With the linguistic turn of literary research, literary studies has made an extremely deep and detailed exploration of the structure of narrative discourse; but these structural studies are basically studies directed at the form of discourse, and a more intrinsic, more important structural element has been overlooked as regards literary activity. In fact, merely by understanding the formal structure of narrative discourse, we are still unable to organize narrative discourse correctly, unable to recount persons and events in a way that accords with feeling and reason, and naturally unable to construct a literary work. Behind this there exists yet a more important factor that constrains narrative activity—namely, social convention. Social convention both norms the behavior of the human in everyday life and organizes the human's social relations, and at the same time norms literary narrative activity (the discourse-act) and constructs the literary fictional world. Social convention is the structural element by which the literary fictional world establishes an intrinsic connection with the real world. It is precisely by borrowing this structural element shared with the real world that literature recounts persons and events, organizes its own fictional world, refers to reality through what Goodman calls "exemplification" (1), and thereby achieves the aim of social critique. The comprehensibility, credibility, and authenticity of literature depend on this intrinsic connection, and literature's criticalness toward reality likewise depends on this structural connection between the literary fictional world and the real world. At the same time, the author's attitude toward social convention, his distinctive way of handling it, also prescribes, from an extremely important aspect, the stylistic features of the work.
I
In Lu Xun's fiction, Kong Yiji is a man who "stands to drink his wine yet wears a long gown." The long gown is a status-mark of the literate and the wealthy, and this attire sets Kong Yiji apart from the laboring "short-coat crowd." He could originally have enjoyed the treatment of sitting in the inner room to drink; yet he can only lean against the outside of the counter to drink standing—which shows that he has no money, and in the tavern-keeper's eyes is nothing but a fallen, down-and-out man of letters, whose status can only be equivalent to the short-coat crowd who drink standing. This distinctive mode of behavior reveals Kong Yiji's extremely awkward social situation: he wears a long gown—a tattered, filthy long gown, to be sure, yet still a status-mark of the literate—and is unwilling to lump himself together with laborers, clinging to the status-boundary that separates him from them; but in fact he cannot but drink standing and can only stand sidewise in the ranks of the laborers. This at the same time shows that he has already been ousted from the group of the literate yet cannot belong to the laborers either—he is merely a social "superfluous man," and this society has no place for him to set even an awl's point; he is bound to be eliminated by society. This one behavior alone foretells the ending in which Kong Yiji must crawl into his grave. Precisely behind Kong Yiji's behavior, we see the operation of social convention. It is social convention that norms the human's modes of behavior and stamps a status-label upon the human's behavior. Kong Yiji's wearing a long gown, his showing off that he knows the four ways of writing the character hui, his constant "thee-ing and thou-ing" in classical tags, are all a ceaseless proclaiming of his status as one of the literate—and even those "two long fingernails on two fingers" are a mark distinguishing him from laborers. Yet his actual economic position cruelly prescribes his true status; he cannot but obey another set of rules and cannot but drink standing. This loss of proper status throws Kong Yiji into contradiction, so that he cannot even hold himself steady before convention: on one hand, he keeps the good faith of one who has status—though he often drinks on credit, he is sure to clear his account within a month; on the other hand, he maintains his livelihood by stealing, and so can only excuse himself with "filching books cannot count as stealing."
