 1857–1858, The Poverty of Philosophy, Capital, Anti-Dühring, Dialectics of Nature, and Machinery, Utilisation of the Forces of Nature and of Science. Starting from the status quo of capitalist society at that time, the classical writers analyzed the relationship shared by scientific and technological development and social production in the era of large-scale mechanized industry as well as the various changes in society thus caused.

1.1 Marx and Engels on Science and Technology

Marx and Engels examined the nature and development of science and technology with the basic principles of historical materialism and dialectics. Unlike classical German philosophy, which is confined to theoretical speculation, Marx and Engels, in their criticism of capitalist society, attached great importance to natural and technical sciences, highlighting the development of science and technology and its application in material production. The Dutch scholar Schulman indicated that “any study of technology and the future would be incomplete without a consideration of technological development from the perspective of Marxist philosophy” (Schuurman 1980, p. 260).

Engels’ “Speech at the Grave of Karl Marx” noted:

Science was for Marx a historically dynamic, revolutionary force. However great the joy with which he welcomed a new discovery in some theoretical science whose practical application perhaps it was as yet quite impossible to envisage, he experienced quite another kind of joy when the discovery involved immediate revolutionary changes in industry and in historical development in general. For example, he followed closely the development of the discoveries made in the field of electricity and recently those of Marcel Deprez. (Engels 1989a, p. 468)

Whenever he witnessed the development of science and technology, Marx experienced “quite another kind of joy” because it had a direct impact on the transformation of relations of production and productive forces. Additionally, the issues and changes in capitalist society could not be clearly deciphered without sufficient sensitivity to the considerable progress of material productive forces and the massive application of science and technology.

1.1.1 Science and Technology and Society

Marx and Engels had profound insights and predictions about science and technology and its relationship with society. In Capital, Marx explicitly regarded natural science and its corresponding technology as a major component of the productive forces:

This productiveness is determined by various circumstances, amongst others, by the average amount of skill of the workmen, the state of science, and the degree of its practical application, the social organisation of production, the extent and capabilities of the means of production, and by physical conditions. (Marx 1996a, p. 50)

The “state of science” and the “degree of its practical application” are a part of the productiveness. Based on their observations of the capitalist society at that time, the Marxist classical writers examined the relationship between scientific and technological development and social production in the era of large-scale mechanized industry, and thus defined the social attributes of science and technology.

Marx and Engels realized the dependence of science and technology on society, and they believed the emergence and development of science and technology stems from the needs of modern society. Discussing the history of the development of science and technology, they mentioned that it originated from the needs of real life and production, and that the occurrence and development of science was determined by production. Engels said, “If, as you say, technology is indeed largely dependent on the state of science, then how much more is not the latter dependent on the state and the requirements of technology? If society has a technological requirement, the latter will do more to promote science than ten universities” (Engels 2004, p. 265). In Dialectics of Nature, Engels also uncovered the social reasons behind why science developed in the fifteenth century. He stated:

If, after the dark night of the Middle Ages was over, the sciences suddenly arose anew with undreamt-of force, developing at a miraculous rate, once again we owe this miracle to production. In the first place, following the crusades, industry developed enormously and brought to light a quantity of new mechanical (weaving, clockmaking, milling), chemical (dyeing, metallurgy, alcohol), and physical (spectacles) facts, and this not only gave enormous material for observation, but also itself provided quite other means for experimenting than previously existed, and allowed the construction of new instruments; it can be said that really systematic experimental science now became possible for the first time. Secondly, the whole of West and Middle Europe, including Poland, now developed in a connected fashion, even though Italy was still at the head owing to its old-inherited civilization. Thirdly, geographical discoveries—made purely for the sake of gain and, therefore, in the last resort, of production— opened up an infinite and hitherto inaccessible amount of material of a meteorological, zoological, botanical, and physiological (human) bearing. Fourthly, there was the printing press. (Engels 1987b, p. 466)

Science emerges and develops from society, yet it is abstract to some extent when compared to reality. That is, although science arises out of social needs, it is not always dependent on the society; it develops into an independent force, gradually detaching itself from the real world and becoming powerful and abstract. And the process by which science becomes abstract and independent is illustrated by Engels in Anti-Dühring:

Like all other sciences, mathematics arose out of the needs of men: from the measurement of land and the content of vessels, from the computation of time and from mechanics. But, as in every department of thought, at a certain stage of development the laws, which were abstracted from the real world, become divorced from the real world, and are set up against it as something independent, as laws coming from outside, to which the world has to conform. (Engels 1987a, p. 37)

That is to say, once science and technology has been developed, it can, in turn, contribute to production and society. Marx and Engels pointed out that science and technology, as a potential productive force, is the most fundamental and most active factor. It acts directly on the productive forces, bringing about changes in the structure and accumulation of capital, and then acts on the relations of production, changing the economic base, and thereby, the superstructure and ideology. In this sense, science and technology is revolutionary in nature and an important force for social development and progress.

Followed by France and Germany, England was the first country to conduct and complete the Industrial Revolution. In the 1750s and 60s, the transition from manual to machine production and from workshop crafts to machine industry began in the major industrial sectors of England. The use of new tools (such as Spinning Jenny), new sources of energy (such as coke), new technologies (such as the use of blower equipment to remove sulfur and impurities in ironmaking), and new power (such as steam) greatly promoted the development of productive forces. By the 1820s and 30s, the prospects presented in England were considered to be “beyond the reach of reason” (Kuczynski 1984, p. 50), and industry was nothing short of a miracle. Marx and Engels highly appreciated the science and technology emerging in England and France and exclaimed about the great achievements of industrial civilization:

The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature's forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalization of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground—what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour? (Marx and Engels 1976, p. 489)

Marx observed the momentum of science and technology and the new industrial machinery to capitalist production, and the resulting great leap in social productive forces.

Science and technology not only intrinsically promotes the development of productive forces, but also produces many changes in the mode of production, means of production, object of labor, and market pattern. In his Economic Manuscript Of 1861–63, Marx mentioned that, “Here the correct sequence of events is correctly expressed. The ‘MECHANICAL INVENTION’ first. Thereby there was CREATED a ‘REVULSION IN THE MODE OF MANUFACTVRE’ (mode of production) and HENCE in the relations of production, HENCE the SOCIAL RELATIONS and ‘EVENTUALLY’ in the ‘HABITS OF THE OPERATIVES’” (Marx 1994a, p. 468). Engels, in his Letter to Borgius, also noticed the role of the technology of production and transport in the relations of production and said, “As we see it, that technology also determines the manner of exchange, likewise the distribution of products and hence, following the dissolution of gentile society, also the division into classes, hence the relations of rulers and subjects, and hence the state, politics, the law, etc.” (Engels 2004, p. 264). In this way, technology is no less impactful to society than the French Revolution: “Whilst in France the hurricane of the Revolution swept over the land, in England a quieter, but not on that account less tremendous, revolution was going on. Steam and the new tool-making machinery were transforming manufacture into modern industry, and thus revolutionizing the whole foundation of bourgeois society” (Engels 1987a, pp. 248–249). Marx also made the point in his essay “The British Rule in India” that it was the Indian railroads that really changed the structure of Indian society. In the sense that science and technology drove social progress, it is the construction of the railroad system that connected the Indian small states and ultimately helped transform the nature of Indian society.

1.1.2 The Capitalist System and the Alienation of Science and Technology

While Marx and Engels saw the revolutionary changes produced by science and technology as productive forces in society, they also soberly recognized the alienation of science and technology in the capitalist system. Marx assimilated Hegel’s idea of the alienation of labor by technology,Footnote 2 “science appears as a potentiality alien to labour, hostile to it and dominant over it” (Marx 1994b, p. 34). In Capital, Marx compared the handicraft industry with the machine industry:

In handicrafts and manufacture, the workman makes use of a tool, in the factory, the machine makes use of him. There the movements of the instrument of labour proceed from him, here it is the movements of the machine that he must follow. In manufacture the workmen are parts of a living mechanism. In the factory we have a lifeless mechanism independent of the workman, who becomes its mere living appendage. (Marx 1996b, p. 425)

Science and technology increased efficiency with the great division of labor, but that obscured the miserable lives of the working class—“In short, with the introduction of machinery the division of labour inside society has increased, the task of the worker inside the workshop has been simplified, capital has been concentrated, the human being has been further dismembered” (Marx 1976, p. 188). Due to the division of labor, each person’s labor was only a part of the whole and “No one person could say of them: ‘I made that; this is my product’” (Engels 1989b, p. 308).

The greatest disadvantage of large-scale industrial production is that it leads to the one-sidedness of human beings, which is exactly what Marx was trying to criticize—“The machinery of modern industry degrades the labourer from a machine to the mere appendage of a machine” (Engels 1987a, p. 278). Not only that, but such large-scale industrial production in the capitalist system also limits and even injures both the intellectual and physical strength of human beings:

At the same time that factory work exhausts the nervous system to the uttermost, it does away with the many-sided play of the muscles, and confiscates every atom of freedom, both in bodily and intellectual activity. The lightening of the labour, even, becomes a sort of torture, since the machine does not free the labourer from work, but deprives the work of all interest. …The separation of the intellectual powers of production from the manual labour, and the conversion of those powers into the might of capital over labour, is, as we have already shown, finally completed by modern industry erected on the foundation of machinery. The special skill of each individual insignificant factory operative vanishes as an infinitesimal quantity before the science, the gigantic physical forces, and the mass of labour that are embodied in the factory mechanism and, together with that mechanism, constitute the power of the “master”. (Marx 1996b, pp. 425–426)

Workers became appendages of machines, and labor became contentless. And this is precisely the alienation of human beings brought about by large-scale machine production. “The yarn, the cloth, the metal articles that now came out of the factory were the joint product of many workers, through whose hands they had successively to pass before they were ready” (Engels 1987a, p. 308). Regrettably, this phenomenon still persists today, as science and technology humanizes and embodies this theory of machine division of labor to make workers unconsciously and automatically identify with the capitalist setting of technological rationality, shaping a negative subjective form that is heterogeneous and yet also isomorphic to the capitalist mode of production.

In his study of science and technology, Marx pointed the finger directly at the capitalist system. He argued that alienation was not the fault of science and technology, but of the capitalist system. In Capital he wrote:

The contradictions and antagonisms inseparable from the capitalist employment of machinery, do not exist, they say, since they do not arise out of machinery, as such, but out of its capitalist employment! Since therefore machinery, considered alone, shortens the hours of labour, but, when in the service of capital, lengthens them; since in itself it lightens labour, but when employed by capital, heightens the intensity of labour; since in itself it is a victory of man over the forces of Nature, but in the hands of capital, makes man the slave of those forces; since in itself it increases the wealth of the producers, but in the hands of capital, makes them paupers… (Marx 1996b, p. 444)

Taking the use of gunpowder as an example, Marx believed that those who mastered science and technology were the ones to blame, and that “the way in which machinery is exploited is quite distinct from the machinery itself. Powder is still powder, whether you use it to wound a man or to dress his wounds” (Marx 1982, p. 99).

Despite the objective nature of science and technology, it is the destiny of science to have social properties as long as it is used by human beings. Once science and technology is mastered by human beings, they take on a certain ideological character, and “the development of science alone, i.e. of the most solid form of wealth, both product and producer of wealth, was sufficient to dissolve this community. But the development of science, this notional and at the same time practical form of wealth, is only one aspect, one form, in which the development of human productive powers, i.e. of wealth, appears” (Marx 1989, p. 464). Here science as “notional wealth” indicates that the scientific achievements in each era are backed by scientific ideas, and that particular scientific ideas demonstrate the knowledge of nature in a particular era. Marx’s idea of science and technology as “notional wealth” and the following exposition of the paradox of science and technology have become the precursors of Western Marxism on the ideological nature of science and technology, which deserves further study and elucidation.