From the analysis of Kong Yiji's behavior, we see that social convention is mainly used not to direct the human in "what to do," but to require of the human "how to do it"; its function is to norm the human's modes of behavior. And social convention is by no means simply uniform but complex and plural; the various conventions together weave a "grid" of social convention. In this grid, the various conventions are mutually related, knotted together, and crisscrossing, yet are not organically unified—there is both coordination and contradiction among them, full of ruptures and conflicts. For example, Kong Yiji always regards himself as a man of letters, and his speech and bearing consciously or unconsciously follow the behavioral norms proper to a man of letters. Yet in the eyes of the keeper, the waiter, and even the twelve-year-old "I," he is one who deserves only to drink standing—a mode of behavior that is "appropriate" for a man who failed the licentiate examination, is nearly reduced to begging, and drinks on credit. The contradiction created by this dislocation of status makes all of Kong Yiji's acts of displaying himself as a man of letters become, in the eyes of the crowd, exceedingly pedantic and laughable. That is to say, social convention also has a second function: the function of interpretation. It is precisely because different conventions and interpretations exist that the people in the tavern and the reader feel Kong Yiji's behavior to be "inappropriate"; to any social group whatsoever, he can only be "one not of our kind." The human's every move and every frown and smile are inscribed with social convention; only thus can people understand one another, and only thus can interpersonal communication proceed smoothly. The genetics of behavior divides the knowledge of social rules that constitutes social competence into "regulative rules" and "interpretative rules" (Potter and Wetherell 55). In fact, this division is unnecessary and inappropriate. There does not exist another, independently existing set of "interpretative rules"; the interpretation of behavior can rely only on social convention itself, and it is by relying on convention that we understand the meaning of behavior. Only the evaluation of behavior is rather more complex, and this in turn makes precisely of the plurality, relatedness, and incongruity of social convention: we both interpret the meaning implied behind the behavior in accordance with the convention the agent enjoys, and often make value-judgments of the behavior in accordance with the convention we ourselves uphold, or a more universal convention of a socially shared character. Because social convention is plural, it norms human behavior in different ways and thereby divides humans into different social groups and constructs a specific social order; so the third function of social convention is the function of social differentiation. The fourth function of social convention lies in delimiting the boundary of behavior. For a man of letters, to seek out and borrow books is an "elegant matter," but "filching books" oversteps the boundary of behavior. However Kong Yiji seeks pretexts and stresses the special character of a man of letters' behavior, he cannot exonerate his own rule-breaking act, but on the contrary provokes the roaring laughter of the crowd. Thus the function of norming modes of behavior, the function of interpreting behavior, the function of differentiating social groups, and the setting of boundaries for behavior—these four together constitute the functional structure of social convention.
Social convention is different from a legal statute; it mainly sets a boundary not between "crime" and "non-crime" but between "appropriate" and "inappropriate" behavior, and therefore this boundary is not rigid but relatively soft, and it constrains behavior mainly by means of the human's "sense of shame" rather than "sense of guilt." When the human's behavior violates the convention of the group to which he belongs, he is regarded by the group's members, and even by the whole of society, as inappropriate and abnormal, and is negated, and from this a sense of shame arises. This psychological experience compels him to adjust his own behavior so as to be reincorporated into the specific convention. Of course, "taboo," as the most severe social convention, generates in its experience the deepest sense of guilt.
Viewed from a deeper level, the root of social convention is planted in the human's feature of pursuing ontological security. Any behavior that violates group convention may lead to the agent's being regarded by the group as an alien, and then suffering the group's repudiation and losing his sense of security. Giddens points out that the sense of ontological security is a feature of most human activity in all cultures, and that the cognition of ontological security in turn rests upon practical consciousness. "Practical consciousness, together with the day-to-day routines reproduced by it, is bound up with [a sense of] security not only—or even primarily—because [these routines] involve social stability, but because they play a constitutive role in organizing an 'as if' environment in relation to the problem of existence, and thereby help to bracket out such anxieties. They provide modes of orientation that, on the practical plane, 'answer' the many questions concerning the framework of existence." Here, what Giddens calls "day-to-day routines" is to a great extent social convention. The human, in social practice, acquires the group-shared social convention, and thereby orients his behavior, "producing a certain 'appropriate' or 'acceptable' response" (Giddens 40–41). Conformity to social convention not only accords with his existing experience and ensures the continuity of the self, but also lets him smoothly merge into a specific social group, gain a relatively stable social belonging, and establish a sense of social existence and security.