1.1.3 The Paradox of Science and Technology

The development of science and technology and the application of large machines have caused huge changes in the structure and the accumulation of capital. While promoting the development of capitalist industrial production, they have also caused various contradictions that are difficult to resolve.

One of the obvious contradictions is the paradox of division of labor. On the one hand, science and technology has led to an increasingly fine division of labor, and “a radical change in the mode of production in one sphere of industry involves a similar change in other spheres. This happens at first in such branches of industry as are connected together by being separate phases of a process, and yet are isolated by the social division of labour” (Marx 1989, p. 386). On the other hand, the division of labor requires closer cooperation. Since changes in each part of the division of labor inevitably lead to changes in the structure of the whole, they trigger new collaborations or combinations in production, “unite branches of production previously independent of each other” (Marx 1994b, p. 34). The fundamental paradox is that of endlessness and finiteness formed by the spirit of scientific inquiry. There is no “stop” in the development of science and technology; scientific research does not stop exploring. As Marx propounded in Capital,

Modern industry never looks upon and treats the existing form of a process as final. The technical basis of that industry is therefore revolutionary, while all earlier modes of production were essentially conservative. By means of machinery, chemical processes and other methods, it is continually causing changes not only in the technical basis of production, but also in the functions of the labourer, and in the social combinations of the labour process. At the same time, it thereby also revolutionizes the division of labour within the society, and incessantly launches masses of capital and of workpeople from one branch of production to another. (Marx 1996b, p. 489)

Such a Faustian spirit of modern science not only leads to the everlasting pursuit of efficiency and continuous revolution in the means of production, but also poses a major threat to nature as well as human beings themselves. Looking at the booming development of science and technology in the twentieth century and the problems it has brought, people have started wondering whether they should reflect on the Faustian spirit of eternal, insatiable pursuit.

Marx recognized the value of science as an independent force, while seeing the alienation it produced:

Knowledge thus becomes independent of labour and enters the service of capital; this process belongs in genera l to the category of the attainment of an independent position by the conditions of production vis-à-vis labour. This separation and autonomisation, which is at first of advantage to capital alone, is at the same time a condition for the development of the POWERS OF SCIENCE AND KNOWLEDGE. (Marx 1994b, p. 57)

Marx predicted that the surge of wealth due to the development of science and technology would gradually become the material basis for the burial of capitalism; science and technology, while causing changes in human beings’ daily lives, would also lay the foundation for the complete emancipation of humankind. In The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Marx mentioned,

But natural science has invaded and transformed human life all the more practically through the medium of industry; and has prepared human emancipation, …natural science will lose its abstractly material—or rather, its idealistic—tendency, and will become the basis of human science, as it has already become—albeit in an estranged form—the basis of actual human life. (Marx 1975, p. 303)

A tremendous increase in productive forces with the flourishment of science and technology will eventually transform human society into a harmonious society of the association or community of free individuals and facilitate the complete emancipation of man.

1.2 Marx and Engels on the Relationship Between Science and Art

The classical Marxist writers’ research on the relationship between science and technology and literature has also been conducted within the general framework of historical materialism and material dialectics. They not only see the inexorable trend of historical development, but also realize the contradiction and non-synchronicity between the two, with the latter showing the wisdom and profundity of classical Marxism.

1.2.1 The Influence of Science and Technology on Literature and Art

With regard to the relationship between science and technology and literature, Marx and Engels thought that philosophy, history, and literature could never develop separately. Discussing classical German philosophy, Engels stated the influence of science and technology on philosophy:

But during this long period from Descartes to Hegel and from Hobbes to Feuerbach, the philosophers were by no means impelled, as they thought they were, solely by the force of pure reason. On the contrary, what really pushed them forward most was the powerful and ever more rapidly onrushing progress of natural science and industry. (Engels 1990, p. 368)

As such, the ideas of these thinkers, from Descartes to Hobbes and to Feuerbach, were not limited to their philosophical heritage, but were stimulated by “the powerful and ever more rapidly onrushing progress of natural science and industry” that “really pushed them forward.” In the past, we have examined philosophers’ sublation from within the history of philosophy, ignoring the broader context that philosophers were perhaps not really inspired by philosophy itself, but by gifts from outside philosophy—science and technology in particular. What Engels’ words tell us today is that the study of literature should look not only at the inheritance and innovation within literature, but also at the profound influence of factors outside literature, including science and technology. Today, science and technology has become the material basis for the existence and transformation of literature. In The German Ideology, Marx and Engels cited the flourishing of art, specifically painting, during the Italian Renaissance as an example of how the artistic achievements of the Renaissance were correlated to the technological advances of their time—“Raphael's works of art depended on the flourishing of Rome at that time, which occurred under Florentine influence…Raphael as much as any other artist was determined by the technical advances in art made before him, by the organization of society and the division of labour in his locality, and, finally, by the division of labour in all the countries with which his locality had intercourse” (Marx and Engels 1975, p. 393).

Facing the impact of rapid scientific and technological progress on human society in all aspects, literature and art could not be out of it. Marx indicated in The Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy that the advancement in science and technology would destroy the imagination of childhood, and that certain forms of art of great importance were only possible at a specific stage of social underdevelopment. “Is the conception of nature and of social relations which underlies Greek imagination and therefore Greek [art] possible in the age of SELF ACTORS, railways, locomotives and electric telegraphs? What is Vulcan compared with Roberts and Co., Jupiter compared with the lightning conductor?” (Marx 1989, p. 47). With the advent of technological advancements, such as the steam engine and the telegraph, the old literary genre or forms were bound to disappear. With the progress of technology, the basis of existence of some imaginations and fantasies of our ancestors was lost, and the myths and epics of ancient Greece based on them could not be continuously created under the new historical conditions.Footnote 3

1.2.2 Non-Synchronicity Between Science and Technology and Literature

When dealing with the unbalanced relationship between science and technology and literature, the classical Marxist writers always adhere to historical materialism. As Engels wrote,

According to the materialist view of history, the determining factor in history is, in the final analysis, the production and reproduction of actual life. More than that was never maintained either by Marx or myself. …The economic situation is the basis, but the various factors of the superstructure—political forms of the class struggle and its consequences, namely constitutions set up by the ruling class after a victorious battle. (Engels 1995, p. 368)

The classical Marxist writers, while insisting on the ultimate dominance of economic development in literature and art, also valued the complexity of various factors that contribute to social development. There are indeed multiple factors at work in social development; the relationship between material and spiritual production is thus not simply one of pure determination and dependence, or domination and subordination. There is a difference between the material wealth created by material production and the “immaterial value” created by spiritual production, because they are not governed by the same law. When it comes to the unbalanced relationship between social development and literature, Marx famously said:

As regards art, it is known that certain periods of its florescence by no means correspond to the general development of society, or, therefore, to the material basis, the skeleton as it were of its organization…. this is the case with regard to the different arts within the sphere of art itself. (Marx 1989, pp. 46–47)

Here, Marx implied two types of imbalances: one is the imbalance between literature and the general development of society and the material base, and the other is the imbalance in the “relationship between different art genres within the realm of art itself.” This corresponds to the intricacies of historical development and the concreteness of history itself.

The non-synchronicity of social development, including the material base and artistic production, has already been evidenced by the history of culture and literature. In ancient Rome, people wore satin and spent inordinate sums of money, but its entire artistic achievement fell far short of that of ancient Greece, which produced unparalleled art in a rather barren land. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the material production of Norway and Russia evidently lagged behind that of England, France, and the United States, but Norway witnessed a boom in theater, spearheaded by Ibsen, and Russia saw a “splendid group” of novelists pioneered by Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. China witnessed something similar, where literature flourished in the midst of social and political darkness; this is what is meant by “The misery of the state leads to the emergence of great poets.” In other words, it is entirely possible for material life to be abundant but artistic spirit to be pale. This shows that “the economy is determinant, but in the last instance. From the first moment to the last, the lonely hour of the ‘last instance’ never comes” (Althusser 2005, pp. 112–113).

1.2.3 The Permanent Charm of Art

Marx once made a famous proposition, quite worthy of consideration, on the permanent charm of art—“certain important creations within the compass of art are only possible at an early stage of its development” (Marx 1989, pp. 46–47). For example, the flourishing of mythology and epics in ancient Greece could have only happened when productive forces were underdeveloped and social development level was low. Additionally, these ancient forms of art, produced in underdeveloped social conditions, are extremely splendid in spiritual implications, and they do not lose their artistic appeal with the changing times. Marx proposed in Economic Manuscripts of 1857–1858, “the difficulty lies not in understanding that Greek art and epic poetry are bound up with certain forms of social development. The difficulty is that they still give us aesthetic pleasure and are in certain respects regarded as a standard and unattainable model” (Marx 1989, p. 47). The myths, tragedies, and comedies of ancient Greece not only reached their artistic peak in a past time, they also continue to provide us with tremendous artistic enjoyment and serve as an unattainable model even for today.

Then why is classical art so enduring? How can this seemingly nonhistorical literary phenomenon be explained? Marx answered:

An adult cannot become a child again, or he becomes childish. But does not the naivete of the child give him pleasure…? Why should not the historical childhood of humanity, where it attained its most beautiful form, exert an eternal charm as a stage that will never recur? (Marx 1989, pp. 47–48)

The nostalgia and yearning for one’s childhood is a universal human emotion. From this perspective, perhaps, this type of art is not in contradiction with the underdeveloped social stage out of which it grew. Moreover, since capital, by its very nature, is somewhat hostile to art, the ground for such art is no longer available in a capitalist society. Furthermore, we can also find part of the answer from Engels’ elaboration of the complex relationship between the economic base and the superstructure. In a given period, art has its own laws, in addition to the constraints of social development.

Marx’s idea that “the concept of progress is not to be taken in the usual abstract form” (Marx 1989, p. 46) also provides new approaches to understand and answer this question. This view is more prominent in the humanities, especially in literature and art. To explain the enduring charm of classical art, we need to go back to literature itself, while considering that historical stages will “never recur.” The charm of literature lies exactly in the non-repeatability of literary works, the non-imitability of talented writers, and even the non-recurrence of their artistic forms. These characteristics thus make it difficult to measure the classics in literary history in terms of “progress.” As such, our perspective moves from the historical level to the value level, where both literature and art are products of history and can both be directed beyond a particular history into the future. This transcendence implies a certain universality in literature and criticism that overcomes the limitations of time and space, and such invaluable transcendence is precisely the goal of literary creation and criticism. This was perhaps the important inspiration of what Marx called the “an eternal charm” (Marx 1989, p. 48).

In addition, Marx and Engels were talented enough to foresee that the development of science and technology would provide more people with leisure and tools, thus greatly contributing to a wider production and consumption of literature and art. Since science and technology “in general the reduction of the necessary labour of society to a minimum, to which then corresponds the artistic, scientific, etc., development of individuals, made possible by the time thus set free and the means produced for all of them” (Marx 1988, p. 91). Engels foretold that in the post-Industrial Revolution future, “given a rational division of labour among all, of producing not only enough for the plentiful consumption of all members of society and for an abundant reserve fund, but also of leaving each individual sufficient leisure so that what is really worth preserving in historically inherited culture—science, art, forms of intercourse, etc.—may not only be preserved but converted from a monopoly of the ruling class into the common property of the whole of society, and may be further developed” (Engels 1988, p. 325). This is how classical Marxist writers envisioned a future society in which science and technology would be highly developed.