At the same time, it is precisely social convention's constraint upon human behavior that, at the moment it lets the individual gain identification, also partitions humans into different social groups and thereby constructs a specific social order. Social convention is an extremely important structural element of a society, and social order is built upon its foundation. Only because social convention has already been embedded in the human's body and has been internalized, naturalized, and rendered unconscious by the human, although people accompany it at every moment, they grow accustomed to it and do not notice it. "They work best when they become habit, automatic procedure, or even subconscious reflex; for this they need constancy" (Hobsbawm and Ranger 3). This is precisely the "norm" in the often-quoted phrase "following the heart's desire without overstepping the norm." Of course, social convention is also inscribed within various rituals and customs, and thereby reinforces the various behavioral norms. (2) Likewise, precisely because social convention is internalized, naturalized, and rendered unconscious, the author, in the process of writing, always consciously or unconsciously describes the characters' behavior and constructs the world of the work in accordance with convention. Social convention is shared in common by the literary work and real society; it is the structural element common to the literary world and the real world, and it is the bridge connecting literature and reality. Literature, through its discovery of social convention, recounts all the possibilities of human behavior and recounts all the possibilities of the human's world. At the same time, it is also through social convention that it exemplifies reality, reveals the structural features of real society, and achieves the aim of social critique. The universality of literature is grounded on the universal validity of social convention. The comprehensibility, credibility, authenticity, and criticalness of literature are built upon social convention.
II
The characters in a literary work are fictional, and yet their behavior follows social convention; therefore these images border on our life-experience, and they are bound to become "familiar strangers." The persons and events the work recounts also become a distinctive existence that "neither exists nor does not exist," possessing that "reality" of which Frye speaks.
When we praise a work for portraying a character's personality in a way that accords with feeling and reason, we are holding that these characters' modes of behavior follow a specific social convention and are therefore reasonable. When we praise a story's plot as true and credible, it is because these plots are the natural unfolding of convention-conforming behavior, and the root of the conflict is built on the foundation of social convention. Social convention is the basic starting point and basis on which the author shapes characters, tells stories, and devises plots, and it is also the common measuring-rod by which author and reader judge the authenticity of characters and plots. When we praise a certain character as having a vivid individuality, it is because some aspect of this character's behavior approaches the limit of convention, even challenges convention and breaks through the boundary of convention—acting in a singular, independent way—and thereby a character-image of distinctive individuality is shaped. For example, Wang Xizhi, who came to be called "the carefree son-in-law on the eastern bed," went so far as to lie on the bed with his belly bared to receive the disciple of the Grand Tutor Xi Jian, who had come to choose a son-in-law. Only those who possess a special status and cultural power—such as the princes, nobles, and high dignitaries of old, their profligate young scions, and the stars of modern society—are likely to possess the strength to challenge certain social conventions, thereby drawing others' eyes, inciting imitation, manufacturing and leading fashion, and perhaps finally bringing about the rewriting of certain conventions. Of course, these rule-breaking acts are generally manifested only in some one particular aspect; the character both displays his individuality through his distinctive mode of behavior and yet does not comprehensively violate social convention—otherwise he would be unable to gain a foothold and survive in society. In analyzing the roots of social fashion, Simmel points out the "duality" of the human: the human both pursues "universality" and yearns for "particularity." Universality is collectivity and uniformity—the desire to merge into the group and gain a sense of identity, belonging, and stability; particularity is difference—it pursues dynamism, seeks change and independence, and breaks convention in order to strike out for novelty, standing out beyond the group and drawing attention (Simmel 70–72). In fact, these two polarized features are not juxtaposed and evenly matched; particularity is premised on universality. Only by first gaining universality—following convention and merging into the group so as to enjoy a full sense of security—is it possible to go on to seek particularity and novelty; and this is precisely the reason why only a few privileged figures possess the capacity to challenge social convention.
Generally speaking, a character's series of acts contrary to feeling and reason often produces a comic effect; the absurd acts of Don Quixote and Ah Q, for instance, destine their comic characters. Yingning's laughing regardless of occasion is not only winningly naïve but also adds a comic quality to the work (Pu Songling, Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio). But even these acts contrary to common sense take social convention as the background of the character's behavior, and can be interpreted and evaluated only in accordance with a specific social convention. If the world a literary work depicts inverts and subverts social convention as a whole, then this world is a grotesque world. Yet for us, the reason the world of the work is grotesque is precisely that behind this world there is hidden a latent "normal world"—that is, a world following social convention. It is precisely because a world constructed in accordance with social convention exists that a grotesque world can be created and understood. Conversely, a character whose every move is correct and proper appears, on the contrary, exceedingly stiff and utterly uninteresting, like the petty clerk under Chekhov's brush, even approaching "the man in a case." Of course, this too is a type. Social convention, in its own peculiar way, constrains the speech and bearing of the work's characters and constrains the ups and downs of the plot; it is the foundation on which literature gains comprehensibility, credibility, and authenticity—while the author's special attitude toward social convention and his way of handling it create the work's distinctive stylistic features.