Due to the restricted level of productive forces at that time and the fact that Marx’s main concern was the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, Marx and Engels did not pay more attention to science and technology, especially the relationship between literature and science and technology. They highlighted the nature of science and technology in the era of machine industry during the primitive accumulation of capital, and thus in their discussion of the relationship shared by literature and science and technology, they mostly examined the limitations and negativity of science and technology and its impact on literary creativity. However, the historical materialism and relevant theoretical perspectives held by classical Marxist writers about science and technology and its relationship with literature are still of tremendous methodological significance for contemporary research.

1.3 Western Marxism’s View on Technology and Literature

Western Marxist studies on the relationship of science and technology and literature directly inherited Marx’s views on science and technology in large-scale industrial societies; however, they incorporated Marx’s legacy in a reflective manner within a Western cultural context. In contrast to the historical context of early capitalist societies such as the one in which Marx lived, Western Marxism, including the Frankfurt School, was situated in advanced industrial societies, where the boom of science and technology impacted upon the material, spiritual, and political life of the West. Therefore, while witnessing the progress initiated by high technology, they were more concerned with the problems that accompanied the advent of high technology. They seriously worried about the damage that the rapid progress of technology would cause to literary creation and even to human integrity, but they weren’t aware enough of the revolutionary influence of technology on literary creation.Footnote 4 Lukács’ History and Class Consciousness, Benjamin’s A Short History of Photography and The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment, Marcuse’s The One-Dimensional Man and The Aesthetic Dimension, and Jameson’s Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism are all unique explorations that critique and analyze literature and science and technology with depth.

1.3.1 Technology and Alienation

Western Marxism drew on Marx’s view on the alienation of human beings by science and technology in large-scale industrial societies, and investigated it in greater depth. They believed the development of modern science and technology had ironically turned into the opposite of itself by being transformed into an instrument for ruling human beings and even becoming a threat to the survival of human beings. Lukács, the pioneer of Western Marxism, made reification (alienation) the central issue of his critique of capitalism and argued that the critique of reification was what made the communist movement so attractive. In Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat, Lukács conducted a comprehensive study of the theory of reification, which can be taken as a rediscovery and reinterpretation of Marx’s theory of alienation. According to Lukács, reification, though also present in other social forms, is not prominent. Only in a capitalist society has it become a peculiar, pivotal issue specific to modern capitalism with the mechanized division of labor, especially with the transformation of everything into a commodity, extending to all aspects of capitalist society.

Reification thus becomes the focus of Lukács’ critique of capitalist society. Lukács implied that the role of man in the labor process is not essentially different from that of a screw in a machine. He said:

Neither objectively nor in his relation to his work does man appear as the authentic master of the process; on the contrary, he is a mechanical part incorporated into a mechanical system. He finds it already preexisting and self-sufficient; it functions independently of him and he has to conform to its laws whether he likes it or not. (Lukács 1999, p. 89)

He went on to say, “there is an even more monstrous intensification of the one-sided specialization which represents such a violation of man’s humanity” (Lukács 1999, p. 99). Lukács also extended Marx’s theory of alienation to all other aspects. For example, he inherited Marx’s view of the “alienation of things” such as land: “Private property alienates not only the individuality of men, but also of things. The ground and the earth have nothing to do with ground-rent, machines have nothing to do with profit. For the landowner ground and earth mean nothing but ground-rent; he lets his land to tenants and receives the rent - a quality which the ground can lose without losing any of its inherent qualities such as its fertility; it is a quality whose magnitude and indeed existence depends on social relations that are created and abolished without any intervention by the landowner. Likewise with the machine” (Lukács 1999, p. 92). Land originally has its basic properties, such as fertility for growing crops, but in a capitalist society, it is used only as a form of rent and loses its true physical nature. Lukács also discussed various kinds of reification in society, among which the reification of human consciousness, that is, human beings’ psychological traits, is particularly chilling and alarming. As reification is “rationalized” and abstracted, it then has a certain calculability, in the sense that everything can become a calculated object, even including “love.” Lukács’ critique of reified reality based on modern science and technology had a great influence on the Frankfurt School, and traces of Lukács’ thought are also evident in Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man.

In the Dialectic of Enlightenment, Horkheimer and Adorno deemed that the high degree of unfreedom of human beings due to the development of science and technology has led to the increasing alienation of modern people. Science and technology shapes workers on the basis of a mechanical principle, Taylorism,Footnote 5 and a mathematical division of labor, which not only factually causes a certain atomized and fragmented status of existence of human beings, but also embodies the machinic division of labor with human flesh. This leads to workers to unconsciously identify with the capitalist value setting of technological rationality and ultimately acquires a passive subject form that is both heterogeneous and isomorphic to the capitalist mode of production. Classical Marxism and Western Marxism offer quite different solutions to avoid the alienation of human beings. Marx advocated proletarian revolutions, while Western Marxism’s proposals include aesthetic salvation, interaction theory, and new sensibility. Fromm even expressed a preference for a return to the handicraft era, and believed that in handicraft societies the handicraftsmen were the center of productive activities, deciding how and how much to produce. Modern man, instead, “while becoming the master of nature … has become the slave of the machine which his own hands built” (Fromm 2002, p. 4). He also argued that “the alienation of work in man’s production is much greater than it was when production was by handicraft and manufacture” (Fromm 1980, p. 51). In the mechanized production of capitalist society, it is not the machine that surrounds the man, but on the contrary, the workers in factories surround the machine, merely as a form of capital, all day long, without thinking or creating; everything is planned and arranged by the manager, and the workers only have to move their hands automatically. Admittedly, such a view of retreat is only wishful thinking, not the mainstream view of Western Marxism.

1.3.2 Ideological Nature of Science and Technology

Another contribution of Western Marxism is revealing the ideological nature of science and technology. In his “Notes on Science and the Crisis,” Horkheimer clearly asserted that science and technology is also a form of ideology. Habermas further developed Horkheimer’s view, and in “Technology and Science as Ideology,” Habermas argues that science has become both “the primary productive force” and “ideological” (Habermas 1971, pp. 81–127). This means science and technology has a dual function, both as a productive force and as a form of ideology. In Habermas’ discussion, science and technology is primarily regarded as a negative ideology because science and technology, should have been the tool and means, eventually become the telos in itself. In this way, people become slaves to technology, and the human spirit becomes increasingly empty and repressed.

This ideological nature of science and technology is first manifested in the defense of the existing system through science and technology, which makes it becomes thus an accomplice to the capitalist system. In capitalist societies, while people enjoy the convenience of technology, they also tacitly approve the legitimacy the existing capitalist society. As Lukács says, “This rationalization of the world appears to be complete, it seems to penetrate the very depths of man’s physical and psychic nature. It is limited, however, by its own formalism. That is to say, the rationalization of isolated aspects of life results in the creation of—formal —laws” (Lukács 1999, p. 101). By satisfying people’s material needs, modern technology has led them to settle for the status quo and gradually lose their ability to transcend the capitalist reality. It is in this sense that Horkheimer considers science and technology to be ideological, because it takes on a particular form that prevents people from discovering genuine social crises, “every human way of acting which hides the true nature of society, built as it is on contrarieties, is ideological” (Horkheimer 2002, p. 7). Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man is a sharper critique of this problem. The rapid growth of science and technology has integrated people’s mentality and thought with the existing capitalist system, and technology has achieved domination over human beings, controlling and manipulating their consciousness—“A comfortable, smooth, reasonable, democratic unfreedom prevails in advanced industrial civilization, a token of technical progress” (Marcuse 2006a, p. 4).

The ideological nature of science and technology is not only reflected in its complicity with and defense of society, but also in the clamping down on literary creativity. In a capitalist society, under the manipulation of science and technology for the benefit of the bourgeoisie and instrumental rationality, not only is labor regulated through calculability, but everything that cannot be calculated is either discarded or not recognized. Furthermore, science and technology restricts the imagination and free expression in literature and art. In The Aesthetic Dimension, Marcuse stated that transcendence is inherently a principal feature of art. The development of modern technology has tamed the transcendence and estrangement of art in terms of capitalist society, and the transcendent literary image, imbued with romantic imagination and dreams, is being eliminated by modern technology. It is in this sense that he strongly called for the emergence of new sensibility and new technologies.

The ideological nature of science and technology is also expressed in its emancipatory potential, and noticeably, emancipation itself is ideology. This is another aspect of the ideological nature of science and technology. Benjamin was the first to recognize the revolutionary subversion of artistic activity in the age of mechanical reproduction and its emancipatory potential and paradoxes in A Short History of Photography and The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. He believed that mechanical reproduction made art accessible to the masses and that technology-based art forms, such as film, broke the old perceptions and imaginations and renewed people’s senses. Marcuse even called for the emancipation of science and technology, for “Such a society presupposes throughout the achievements of the existing societies, especially their scientific and technical achievements. Released from their service in the cause of exploitation, they could be mobilized for the global elimination of poverty and arid toil” (Marcuse 1971a, p. 23). In other words, science and technology should be liberated from all types of bondages and serve the future of the society. As Marcuse said, “The liberated consciousness would promote the development of a science and technology free to discover and realize the possibilities of things and men in the protection and gratification of life, playing with the potentialities of form and matter for the attainment of this goal” (1971a, p. 24).

Western Marxism has deeply inquired into the relationship between literature and science and technology, but the focus has primarily been on criticism and reflection, and the theoretical perspectives have often been contradictory or dualistic. Nevertheless, the research on the relationship between science and technology and literature is inspirational for the Chinese form and provides a handy reference to explore the relationship between literature and science and technology, while leaving room for further discussion.

2 Theoretical Reconstruction in the Hi-Tech Era

China, a country where industrialization started late but has been developing steadily and rapidly, differs to some extent from the Western post-industrialized society where Western Marxism emerged. It is necessary for the Chinese form to understand the relationship between literature and science and technology in an in-depth, dialectical way, in light of contemporary Chinese literature and cultural phenomena. There is an urgent need to rethink those issues that have been settled or not yet probed into by previous Marxist criticism, and to sort out, summarize, and conclude the new literary and artistic reality by forming and inventing new critical concepts, theories, standards, and terminology, so as to respond to, promote, and guide the new development of literary activities. This will provide new ideas and wisdom for examining the relationship between contemporary Chinese literature and science and technology.

2.1 View of Science and Technology in the Chinese Form

The development of science and technology in China goes hand in hand with the process of Chinese modernization. The Chinese Communists have fully recognized and performed historical dialectical analysis of the nature, status, and role of science and technology, and put forth some ideas and views with Chinese characteristics, which have become the theoretical cornerstones for the study of the relationship between high technology and literature in the Chinese form of Marxist literary criticism.

2.1.1 Science and Technology and the Dream of a Strong Nation

The importance of science and technology in modern China relates closely to the liberation and rejuvenation of the nation. Traditionally, China valued agriculture and belittled commerce, while neglecting science and technology. In the modern era, China has witnessed waves of learning modern Western science and technology, and it has become the common aspiration of a generation of people with lofty ideals to make the country stronger through science and technology. During the May Fourth Movement, the New Culture Movement, represented by the New Youth, welcomed “Mr. De,” namely “Democracy,” and “Mr. Sai,” namely “Science,” with astonishing enthusiasm; the concept of science and technology was increasingly recognized by intellectuals, including the public; and “Mr. De” and “Mr. Sai” became major contributors in the early stages of China’s modernization. Hence, it was precisely because of the tremendous pressure of modern science and technology from the West and the anxiety of saving the nation when its very existence was at stake that Chinese society was gradually transformed and modernized.

During the Chinese revolution and reconstruction of the nation, Chinese Marxists openly advocated a strong desire for science and technology. Confronted with this impoverished and weak China, Mao Zedong summarized the important reasons for China’s lagging behind:

From the 1840s to the mid-1940s, a total of 105 years, almost all the large, medium, and small imperialist countries in the world have invaded and fought against us. Except for the last war, the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, which ended in the surrender of Japanese imperialism for various reasons at home and abroad, there was not a single war that did not end in our defeat and the signing of a treaty that humiliated our country. The reasons for that were, first, the corruption of the social system and, second, the backwardness of the economy and technology. (Mao 1999, p. 340)

After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, Mao, aiming high and thinking ahead, attached great importance to science and technology, especially to cutting-edge technology for national defense from the perspective of national security. It was Mao’s successful strategy that led to China’s outstanding achievements in science and technology, which established China’s status as a great power and laid the foundation for national defense and China’s economic take-off.

It was Deng Xiaoping, the chief architect of Reform and Opening up of the economy policy, who brought science and technology to the forefront of the social structure. In March 1978, at the opening ceremony of the National Science Conference, Deng emphasized that “the key to the four modernizations is the modernization of science and technology” (Deng 1984, p. 102). Through his observation of and reflection on the development trends of the world economy, he noted that “What has brought about the tremendous advances in the productive forces and the vast increase in labour productivity? Mainly the power of science, the power of technology” (Deng, 1984, p. 103). At this conference, Deng famously asserted, “science and technology is a productive force” and “intellectuals are part of the working class.” Therefore, in the wake of the National Science Conference, China ushered in a new era, a “spring of science.”

Reviewing the discourses of the Chinese Communists on science and technology, it is quite clear that science and technology is closely pertinent to the prosperity of the country and the happiness of the people, and that science and technology significantly supports and drives the national economy.

2.1.2 Science and Technology as the First Productive Force

Deng not only proposed science and technology as a productive force, but also placed it in a prominent position in national economic construction, highlighting that “science and technology is the first productive force.” He clearly said, “China cannot advance without science” (Deng 1993a, p. 183). On September 5, 1988, when Deng met with President of Czechoslovakia, Husak, he elaborated on the importance of science and technology:

The world is changing, and we should change our thinking and actions along with it. In the past we pursued a closed-door policy and isolated ourselves. How did that benefit socialism? The wheels of history were rolling on, but we came to a halt and fell behind others. Marx said that science and technology are part of the productive forces. Facts show that he was right. In my opinion, science and technology are a primary productive force. For us, the basic task is to maintain socialist convictions and principles, expand the productive forces and raise the people’s living standards. To accomplish this task, we must open our country to the outside world. Otherwise, we shall not be able to stick to socialism. In the 1950s, for example, the gap in technology between China and Japan was not great. Then we closed our doors for 20 years and made no effort to compete internationally, while during the same period Japan grew into an economic power. (Deng 1993b, p. 269)

Science and technology is the “primary productive force,” or “first productive force” is a scientific assertion made by the Chinese Communists based on the development trends and current situation of contemporary science and technology, and is a theoretical extension of Marx’s “scientific power” or science and technology as a productive force.Footnote 6

On the issue of “science and technology is the first productive force,” Deng made it very clear that “We should make joint efforts to develop science and technology. Without science the hopes of mankind will not be fulfilled. Without science the people of the Third World countries cannot cast off poverty. Without science world peace cannot be maintained” (Deng 1993a, p. 184). First and foremost, in terms of the relationship between society and science and technology, the development of society and people’s happiness are directly related to the growth of wealth, and in the growth of social wealth, the role of science and technology has been increasingly important: it has become the paramount driving force of economic growth. Second, the promotion of science and technology in the economy inevitably promotes the development of spiritual culture, which improves people’s spiritual quality of life while raising their material living level. This helps change their spiritual outlook and daily life, thus, promoting the overall development and progress of society. Finally, as for maintaining world peace, the sword of national protection created by science and technology is a guarantee of peace, and the development of science and technology in various countries becomes a counterbalancing force among them.

2.1.3 Ideological Construction Function of Science and Technology

There are different opinions on the ideological nature of science and technology in China. When being viewed in isolation, science and technology does not seem to be ideological, but it must be admitted that “technology as such cannot be isolated from the use to which it is put” (Marcus 2006a, p. xlvi) and that science and technology is inseparable from the people who control it, because it cannot exist independent of people. As long as science and technology is used by people, it will naturally play an ideological function. While Marx proposed to distinguish gunpowder from the people who use it, he also regarded science and technology as “notional wealth.” Western Marxism is soberly aware of the ideological nature of science and technology, and yet holds a mainly negative perception about it.

In studying the nature of science and technology, we should see both science and technology as productive forces along with their ideological properties, and pay attention to the mutual-transformation between the two. From a historical perspective, science and technology as a revolutionary productive force embodies the deconstruction of the land-based feudal society and the deconstruction of feudal values and mindset. As such, science and technology is not only material, but also has a revolutionary nature and historical value. With regard to social development, science and technology, as an alias of modernization, has contributed enormously to the transformation and development of society, which shows its revolutionary nature as well. Moreover, “science and technology is the first productive force” is in itself ideological in nature, as it demands the realization of its dominant position in social life. The revelation and transformation of the dual nature of science and technology from historical and dialectical perspectives are an exploration and development of the view of science and technology in the Chinese form.

The ideological nature of science and technology today has new characteristics. Science and technology has not only moved from the machine age to the digital age, but has also permeated into all aspects of life, playing an increasingly important role. Science and technology has become something opposed to ordinary labor, and its control over human being is pervasive, from people’s work to their leisure, and even to their feelings and thoughts. Postman, in Foreword to Amusing Ourselves to Death, worried that if all work were done by machines, humans would become stupid and numb under the pleasure of technology. Moreover, because the development of technology makes people’s work easier, they will have more and more leisure time, and they will give up thinking in comfort. The postmodern novel “Lost in the Funhouse” written by John Barth is a metaphor for this phenomenon, in which people live in the Funhouse but lose their way. The lifestyle provided by modern technology has caused people to lose the desire to strive further. Guarding against the negative pitfalls of the development of modern science and technology, and preventing it from being transformed into an instrument of domination or threat to the subsistence of humankind, are issues of particular concern to Western Marxism and a warning to China today as well.

2.2 Modern Science and Technology and the “Survival” of Literature

While people cheer for the new life brought about by high technology, they also deeply recognize the impact of industrialization and informatization threatening the subsistence of literature and art, as well as infringements on individuals. Joseph Needham once stated, “when at the Scientific Revolution the final cause of Aristotle was done away with, and ethics chased out of science, things became very different, and more menacing” (Nedham 1985, p. 11). Nowadays, when science and technology is developing rapidly and entering an era of total control, the excessive promotion of instrumental and technical rationality may cause society to fall into the trap of “material prosperity and spiritual suffering.” The relationship shared by literature and science and technology has become a realist problem that needs to be examined and refined theoretically. It is difficult for everyone who engages in literary and artistic creation and research to stay away from it.

2.2.1 The Challenge of Digital Technology to Literature

The development of science and technology today varies from that in Marx’s time. If machines were used to control people mainly in factories, contemporary technology not only controls people’s work and life, but also penetrates into all areas of social life. Here, the focus is put on digital technology, which is closely related to literature. Negroponte, the author of Being Digital, divided the world into an atomic world and a bit world (Negroponte 1995, p. 11)that is, “a society constructed by the real physical world made of atoms and a digital media culture based on digital technology” (Li 2012, p. 8).This is the major difference between the industrial and high-tech age.

Digitalization has quietly changed the spiritual life of people including literature and art. With the extension of digital technology, high technology has become more closely connected with people’s lives and their feelings. For instance, “this private space has been invaded and whittled down by technological reality. Mass production and mass distribution claim the entire individual, and industrial psychology” (Marcuse 2006a, p. 12).The public and private spheres have been unknowingly integrated. Faced with the impact of digital technology, especially virtual reality (VR) and artificial intelligence (AI), the basic attributes of literature and art are seriously challenged, and the survival of literature in the high-tech era becomes a problem.

VR is a computer-generated immersive and interactive experience that uses computer graphics, photoelectric imaging technology, and sensing technology to create a virtual environment incorporating multiple human senses such as sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste. People are immersed in it using various devices, and the interaction produces experiences and feelings similar to those produced in the real environment. By wearing a pair of VR glasses and holding a controller, people can view different spaces from different positions and feel the different moods and rhythms as if they were present in that environment. Multisensory perception also falls within the scope of VR. In addition to the visual perception of three-dimensional images generated by computer graphics technology, VR can provide sensory experiences—such as hearing, touch, and even smell and taste—to people. Artificial world landscapes such as the flow of water, the twitter of birds, the fragrance of flowers, the appearance of giant beasts, and monstrous floods also arouse people’s comfort, excitement, or panic. In VR, the physical world is absent and, thus, the relationship between literature and real world and the resultant problems need to be reexamined.

AI too has a serious impact on literary activities. AI is the simulation of the information process of human consciousness and thought through symbolic computation. Although the term “artificial intelligence” emerged only in the middle of the twentieth century, it has developed at a startling pace, expanding its fields of application, so much so that machines are beginning to perform complex tasks that would normally be performed by humans, and some important decisions are also being made with the aid of big data. Today, AI poses a major challenge to literature as writing with computers has become a common reality (Hu, 2004, pp. 183–186). In 2017, the robot Xiaoice learned modern poems by 519 poets written since 1920, and after 100 hours and 10,000 training sessions, it was able to compose modern poetry by simulating the human creative process through deep neural networks and other technical means. Given just a few hints, such as a picture or a few keywords, it can find the right words to compose appropriate letters and words from tens of thousands of poems, and the poems it writes out of the words can be really like the ones written by human beings.

Also in 2017, the Chinese writer Han Shaogong published an article in magazine Discovery, “When Robots Set Up Writers’ Associations,” claiming that robot writing is no longer a figment of the imagination (Han 2017). However, Han is still confident that only humans have emotions and thoughts. On this point, Pascal also had said, “A human being is only a reed” (Pascal 2008, p. 72) in which “thought” becomes a noble and essential characteristic of human beings. However, today’s research on AI does not stop there, as robots are beginning to select, learn, and transform themselves on the basis of big data to behave creatively, especially since the next goal of researchers is to see how robots can have both IQ and EQ, as envisioned in the films Artificial Intelligence and Ex Machina. When a robot with advanced intelligence emerges and when it (he or she) can not only think but also feel and be emotional, “thought” and “emotion” will no longer be the preserved “patent” of humans. In this way, the definition of human being will need to be rewritten, and the nature of literature will also be reconfigured, thus posing a threat to humanity.

Derrida once lamented that science and technology are more powerful than politics in terms of impact on literature—“Neither can philosophy, or psychoanalysis. Or love letters……” (Derrida 1987, p. 197). It is because politics can be managed by humans, whereas the power of technology cannot be completely controlled by humans. Technology is like Pandora’s box, which is quite difficult to retrieve once it is opened. The blind development of technology may probably produce terrible prospects and even bring destruction to humankind. Therefore, whether there is a need to set limits and draw boundaries for AI and other high technologies has become an important topic in the contemporary discourse around science and technology.

2.2.2 Symbiotic Relationship of Literature and Science and Technology

The history of art is full of questions about “the end of art.” Early in the first half of the nineteenth century, Hegel had predicted that, as the development of the spirit inevitably overtakes the material and the expansion of rational content inevitably breaks through the sensuous form, art, after its symbolic, classic, and romantic stages of development, would necessarily decline and be replaced by an abstract conceptual way of perception, philosophy. Thus, from his historical view of limited development, Hegel described a quite bleak future for art.