The social mode of expression of a character's behavior is normed by convention, yet the innate capacity of his behavior can transcend the human's true state and be subjectively set by the author. For example, the "son of the eagle" Larra of the grasslands, because of his arrogance, willfulness, and coldness, turns into a lonely drifting cloud (Gorky, "Old Izergil"); the enchanting and deadly beauty Remedios is carried off by a light breeze along with the ascending bedsheet (García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude); Gregor wakes from sleep to find himself turned into a beetle (Kafka, The Metamorphosis); Henry suffers from a strange "chrono-displacement disorder" and is often involuntarily placed in a topsy-turvy time (Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife)… In the above works, the author gives an extremely exaggerated description of the characters' behavioral capacities, thereby endowing the work with a magical, fantastical, or absurd quality; but the mode of behavioral expression of these characters cannot but still follow social convention—otherwise communicability would be lost among the work's characters and between characters and reader.
The human's society is constructed by the human's communicative behavior; social convention is both the "agreement" negotiated and concluded in this process—a fruit of interpersonal communication—and norms communicative behavior itself, reacting back upon social construction. Therefore, wherever communicative behavior is involved—whether conversation, sexual love, or conflict—social convention appears all the more important; it is often the very bond that holds together communicative behavior of every kind. For only when "the other" is present—that is, when the individual is situated within "social relations"—does social convention possess a more conspicuous binding force. Social convention exists precisely to regulate interpersonal communication and to organize the social whole; it is itself "social," and only by means of the "force of the social" can it be effectively carried out. This is precisely the reason for Sartre's saying that "hell is other people." (3) Real society and literary works both construct their own worlds according to a common organizing principle. Therefore social convention is a more intrinsic, more basic, more important structural element than the narrative structure of discourse. The root of literary authenticity and criticalness is planted in this structural element.
Of course, this structural element of social convention is mainly spoken of with respect to narrative literature, because the "events" narrated are constructed by human behavior and communication, and so are bound to be unable to detach from social convention. As for lyric literature, such as poetry, it is otherwise. Although a poet's writing of poetry, as a social behavior, equally cannot escape social convention, the work itself often does not narrate, and so has little direct involvement with social convention. The main factor structuring lyric literature is the human's law of life and law of emotion. While respecting natural law, the poet attaches more importance to the law of life and the law of emotion, and recreates nature in accordance with the law of life and emotion. Only thus can a connection be established between literature and reality (psychological reality), and only thus can the resonance of the reader's life and the sympathetic vibration of his emotion be won. Likewise, narrative literature too cannot do without the law of life and the law of emotion; the rhythm of life and the cadence of emotion have already been sedimented within the aesthetic form, jointly norming literary activity and influencing the course of the discourse-act, the composition of character-images, and the layout of plot. If social convention, as an external constraining mechanism, constitutes a certain confinement of the human's life, then the law of life and emotion—life-activity itself—precisely grants the human freedom, and thereby endows literature with the function of liberating human nature. The tension constituted between these two makes literary activity full of ever-shifting hidden import. Only, the importance of characters and plot in narrative literature often makes the position of social convention appear all the more prominent, (4) so much so that it covers over the presence of the law of life and the law of emotion. Therefore the poeticized novel must, by weakening the plot, make it possible for the function of the law of life and emotion, and the poeticity of the work, to come to the fore.