Is high technology truly a nightmare for literature? To answer this question, people often turn to J. Hillis Miller’s statement “Will Literary Study Survive the Globalization of the University and the New Regime of Telecommunications?” to demonstrate the dilemma of literature. Miller’s thought actually needs to be fully explained, as Miller opens with a quote from the protagonist in Derrida’s The Post Card, “an entire epoch of so-called literature, if not all of it, cannot survive a certain technological regime of telecommunications (in this respect the political regime is secondary)” (Miller 2015, p. 50).However, in contrast to Hegel’s predicted notion of the end of art, Miller himself expressed this concern and viewed it as the norm, “literature is never just in time.” This is confirmed by the development of literature, which has never been the lucky few or progressed smoothly, and yet has always faced various challenges. As Miller described, “Literature is potholes in the Information Superhighway, black holes in the Internet Galaxy. ‘Literature’ as survivor, will continue to demand urgently to be ‘studied’” (Miller 2015, pp. 69–70).

As a “survivor” of high technology, literature has its own reasons for tenacious persisting. Regarding human’s spiritual needs, literature cannot disappear, because people’s feelings, senses, and imagination need to be projected. As John Hollowell said, “since the beginnings of the novel in the eighteenth century, of course, it has periodically become fashionable for critics to speak of the form’s imminent death” (Hollowell 1977, p. 3). Barthes claimed, “the death of the author,” or Gasset asserted “the decline of the novel,” but the development of the history of literature is still moving forward in constant alternation and innovation. We are convinced that the literature of the future may change in appearance, but its qualities remain, and that it will always be the homeland of human imagination and passion.

Referring to Adorno’s work on the history of music, Jameson made an unusual new point about the relationship between literature and science and technology: “scientific and technological invention is at one with artistic construction” (Jameson 1990, p. 190). He thought that modern, advanced technology can drive the constant renewal and development of art, and that there exists a certain “synchronicity” in their development. Jameson’s argument for such synchronicity is justified by the fact that modern technology can indeed provide strong support for aesthetic activity, and that two parallel lines can be vaguely but positively discerned in the course of history. However, in a particular context, Jameson’s “synchronicity” needs revision. In some cases, the development of art and technology may not coincide; the spiritual content of art may not necessarily be enriched and developed in an age of high technology; literature and art may even be lost or confused; and the peak of literature may not be ruled out at a time when technology is underdeveloped. However, although science and technology and literature have different tracks, they indeed intersect from time to time, and literature continues to march along its route stubbornly. Therefore, the fact that literature and science and technology move toward each other should be in accordance with the law of historical development.

The relationship between literature and science and technology also presents the problem of dichotomy. Modern technology always attempts to suppress people’s literary imagination and fiction from their instinct of life, but the latter always resists, criticizes, reflects, denies, and surpasses the former. Such resistance, in turn, facilitates the development of literature. This suggests that questioning, resisting, and criticizing science and technology can promote the emergence of new literature and art.

2.3 The Inner Connection and Mutual Shaping of Literature and Technology

It is true that modern science and technology and literature occupy different positions in the whole social structure, and in terms of the four ways of appropriating the world mentioned by Marx, literature and science and technology are also different ways of mastering the world. The boundary between science and technology and literature may have been relatively clear in Marx’s time, but it is no longer so in our age of high technology. While art needs the support of technology, technology also needs the nourishment of art, which is reflected in the routinization and aestheticization of technology. In some sense, the mutual shaping between art and technology has shaken the boundary between economic foundation and superstructure, or we can say, the boundary between the two needs to be revisited.

2.3.1 The Inner Connection Between Literature and Science and Technology

The fields of modern technology and literature share a common foundation. From the point view of practice, as both a form of human practice, science and technology and literature are all the reification of the essential power of human beings, in which people can discover and confirm their own essential power, thus producing beauty and poetry. In a dialogue between Yang Zhenning, the winner of Nobel Prize in physics, and Mo Yan, the winner of Nobel Prize for Literature, Yang said that both science and literature reveal their structural, expressive, and intellectual beauty in their own ways. According to many scientists, aesthetic criteria are also the highest criteria of science. Mo said that although science and literature explore in different ways, both essentially search for truth and order, and gain insight into the mysteries of the universe and the human heart. Thus, both are pursuing the truth via different means. The scientist and writer have often stated their thoughts with the words in each other’s field: Yang said science is aesthetic, while Mo said literature is in search of truth and order (Yang 2013).

The most fundamental basis of science and technology and art is that they both pursuit beauty and liberty. Marcuse said, “from the beginning, science contained the aesthetic Reason, the free play and even the folly of imagination, the fantasy of transformation” (Marcuse 2006b, p. 233). All of the physicists’ theories of natural phenomena, including the “laws” they describe, are the products of the mind and, to some extent, of fictitiousness. For the ultimate purpose, the mission of literature is to seek and provide a spiritual and emotional home for human beings, and the future of science and technology is to look for a more suitable living space for human beings. The two thus strive for the same goal using different means. Therefore, both science and art are basic needs of human beings. The study of the commonalities between literature and science does not aim to eliminate their differences, but rather to enrich and complete the life of human beings today.

2.3.2 The Aestheticization of Technology and Technicization of Literature and Art

The aestheticization of technology and technicization of literature and art have been mentioned by Western Marxists. In the present context, this mutual assimilation has become a trend. Art becomes a part of technology, and technology bolsters artistic creation. This presents itself as an important phenomenon in the development of technology and literature in the high-tech era.

The aestheticization of technology is expressed in the fact that technology has an aesthetic element, or rather, aesthetic elements have been added to technology. The technology of the information age is qualitatively different from the technology of the industrial age in that the latter was used to transform the objective world and emphasized the instrumental aspect of technology, whereas the former is getting closely linked with day-to-day life; in order to be more competitive, producers often put great efforts into aesthetic symbols. Some products are just like artistic works. For instance, the design of some cell phones and cars has a strong sense of aesthetic form, especially those virtual display spaces that bring people unprecedented shock: these displays themselves reflect an artistic nature. The art of technology is not only the adoption of a certain form of beauty, but more importantly, the addition of value to technology, so as to maximize humanistic care, which is a phenomenon Marcuse called “new technology,” as he propounded, “a guiding force in the reconstruction of reality- reconstruction with the help of a gaya scienza, a science and technology released from their service to destruction and exploitation, and thus free for the liberating exigencies of the imagination” (Marcuse 1971b, p. 31). Science and technology overturns the instrumental and technical rationality of the old technologies by assimilating the freedom and transcendence inherent in art. Such “new technology,” varying from the old, is free from the science and technology serving for “destruction and exploitation” and realizes the value and meaning of science and technology in a joyful way, with humankind itself being the ultimate purpose of the work, instead of degrading humankind as an instrument of technology. Thus, technology possesses “the features of art” (Marcuse 1971b, p. 24).

Likewise, the technicization of literature and art suggests that in contemporary society, technology has become a major component of art. Not only does technology provide the material for art and its specific media, such as hyperlink technology in today’s digital literature, but art can also use science and technology to bring about the imagination of possibilities that have not yet been realized, such as a boundless sea and sky of virtual worlds. Art can even enter daily life directly through the dimension of design, turning reality into art, and so on. To do so places higher demands on the creators.

To conclude, as the wings of contemporary society, literature, and art, as well as science and technology, are indispensable. Without the development of high technology, it is difficult for a nation to stand on its own feet; without the enhancement and prosperity of literature and art, society will become sick or deformed. Mutual assimilation and shaping of the two will be the future of the development of literature and technology.

3 Literature Writing in the Hi-Tech Era

From the historical materialist standpoint which regards science and technology as a productive force, the development of contemporary science and technology is profoundly changing not only the edifice of society, but also people’s way of thinking, values, and behavior; it is also nourishing and shaping new culture and literature. In studies on literature and science and technology, people highlight the problems posed by high technology, but, perhaps, they are not aware enough of the revolutionary impact of high technology on literary creation. While changing people’s daily lives, high technology also creates new experiences, including new ways of perception, imagination, and fiction, and reorganizes and reshapes writers’ experiences and perceptions in the new environment. What kind of changes high technology causes to the nature and properties of literature and literary creation, how to promote the renewal and development of literature in an age of high technology, and how to systematically tackle the relationship between literature and high technology are questions that need to be explored and studied.

3.1 The Revolutionary Impacts of High Technology on Literature Writing

In A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens described the nineteenth century: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity……” (Dickens 2006, p. 3) Today’s high technology has also created such a most destructive yet also most creative environment for literary creation. In the relationship shared by literature and science and technology, researchers have focused on the problems caused by high technology, with an insufficient understanding of the revolutionary influence of high technology on literary creation. And yet creative practice shows that the impact of high technology on literature and art is of a dual nature, as it undermines the old literature while promoting the evolution of the new.

In today’s creative practice, the relationship between literature and science and technology is a simultaneous process of “destruction and compensation.” On the one hand, high technology dismantles the content, structure, and expression of traditional literary texts; on the other hand, it provides new opportunities for literature, and reorganizes and reshapes the way writers perceive and experience, urging literature to change its original structure and means of expression and present itself to people in a new light. This dual relationship of “destruction and compensation” shared by literature and science and technology is an important inspiration for exploring how high technology can accelerate the progress of literature and art.

3.1.1 Refreshing the Understanding of the World

At the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, many discoveries and inventions were made in the natural sciences, including the discovery of the X-ray and electron, the establishment of the electron theory, and the establishment of quantum theory. The publication of Einstein’s “Theory of Relativity” in 1905, especially, revolutionized the realm of physics. These explorations and discoveries of the world, nature, and the universe revised or rejected some previous scientific conclusions and theorems that had previously been considered irrefutable truths, broadened people’s understanding of the world and themselves, and directly or indirectly affected the study of the humanities and social sciences, such as the relationship between literature and the world.

In the past, people regarded time as linear, ever-expanding, and irreversible, and novels often represented characters or events in a certain time sequence; even if there were analepsises or flashbacks and prolepsises or flash-forwards, the temporal trajectory of the story could be outlined by sorting out the plot development. In Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, however, time is related to human movement and position, and there are different times at different speeds. This theory fundamentally transformed people’s sense of space–time and triggered a revolution in the way of thinking—“the theory of relativity requires us to put an end to the idea of absolute time!” (Hawking and Mlodinow 2005, p. 20), and people discovered the mystery of time travel, which was presented in literary creation, most prominently in the unbridled treatment of space–time.

In the literary and artistic works of the twentieth century, time could not only be frozen, but also traversed at will, and reality and non-reality were magically intertwined. We can appreciate this even more when we look at the distorted and grotesque sculptures of time created by the Spanish painter, Salvador Dalí. As Daniel Bell wrote, “it is this response to movement, space, and change which provided the new syntax of art and the dislocation of traditional forms” (Bell 1978, p. 48). Quantum mechanics, which along with relativity forms the basis of modern physics, reveals the motion of particles in the microscopic world. This differs from the laws of classical physics. According to Bell,

The history of physics has been the search for the ultimate unit of matter; but in the end it may turn out that there is no such entity, but only a set of relationships which change with the position of the observer, or with the different rates of decay of the particles themselves, as a function of their changing relationships. We may, then, end, as Anaximander did, only with the “boundless,” not the bounded. (Bell 1978, p. 98)

Inspired and stimulated by these scientific discoveries, writers and artists became skeptical and confused about the world and the human self, and embarked on a series of artistic adventures. They strove to explore areas and worlds that had never been realized or set foot in by any predecessors, leading to changes in the structure, expression, and even perception of the world in literature and art. Absurdist theater, with its uncanny scenes, is a strong expression of skepticism about the current phenomenal world and life.

So to speak, almost all truly innovative scientific and technological inventions and creations contain new philosophical ideas, ways of thinking, research methods, etc., and the most important of them is the spirit of negation. In Conjectures and Refutations—The Growth of Scientific Knowledge, Popper suggests that the spirit of science is not to reveal irrefutable truths, but to find them in the process of persistent criticism. Science is characterized by critical thinking, and the spirit of criticism and inquiry, without superstition or blind obedience, is the essence of science (Popper 2010, pp. 264–267). Falsification and negation are the greatest gifts of science to literary creation, which also needs to be explored and innovated. This philosophical meaning or methodology is crucial to the role of high technology in literature.

It should also be noted that the development of modern technology has brought not only clarity, verifiability, and cognizability to the world, but also transcendence, uncertainty, and unknowability. As Neil Postman stated, “Or not wholly disbelieve it, since the ways of technology, like the ways of God, are awesome and mysterious” (Postman 1993, p. 58). Consequently, modern physics has become somewhat intentionally associated with Eastern mysticism. This aspect of the development of modern scientific theories has also profoundly impacted configurations of literary creation.

3.1.2 Creating Novel Aesthetic Experiences

In the era of high-tech, the aesthetic experience of people is evidently different from that in the agricultural and the industrial era. In agricultural society, people were close to elements of nature; seasons such as spring, summer, autumn, and winter; and phenomena such as sunrise and sunset. In the industrial society, the traditional agricultural society as depicted by Ouyang Xiu, a poet in Song Dynasty, “The moon above a willow tree, Shone on my lover close to me”Footnote 7 gradually disappeared, and people’s judgment of time and distance relied more on physical objects and measures, such as clocks and kilometers, respectively, rather than on sensory experience. The emergence of a technological society therefore made the pre-technological experience of the world obsolete (Marcuse 2006a, p. 61). In The Work of Art in The Age of Mechanical reproduction, Benjamin quoted Valéry: “Just as water, gas, and electricity are brought into our houses from far off to satisfy our needs in response to a minimal effort, so we shall be supplied with visual or auditory images, which will appear and disappear at a simple movement of the hand, hardly more than a sign” (Benjamin 1999, p. 219). While people in the industrial age were close to practical existing objects, the development of network technology, AI (artificial intelligence), and VR (virtual reality) based on computer technology and communication technology has already enabled people to live in the digital, virtual space. Modern technology, as an “extended bodily organs” and “an extension of our bodily powers” (Eagleton 2011, p. 230), is shaping people’s overall aesthetic perception as well as the inner experience. Various original aesthetic experiences, including those of sensuality and imagination, have been weakened in the new technological environment, while new sensations and experiences are being constantly created.

The VR mentioned above, as an artificial scenery, is no longer the real, physical world. It can be said that with VR, what disappears is not only the “aura” as Benjamin described, but also the real existing environment. However, from the perspective of the relationship between VR and human senses, the alternate-reality environment created by information technology can also make people feel pleasure and provide them the experience of actually being in a magical world, causing a shocking impact. In addition, VR can also overcome the restrictions of time and space, enabling people to experience and feel scenes that are impossible to experience in the real world. As such, VR influences and expands people’s perception of art, impacting and renewing people’s aesthetic perception and pleasure. Thus, this new relationship between VR and aesthetics will lead us to a new interpretation of the genesis and production of aesthetics.

Fragmentation is another kind of impact on the aesthetic experience. In the age of the Internet, the world has been fragmented into countless pieces of information, as described by the futurist Toffler: “On a personal level, we are all besieged and blitzed by fragments of imagery, contradictory or unrelated, that shake up our old ideas and come shooting at us in the form of broken or disembodied “blips.” We live, in fact, in a ‘blip culture’” (Toffler 1989, p. 166). Those temporal and logical connections established through ancient narratives and the resulting continuums of experience are disappearing, and high-tech has greatly enriched the human senses. People are now confronted with colorful symbols and images every day, especially with the introduction of mobile instant messaging applications such as Whatsapp, Line, and WeChat, which allow them to send and receive texts, voices, pictures, and videos quickly through their cell phones. This fragmentation has directly changed the way people perceive and created a disorienting euphoria. The fragmented world is not always pleasurable, but may cause people to lose focus in a dizzying fog of information that is indistinguishable between true and false, causing inevitable anxiety and emptiness. The question of how to view aesthetics in the midst of fragmentation needs to be addressed, and in our research, we have suddenly discovered that it may be human beings themselves who need to change.

3.1.3 Stimulating Novel Literary Imagination

Whether high technology has weakened the literary imagination or stimulated and strengthened it is another question to be considered. Since high technology has enhanced people’s ability to understand and grasp the world, the increasing clarity and certainty about the external world has curbed certain imaginations and made myths absurd. For instance, after man landed on the moon, the story of Chang’e (the Chinese goddess of the Moon) was naturally destroyed; the development of communication eroded chances for the survival of “clairaudience” and “clairvoyance” after Newton, the magnificent rainbow could be analyzed by spectrum, and so on. At the same time, the prevalence of visualization also dissolves the vagueness and non-certainty of literature, thus limiting people’s imagination. In these contexts, the development of high technology has, to some extent, eliminated the fictional and fantastical elements of literature.

Nevertheless, the principle of “destruction and compensation” of literature and science and technology as discussed above is still valid here. Taking mythology as an example, modern technology, while suppressing or destroying people’s original illusions and imaginations and dissolving traditional myths, still offers new possibilities for writers and artists to understand the world by providing new technical conditions and imaginative spaces. In other words, while science has rejected the myths of the past, it has compensated by creating new technological conditions for new perceptions, imaginations, and fictions of the outside world, and stimulated the imagination and sense of wonder of writers and artists to generate new creations. In this way, it has renewed the original ways of fictional storytelling and given rise to new myths with modern significance. For example, the film Star Trek is directly related to the “wormhole theory.”Footnote 8 The cosmological term “wormhole” that provides a shortcut for interstellar voyages caught the screenwriter’s attention. It may take a journey of four light years to travel from one planet to another, but only a few hours to travel through a wormhole. The film Star Trek shows the human activity and affections supported exactly by this high-tech theory. As the film’s premise goes, in the not-too-distant future, the Earth’s climate is deteriorating rapidly, and there will be a severe food shortage; thus, the protagonist Cooper and others are chosen as part of a plan to save the future of humankind and travel beyond the solar system to find a planet suitable for human habitation. For this reason, Cooper sadly bids farewell to his daughter and starts a journey of interstellar voyage.

High technology has also promoted greatest freedom for writers and artists to create fiction and bolstered their imagination. They are shaking off from the constraints of reality and can create “hyperreality” or “the Imaginary” (Jameson 1991, p. 195; p. 52) with the help of VR technology. Examples of this can be found in Inception directed by Nolan and Ready Player One directed by Spielberg, which provide people with unimaginable fantasy scenes. The imageries of nature have been replaced by industrial and technological imageries. In contemporary science fiction films, in place of the previous horses or carts characteristic of old stories, there are colossal objects and spaceships. Using digital technology, artists have also created on the silver screen superhuman figures such as “Spider-Man” and “Avatar,” which have become the mythical heroes of a new era. Once art has the wings of technology, it opens a door to the future.

In addition, some science fiction works are even ahead of reality, becoming the leader and pioneering of reality and technology, and even becoming the object of imitation of reality conversely, including technology. For example, some wise writers and artists have designed new plots and stories to guide the development of science and technology, and such pioneering works can be said to have begun at the inception of science fiction. Of course, admittedly, there are plenty of other writers and artists who express their worries about the future of technology through their works.

3.1.4 Innovative Literary Styles and Structures

The “destruction and compensation” relation between literature and science and technology is also manifested in the structure and style of literature. On the one hand, high technology has led to the rejection and elimination of some ancient art forms and structural methods; on the other hand, it has provided preconditions to develop literary fiction at a higher level to bring new literature and art forms with modern significance.

In the high-tech era, some old literary styles and forms have been suppressed. The easy access to transportation and electronic communication extended in all directions has made “being with each other though far apart” the norm, making “poems of boudoir grievances,” once an important genre in classical Chinese poetry, yesterday’s flower or a has-been, and the epistolary novel, an ancient narrative style, obsolete, considering the convenience of modern transportation and the decline in post offices. Moreover, new literary styles and forms are constantly forming and emerging on the bedrock of modern technology. The hypertext novel created through online technology is a special literary style in the Internet era, and its emergence has not only impacted and changed the intrinsic elements of literature such as the nature essence and structure of narrative, but also demonstrated a transgressing of the literary territory. Even though the story can show the spatialization of time, the printed text, restricted by page number of the paper, still implies a linear order in its writing and reading, while online technology can completely overthrow this order through technical practice, manifesting genuinely non-linear and disorderly characteristics. Furthermore, with the linking capabilities of computer technology, works can shift between words, images, and even freely browsable archives. Frequent intertextuality, collage of content, and fragmentation of plot are the distinctive features of hypertext. The real completion of this type of hypertext novel thus requires and invites the participation of the reader, that is, the interaction between the author and the reader. The author sets up the nodes and their relations during the creation of the novel, and the reader activates certain particular segment by clicking on a link. It is the author’s settings and the reader’s clicks that fulfill the different aspects and plots of the story, thus leaving the structure of the text open.

The development of modern technology has also added great expressiveness and spectacle to art. A Brazilian scholar said of Zhang Yimou’s movie Hero that when she saw “people’s bodies fly, warriors walk on water, leaves turn from yellow to red in seconds, snow falls out of nowhere,” and lamented, “in this sense, technology is the true hero of the film, it is what conducts and motivates each take” (Cevasco 2006, pp. 49–50). This scholar was looking at the invasion and control of art by technology critically; however, at the same time, this also places a higher demand on creators to grasp the relationship between art and technology. Today’s writers and artists still need to maintain a certain degree of independence when using high-tech tools. This is because “technological resources take them into unknown territory, which it is up to them to explore” (Diani 1992, p. 129).

3.2 The “Thought” and “Poetry” of Literature Writing in the Hi-Tech Era

In the relationship shared by literature and science and technology, on the one hand, high technology influences the creation of literature from multiple dimensions; on the other hand, literature, as the “other” of science and technology, also acts as a driving force for science and technology. Facing the development of high technology, literature can remain reflective and transcendent through its own unique attributes and advantages. It is the mission and responsibility of the contemporary literary creation to be vigilant to prevent modern technology from becoming an instrument to rule and control people or a negative factor that threatens the survival of human beings.

3.2.1 Literature’s Warning Against Science and Technology

Literature has long been reflecting on and warning against science and technology. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) is considered the first modern science fiction novel in the West, set in the early nineteenth century during the Industrial Revolution, when various new inventions and discoveries renewed people’s perception of nature and the human self. The main character, Frankenstein, grows up interested in science and technology, starts his research at the age of 13, and creates a giant as an adult. The giant has the ability to learn and desires affection, but when his desire for a female companion is not met, he exacts a wild revenge. Instead of bringing pleasure to his creator, the giant brings disaster. This early work expresses concerns about technological alienation. At the end of the nineteenth century, another famous British science fiction writer, Herbert George Wells, also reflected on the dual nature of technology in his science fiction novels, such as The Time Machine, The Island of Dr. Moreau, and The Invisible Man, and presciently showed the threat of human mutation brought about by science and technology.

Nowadays, the fear of being controlled and manipulated by technology haunts humankind like a nightmare. Whether nuclear weapons will destroy the Earth, whether AI may one day take control of human beings, the relationship between clone technology or even the replication of “human” and human dignity, and even the impact of “sperm banks” on traditional family relationships and human reproductions, are all reasons for us to be worried. In response to a series of challenges posed by science and technology to contemporary society, literary creations have expressed resistance to science and technology. A wide variety of bizarre science fictions and sci-fi films have shown people the tragic prospects they face when science is alienated into a force beyond human control, and reminded them to stay alert to the negative effects of science and technology by creating and simulating a shock through fictional situations.