III
The human, as a social animal, always has interwoven within him the conflict between desire and social convention. On one hand, desire is an extremely important inner driving force of the human; it powerfully propels human behavior and compels the human to take action to realize life-needs and satisfy his own desire. On the other hand, social convention, as an external social force, constrains human behavior, brings behavior into the track permitted by social convention, and defers the satisfaction of desire—even disciplining life itself, limiting the freedom of life, intending to prune the colorful, many-postured forms of life into a stiff, regular pattern, and thereby provoking a conflict hard to quell. This is manifested both as the conflict between the human and external society and as the human's inner self-conflict—and this self-conflict is, at its root, still the conflict between the human and social convention, that is, the conflict between the human and society. Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter describes the transgressive love of the minister Dimmesdale for Hester Prynne. As a minister of high prestige, deeply beloved by his congregation, Dimmesdale absolutely should not have fallen in love with Prynne, a married woman. When he chose the social position of minister, it was already destined that he should devote all his love to God and His people and could not enjoy the sexual love of the mortal world. Society had long ago preset the behavioral norms for a minister. Still more, Prynne is a married woman, and even were he not a minister, an affair with a married woman would violate social convention. Yet Dimmesdale irretrievably falls into love. His talent and his love for his congregation push this minister again and again to the summit of being revered and worshiped; yet his inner heart grows ever more painful, and even sexual love cannot soothe the sense of inner laceration. This is precisely the conflict between life and desire and social convention. The more he is supported by the crowd, the more he feels he must keep to social convention and professional integrity, and should take the lead as a model; yet he cannot sever his love for Prynne, cannot abandon this true love of human nature. Even were he to break off the abnormal love affair with Prynne, he has, for him, already committed an unforgivable sin; he cannot face the God of his own faith, cannot face the glorious position he enjoys. He has already lost the good faith proper to a minister and to an ordinary person, yet day after day he listens to the confessions of his congregation and admonishes them to be honest. He is already sunk in sin, yet still receives the trust and admiration of the crowd, shaping a false model before them. His private life has already invaded the living space of others, intruded upon social boundaries, and these acts contradict his behavioral norms as a minister, causing his profound self-division and spiritual torment.
In fact, the truth of life is not the pure state of desire, not its naked exhibition, but the display of the very process in which desire ceaselessly struggles against social convention and is ceaselessly frustrated, until it is tormented all over with scars and worn out in heart and strength. This process is full of dramatic quality and tension. The enormous tension thereby constituted both makes the individual's inner contradiction and social convention each become manifest, and fully displays the good or evil character of the work's characters—because social convention is often an important basis on which a society makes moral evaluations of individual behavior. Yet The Scarlet Letter is utterly different: Hawthorne does not judge Dimmesdale according to social convention; on the contrary, he sympathizes with Dimmesdale and, standing from his angle, questions the reasonableness of social convention. Likewise, in Cao Yu's Thunderstorm, Zhou Ping escapes the incestuous relation with his stepmother yet unknowingly falls into a brother-sister incest with Sifeng. Therein, it is precisely the conflict between desire and the most severe convention—"taboo"—that organizes the lightning-and-thunder-like tense drama and finally pushes them into the abyss of tragedy. The conflict between individual desire and social convention may also lead to the distortion of human behavior, making it be carried out in a seemingly normal but actually alienated way. The author often seizes upon what is superficially reasonable—that is, the naturalized, unconscious behavior—and exaggerates it, making it stand out or even become absurd, so that the social convention implied behind it is revealed and criticized. The so-called literary type is precisely an image that concentrates sharp contradictions and profoundly reveals such contradictions.
Jin Shengtan greatly admired the characterization in Water Margin; he held that of the one hundred and eight heroes narrated in Water Margin, each has his own temperament, each his own disposition, each his own form, each his own voice. The reason Shi Nai'an could paint several faces with a single hand lies in the "investigation of things." "Ten years of investigating things and in one morning the things are investigated through; then to write of hundreds of thousands of persons with a single brush is, of course, not difficult." And "the method of investigating things takes loyalty and reciprocity as its gateway." He further explains "loyalty" by the Buddhist "dharma of cause-and-condition," and explains "reciprocity" by "no distinction of high and low, good and evil, and nothing it does not reach" (Huang and Han 278). Human desires are of every kind, and social convention too is plural and complex; the contradiction and conflict between the two are bound to display a thousand postures and myriad changes, and, manifested in a concrete person, must each have its own temperament, disposition, form, and voice. Yet these features are in turn constrained by social convention and possess a certain regularity, and therefore can be perceived through the "investigation of things." But because desire and convention are themselves latent and influence and determine human behavior from behind, they can only be "known" in the manner of the "investigation of things." Jin Shengtan, unlike later scholars, did not stress "observation" but stressed the "investigation of things," stressed comprehending the human's state of existence, conditions, and various relations—and comprehending them through a nature-conforming perception. Therein lies the reason. Literature speaks by means of images, actions, and events; social convention is only deeply latent behind human behavior and the events constructed by behavior, and therefore the world of the work both conceals it and exposes it, letting it make its entrance under cover.