The film The 6th Day, starring Schwarzenegger, presents a hair-raising picture. Years into the future, a number of “blank” embryos are created, and by injecting any person’s physical characteristics and memories into a “blank” embryo, the “blank” embryo could become a perfect replica of him or her. In this way, even if some desperadoes are severely punished, they continue to have a spare body to continue their evil deeds. The film also raises another serious question: which of the two exact “Schwarzeneggers” is more deserving of owning the family and wealth as a genuine “human being?” Genetic technology is also a hot topic of contemporary technological development. If human beings completely crack the genetic code and master the mystery of birth, aging, sickness, and death, will there be a new identity discrimination? The film Gattaca raised this question. The genes were taken out of hair, and people were divided into two categories, healthy “nobles” and defective “inferiors,” with the healthy “nobles” being the only ones who could hold the superior jobs. Other science fiction works further reveal the conspiracy of technology and politics, which can bring about the strangling and alienation of humanity. These works of science fiction mainly represent a dark, crisis-ridden future, and the seriousness of the crisis revealed in these works gives people the necessary warning to care for their homeland and curb blind development. The world needs a more humane and rational model of social development.

3.2.2 Poetic Dwelling in an Age of High Technology

How to achieve the status of poetic dwelling in the Heideggerian sense in an age of high technology is the ultimate question that should be explored as well as answered by literary creation. Human beings are eager to exchange their emotions, and emotions are precisely the basic attributes and advantage of literature. According to Tolstoy, art originates from the need for emotional communication. Literature is needed precisely because it can meet the needs of people’s aesthetic emotions, and such emotional needs constitute a precious element in the high-tech era. The reason why some Western Marxists emphasize and call for human sensibility is also based on the lack of emotional dimension of contemporary people. Today’s literary creation can not only comfort the digitally dulled mind by revealing the genuine feelings on the earth of human being, but also awakening and presenting the emotional experiences obscured by technological elements with emotional factors in the depiction of the surreal world. As we can see, the film Star Trek not only involves the “wormhole theory” at the forefront of physics and the magnificent scenes of the universe using high technology, but also shows the beauty of human nature through the hyperspace of a father looking over his daughter, thus realizing the interplay of science fantasy and human emotion. This is what makes the film so touching for us.

In order to achieve the state of poetic dwelling, literature needs creativity, that is, originality in the aesthetic observation of concrete images. Writers and artists can fully mobilize their imagination and add more brilliant color to the world with original ideas and artistic conceptions according to their own ideals. It should be said that the works of China’s contemporary literary world have not yet blossomed in radiant splendor; we realize this lack of creativity when we, for instance, watch those similar landscape and light shows in tourist attractions. Calling for dreams and spirituality constitutes the basic desire of poetic dwelling in the high-tech era.

Poetic dwelling cannot be realized without the contemplation and transcendence instigated by literature. In response to a series of challenges posed by science and technology to human beings, especially the tendency to turn human beings into mathematics or physical equations, literary creation needs to inherently express resistance to science and technology. Milan Kundera once quoted a Jewish maxim: “Man Thinks, God Laughs.” This aphorism demands that humankind be humble in front of God and that thinking is a ridiculous act; but imagine that if humankind did not think at all, it would be reduced to an even more pathetic situation. At the same time, this “thinking” is also expressed in value orientation. The imagination and possibilities of literature not only embody some universal human emotions, but also imply the uncontrolled potential of human nature. It is human nature to worry about and look forward to the future, and thus good literature cannot be satisfied with being a footnote to reality; it should strive to express thoughts about the universe and life through the creation of new worlds and characters, and maintain the perfection of human nature in an alienated society. In addition, literary creation should influence the development of science and technology through the imagination of future society, show the multiple possibilities and paths of social development, and promote the care of the human in science and technology to the greatest extent possible, so as to promote the harmonious development between human beings, nature, and society. The new mission of literature is to pursue the beauty of art and love of life in the technological environment and generate brilliance of both poetry and philosophy. The direction of literary creation in this age of high technology should be the realization of poetic dwelling and facing the meta-question: “Where humanity is heading?”

At this point, I would like to add that high technology has not only renewed the environment of literary creation, but also converted the process of creation and social functions of literature, which will certainly and inevitably lead to a restructuring of literary concepts. The traditional definition of literature is already losing its effectiveness in the explanation of today’s literature and art, and Benjamin saw this problem early on. When people were still debating whether photography was an art by traditional standards, he made it clear that, “though commentators had earlier expended much fruitless ingenuity on the question of whether photography was an art without asking the more fundamental question of whether the invention of photography had not transformed the entire character of art” (Benjamin 2008, p. 28). For literary creation in the high-tech era, what we need to do is not to classify new literary genres into traditional categories; instead, we need to adjust the existing outlook of literature, re-examine literary creation in the high-tech environment, and explore new ways of literary development with a more inclusive attitude.

4 The Study of Reading in the Internet Age

In the twenty-first century, with the booming of information and communication technology and constantly updating computers and cell phones, digital media have increasingly penetrated contemporary daily life. As for reading,Footnote 9 if the second half of the twentieth century saw a shift from the era of “text reading,” involving the reading of printed materials, to the era of “picture reading,” accompanied by the explosion of images, another new era has now begun: an era of “Internet reading” in which all people read digitally. Such “Internet reading” (including computers and cell phones) is no longer just a change in the sense of media tools and reading methods, but has become an integral component of daily life, and even a way of life for every person. For instance, on the subway, at the dinner table, and even in between sending New Year’s greetings to friends and relatives, people are swiping their mobile phones, and “Internet reading” has become a national activity, among young students, white-collar workers, and even retired women. For literary reading, the dream of “putting the library in your pocket” is coming true. E-book reading is on the rise, and e-book readers such as the Kindle are gaining popularity among readers. In contrast, brick-and-mortar bookstores have shrunk dramatically, and some paper journals have begun to transform, for example, by using Twitter accounts and public websites to expand the readership and increase the amount of reading. The Internet is thus shaping a new culture, including new modes of reading, and therefore people’s thinking, values, and behaviors are being changed in a super invisible and nuanced way by the tapping of keyboards and the touch of fingers. How to regard and respond to reading in the digital media era has begun to attract the attention of critics in China and abroad, and the Chinese form should not be absent from this study.

4.1 The Characteristics of Internet Reading

The new era of “Internet reading” is quite different from the era of paper as the medium and the period of communication media represented by television and movies. Paper works and film art are different sources of media, and their presentation methods are different from those of text and images. However, they have one thing in common, that is, both readers and viewers can only be called receivers (at present, the reception method of TV is changing, but it is still not enough to completely change the passive acceptance of viewers). The medium of communication in the “online reading era” is the Internet, which enables readers to be more initiative, and provides space for readers to participate, thereby making literary creation and criticism interactive in essence. The changes that have occurred in the “online reading era” have provided new topics for research on reading and readers in literary criticism.

4.1.1 Convenience of Reading

The convenience of reading in the age of digital media is obvious to all. The Internet’s ability to store and disseminate information greatly satisfies people’s desire for information, and whenever you switch on your cell phone, all kinds of information will come to you, and you will be able to know about everything that is happening in the world without leaving home. In particular, the Internet has a powerful search engine that makes other media unparalleled, so that people can get what information they desire with a simple movement of their fingers. Besides, the growing number of online databases that bring together documents from different eras or locations do so in an “effortless” manner, which not only saves a lot of time for reading and research, but also relegates the collection of historical materials to the margins.

This convenience has also broken through the limits of hierarchy, and information in general is no longer the privilege of a specific group of people, but has become the right of every individual who has access to a cell phone or computer. In the era of digital media, the privatized public space and the publicized private space exist in parallel and interpenetrate each other. The instant communication platforms that are now prevalent, such as Twitter, Facebook, or WeChat, and the socialized shared reading represented by GoodReads, LibraryThing, or WeChat “moments” and “official accounts” have created one mania after another. To a certain extent, this satisfies the desire for personal expression and presentation. Since these desires are presented on a public platform, there is no need to feel shy or ashamed. The most important feature of “online reading” is that it is not constrained by time or space, and people can read and communicate instantly wherever the Internet can be extended. Interestingly, people today may not feel uncomfortable because of homesickness, but they feel anxious when their cell phones are not with them.

4.1.2 Multidimensionality of Perception

Digital media have not only changed readers’ reading habits, but are also quietly changing readers’ perception and thinking habits, as multimedia breaks the aesthetic dominated by words and languages and brings people multiple aesthetic experiences. On the Internet, netizens can read words, listen to music, and browse images at the same time, which is more interesting than just reading words and languages to some. On Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, netizens can see attractive scenes of food and beauty, as well as hilarious anecdotes and sharp short articles that criticize the current ongoings in the world; these bring people stimulation, shock, and excitement. Especially the realism of virtual technology exerts a new sensory impact along with poetic and picturesque scenes. Watching the flowing scrolls of history intertwined with each other, one feels a sense of movement through the channel of time and space.

Digital technology is also reshaping the form of literary expression, and the digitization of books is becoming the norm. Downloaded books of all kinds are condensed into a mini, portable device so that they can be read at anytime and anywhere. QR codes for readers to scan are even put in some newly published paperbacks, and therefore make reading them more intriguing. The combination of literature with images and sounds is significantly changing the written language per se, and the emergence of QR codes can lead readers out of the paper book and into a new web page with videos or audios related to the particular content of some paragraphs through cell phones, providing a kind of flipped reading experience. In this case, the medium ceased to be simply a vehicle and tool for conveying information, knowledge, and content, but also a vessel of restructuring the content of the information itself. What people get through the process of reading is no longer linear browsing, but a multidimensional, intersectional, or even leaping and bounding aesthetic experience.

4.1.3 Immediacy and Interactivity of Criticism

Literary criticism in the “Internet reading era” also displays new characteristics. In the past, readers or viewers were silent in the process of receiving or accepting new information, and evaluation often lagged behind. Nowadays, with the convenience of the Internet, the threshold for creation has been lowered and that for criticism is almost non-existent, so the general public can voice their concern or opinions at any time while receiving information. For example, bullet screen, a common form of commentary and criticism on the Internet in recent years, occasionally appear on the screen when the video is played; these contain immediate and instant thoughts or comments, some of which even have little to do with the content of the video. However, these bullet screens show the most genuine feelings of viewers, and they have not only become a new style of commentary, but can also have the effect of “watching the rise and decline of customs,” and sometimes so much so that attract a mass of onlookers and create quite a stir.

These comments are instantaneous and interactive, and the identities of authors and readers are transformed and constantly interchanged all the time. The Internet provides a platform for people who are willing to write, as well as giving them the opportunity to comment online. On the Internet, everyone can be a producer in Benjamin’s sense, publish their works online at their will, and comment or modify them as they wish. As a result, works on the Internet no longer exist in a stable manner, but are always fluid and unfinished. As creation moves from professionalism to popularization, the boundaries between author and reader become increasingly blurred, or in Benjamin’s words, “the distinction between author and public is about to lose its axiomatic character.……Literary competence is no longer founded on specialized higher education but on polytechnic training, and thus is common property” (Benjamin 2008, pp. 33–34).

Consequently, when literary reading becomes a public good, literary criticism ceases to be the privilege of scholars. For instance, in the commentary of netizens, a variety of creative and even stylistic variations emerge from time to time, and many comments are brilliant and evocative, so that the absence of literary criticism in the “Internet reading era” is made up by netizens to some extent. In the comment chains of these follow-up posts, netizens consciously or unconsciously become the new producers. What needs to be admitted is that these comments are generally random and fragmentary, often with arguments and debates, sometimes too radical or even biased, and thus mostly fleeting, and rarely having a lasting impact.

4.2 The Symptoms of Internet Reading

Although the Internet has brought a revolutionary impact on reading and has certain constructive functions, it should not be applauded blindly. We should notice the paradox of the “online reading era” while soberly seeing the historical inevitability shown by the transformation in media. On the one hand, the “Internet reading era” has brought us new ways of reading and aesthetic experiences, but on the other hand, it has also brought new problems and dangers to people’s lives. The drawbacks of digital media are likely to dissolve the humanistic spirit and artistic character of literature, and aggravate the spiritual crisis of contemporary literature. From the perspective of “cultural pathology,” it is advisable to make a preliminary diagnosis of the “Internet reading era,” which is a symptomatic representation of current society, and to identify and analyze the various symptoms of contemporary reading.

4.2.1 Labyrinth of Fragmentation

“Fragmentation” is a figurative term that describes the contemporary social phenomenon. It has always existed as a social phenomenon, but has become more prominent in the Internet era, because “one of the internal logics of social and cultural development is the increasing departure from totality and the tendency to fragmentation” (Zhou 2014).

People today are surrounded by all kinds of information, and they can browse a lot of fragmented information with their computers or cell phones every day; they can also send and receive voice, video, pictures, and text quickly through their computers or cell phones. Additionally, Facebook and Instagram or WeChat moments transmit a wide variety of information every day, and people with different identities and geographic locations bring their own views and thoughts to the social networking apps. These messages flood people’s senses and make them lose their sense of direction. In the Internet era, the world has become a labyrinth and everything is fragmented. People receive contradictory, conflicted, irrelevant, and fragmented images every day, and it is almost impossible to obtain a complete and whole picture of any one thing or topic.

In such sharing and linking, the multiplicity and scattering caused by fragmentation pose a challenge to linearity and centralization, and people get a kaleidoscope of information that is constantly changing. Specifically, when people are confronted with fragmentized gamelike narratives, they may doubt the logic of the traditional narratives, and start to question the way of existence and the meaning of literature. Admittedly, the scattered nature of narrative, while leading to fragmented reading styles and habits, also creates conditions for the liberalization of reading activities and the choices of readers.

4.2.2 Reading and Forgetting

Forgetting is another sequel of reading in the “Internet reading era.” There are two main reasons for forgetting: one is the forgetfulness caused by the flood of information; the other is that the convenience of the Internet makes it almost unnecessary for people to remember knowledge.

Forgetting is first and foremost related to the dynamic nature of the Internet. Information on the Internet is constantly being refreshed and scrolled, and what was just fresh is quickly overshadowed by the information that follows, pushing it out of sight. On the Internet, there is little that lasts forever, so people often forget their way back. It seems that the information function of the new media is to help people forget: “The role of the mass media today is not to make events ‘memorable’ in the traditional way, but to destroy them and help people forget them as they come at us in a dizzying array of events” (Jameson 1997, p. 318). The real role of the new media, represented by the Internet, is to banish these recent historical experiences to the past as quickly as possible. These new modes of disseminating information, in fact, act as agents of historical amnesia.

Furthermore, the vast databases available on the Internet create conditions favorable for forgetting. With the increasing power of Internet search engines, the ease of finding information renders the memory of knowledge unnecessary, which accelerates the process of forgetting.

4.2.3 Weakening of Deep Thinking

The “Internet reading” weakens the memory and leads to the degeneration and even the loss of human desire and ability to think. Due to the inundation of information and irrelevance, speedy browsing has become a basic feature of the “online reading era.” Nowadays, people’s attention to text is getting shorter and shorter, forming a kind of “euphoria” of reading. It is “for the purpose of understanding information, leisure and recreation, without much thinking, pursuing a brief visual pleasure and psychological pleasure, showing the characteristics of fast food, browsing, randomness, jumping, and fragmentation” (Zhang 2011). People are used to reading online information within minutes or even seconds, and lack patience for papers that take a little longer. In general, once the mouse is scrolled, they find it of great length, and if they are not particularly interested in the content, they tend to ignore it. Not many people can finish reading a long paper on the Internet nowadays. The traditional Chinese literati’s state of reading, where they repeatedly recited appreciated and savored the nuance of poetry, seems to have left us for good, along with the leisurely and tranquil state of mind in that state of reading.

While this kind of reading allows people to obtain information without much effort, it also weakens their ability to think independently. The information on the Internet today is not only excessive and fragmented but is also a mixture of the good and the bad. The information occupies people’s brains while making their state of mind impatient, and people seldom think further about the information being presented to them; as such, the lack of depth becomes another major symptom in the “Internet reading era.” Nicholas Carr in his article “Is Google Making Us Stupid” raised an important question: Has the Internet sacrificed our facility that makes deep reading possible? (Carr 2010, p. 78).

4.3 The Reading Strategies of the Chinese Form

There are many problems in reading in the era of digital media, but it does not mean that people in the “Internet reading era” can only be confused and at a loss, nor does it mean that all the information in the “Internet reading era” is of low quality and there are no in-depth accounts or fine products. The key to the problem lies in how people read in the “Internet reading era.” This is the problem that needs to be addressed and valued. In China, a country with the largest number of netizens and cell phone users in the world, Marxist literary criticism has a unique research foundation and opportunity. In light of the current cultural and reading situation in contemporary China, some useful suggestions and strategies for reading in the age of digital media are proposed, and this is the value and vitality of the Chinese form by intervening in the most critical problems in the online reading era.

4.3.1 Emphasis on Reader Autonomy

The most fundamental strategy to deal with the shortcomings of the “Internet reading era” is the shaping of the reading subject. As netizens, readers have various identities, experiences, and levels of understanding: many of them conceal their identities, gender, and race through virtual images, and some have different avatars online as opposed to their real personalities in real life. People’s aesthetic interests have also become more diverse and personal. However different the readers’ identities and interests are, as in the “Internet reading era” readers’ autonomy or initiative is the basic and primary requirement, and thus such autonomy is the strong guarantee against the various drawbacks of online reading.

The reader’s autonomy manifests in many ways. The three most important ones are, namely, the reader’s competence to choose, critical ability, and productive capacity.

Choice-making constitutes the basis of people’s lives, and all reading phenomena, including traditional paper reading, deals with various choices. However, faced with the vast amount of information on the Internet, the reader’s ability to discern and select becomes more prominent. In the process of “Internet reading,” how to free oneself from the overwhelming flood of information and how to effectively discern what is good and what is bad on the Internet is a critical problem that every netizen needs to think about. That is to say, choice is the premise of reading, and it is directly related to the quality of reading.

Although choice itself includes thinking, it is not sufficient, and the quality of reading is directly related to critical thinking. This ability is not unique to the era of “online reading,” but because the Internet contains much more diverse information than any other media and is more personal in the micro age consequently, it is essential to discern and reflect independently, and critical questioning becomes vital. The “technological hegemony” of digital media carries certain value tendencies that have a potential impact on readers. Derrick de Kerckhove pointed out from the perspective of the influence of electronic culture on people: “Our psychological reality is not a “natural” thing. It is partially dependent upon the way our environment, including our own technological extensions, affects us” (Kerckhove 1998, p. 4). In the age of “Internet reading,” the reader’s critical faculties are primarily a matter of questioning and rejecting in the reception of ideas and knowledge, resisting by substituting one’s own judgment for the thinking and analysis of the information publisher. In his essay on Shelley’s “The Triumph of Life,” Paul de Man suggested that reading is “to understand, to question, to know, to forget, to erase, to deface, to repeat” (De Man 1984, p. 122). This is especially true and applicable to online reading, where even some intellectual entries need to be scrutinized and cross-checked. Wikipedia no longer has the authority of a traditional encyclopedia. Since the platforms are open to all registered netizens, whenever these people have opinions and insights, they can define an entry according to their own understanding and interpretations. The ranking of the various interpretations is dynamically adjusted according to people’s approval and support (in terms of “pin-on-the-top” or citation rate). The loss of authority and skepticism of information have become a prominent expression and characteristic of the Internet era. Only knowledge and opinions that have been considered and questioned can be better understood and grasped. Therefore, the critical ability of readers is a significant weapon to resist forgetting.

The further expansion of readers’ autonomy is manifested in their productive nature. Becoming cocreators of the text in the reading process is the most beneficial role for readers in the “Internet reading era.” Facing the explosion of information, we need to adjust our knowledge and understanding of reading in the digital media era, and in this process, what should change may be the readers’ way of thinking and their ability to respond critically. Reading in the age of “Internet reading” no longer involves passive perception, but becomes an active and creative activity. Readers with autonomy can give full play to their own creativity, construct correlations among things from the complicated and chaotic information, reveal multiple dimensions of things in objectified relationships, and make the reader another producer in the continuation, expansion, and even interrogation of the text. Readers in the “Internet reading era” can also piece together a new world through this creation and find their personal position in their understanding society from a multidimensional perspective. Thus, the concept of “readers’ autonomy” is a theoretical contribution of the Chinese form to reading in the digital media era.

4.3.2 The Call for Excellent Texts

Another pivotal element for improving reading quality in the “Internet reading era” is to call for excellent texts. The value of a good book lies in its ability to nourish people’s soul, to make them gain some peace in the midst of anxiety and restlessness, and to help them become enriched and wiser. If the quality of the text is poor, even the best Internet speed will not help. Therefore, in multimedia, language is still the most basic medium in the “Internet reading era,” because only language can explain the process of events more lucidly and comprehensively.

It is undeniable that the works on the Internet are of uneven qualities, and some of the prevailing texts are too entertaining or too radical, with a low artistic quality, and lacking in timelessness and profundity. Therefore, reading the classics should be on the agenda. Schopenhauer said,

There is for the mind no greater relaxation than reading the ancient classics. As soon as we have taken up any one of them even for only half an hour, we at once feel revived, relieved, purified, elevated, and strengthened, as if we had enjoyed drinking at a fresh rock-spring. (Schopenhauer 1974, p. 560)

This is exactly the charm of the classics, because they have survived through the ages. They constitute the essence of humanity and testimony of history. Thus, advocating reading the classics is also a substantial part of reading in the “Internet reading era.” The primacy of advocating for reading the classics does not mean avoiding other works of literature, as some classic texts also need to be reexamined for their value from a contemporary perspective.

In addition, from time to time, we hear calls for a return to paper-based texts. Reading paper-based texts introduces a rather different feeling compared with reading electronically, and it is more conducive to retrospection and reflection for us. However, a complete return to paper as older days is not realistic. Today’s e-book libraries have become the first choice for many people, especially young people. Their richness and convenience far exceed those of paper, and e-readers are being technologically redesigned to simulate the environment of paper reading. What is feasible now is that paper and electronic texts coexist and play their own roles.

Thus, it can be predicted that “Internet reading” will continue exerting impact on reading. There are many issues to be studied and faced in future. Reading, as a spiritual need, can be diverse. The depth of reading should not be the criterion for evaluating the appropriateness of reading; rather, reading in the “Internet reading era” can be informative browsing, appreciative viewing, cognitive research, and even productive creation. Here, we can agree with Nietzsche’s “The Gay Science” and advocate reading for pleasure, so that reading becomes enjoyable. Therefore, instead of a single correct mode of reading, there can be appropriate and enriching reading to various extent, whatever kind of reading it is, the ultimate goal is to serve people’s spiritual needs and enhance their mental well-being. To make today’s people both satisfied with material needs and open-minded, a deeper integration of science and technology with humanities is needed. The Internet calls for a new kind of humanism. Thus, further research on reading will demonstrate the creativity of researchers and thus add a new quality and essence to literary criticism.