Just as the human, in creating God, also created the Devil, the human's desire too is shaped by discursive practice and constructed as the opposite of social convention; the relation of opposition between the two embodies precisely the contradiction and awkwardness of human existence: on one hand, any individual cannot but set out from his own desire and grant desire priority—for him, social convention is always external, alien, and to be broken; on the other hand, behind social convention there is the support of historical tradition; it has won the recognition and authorization of the social group (including himself), and, compared with the individual, possesses supreme power and an absolutely superior position, while individual desire is on the contrary debased into an "other" that ought rightly to be controlled, even likened to a "devil."
IV
Social convention is constructed in the course of social activity, and especially in the course of interpersonal communication; it is the result of negotiation between person and person, group and group, and cannot but be stamped with a distinct ideological imprint and concentrate power relations within it. Althusser once deeply expounded the function of "interpellation" of ideology upon the behavior of the subject. He pointed out that a social formation, while carrying on productive activity, must reproduce its various conditions of production, including the relations of production and the human as the principal productive force—otherwise it simply cannot be maintained. In this process, ideology is both its product and plays an extremely crucial role in the reproduction of the conditions of production; it imperceptibly sets behavioral norms according to social position, constructs various relations, and persuades the laborer to learn and adapt to the postures that should be observed in the "assigned" work-position, as well as the "fitting" attitude toward various relations, and thereby reproduces the laborer's submission to the various norms of the existing order. In Althusser's view, the so-called "subject" is in fact the result of ideology's "hailing" and "interpellation." "Every subject endowed with a 'consciousness' and believing in the 'ideas' that his 'consciousness' inspires in him and freely accepts, must 'act according to his ideas,' must therefore inscribe his own ideas as a free subject in the actions of his material practice. If he does not do so, 'then that is wicked'" (Chen 358). And so the subject, at the moment of becoming a "free subject," is also reduced to a "subjected being," who submits to a higher authority, submits to the position and norms set for him. Althusser especially stresses the "material" existence of ideology. He not only assigns the non-violent parts of the state apparatus—such as religion, education, the family, culture, and communication—to the ideological state apparatuses, but finally locates ideology in the human's materialized behavior. He holds that the "ideas" of the human subject exist precisely in his behavior. "His ideas are his material actions inserted into material practices governed by material rituals which are themselves defined by the material ideological apparatus from which derive the ideas of that subject" (Chen 359).
The ideology that Althusser speaks of as "interpellating" the subject and prescribing the subject's behavior is very close to the social convention we propose. Just as people criticize Althusser's theory of ideology for having a tendency to over-generalize, we hold that, although social convention is stamped with the features of ideology and permeated with ideological character, it cannot be reduced to ideology. Social convention is constructed in a long historical process; it has inherited cultural tradition and social custom, and although it has ideological character, it is not equivalent to ideology—it has far richer content and a far longer history. It is precisely in the ceaseless process of social differentiation and fusion that ideology has invaded social convention. Ideology is both the result of social change and split and influences the evolution of society and its conventions. Foucault, for his part, held that ideology is a concept that must be used with caution; he proposed a micro-level "political economy," attached greater importance to the micro-mechanisms of power, and to the disciplining of the body by power. Power is not exercised from the top down; it is itself built on a micro-foundation—"that is, power must reach the human body, its movements, attitudes, and everyday behavior" (Du 441). In Discipline and Punish, Foucault deeply expounded the disciplining of the body by power. He says: "A bodily posture can be gradually corrected. A calculated constraint runs slowly through each part of the body, mastering it, making it pliable and ready. This constraint imperceptibly turns into habitual movement" (Foucault 153). Foucault also expounded in detail the modes of exercising power, pointing out that such things as institutions, discipline, surveillance, judgment, examination, knowledge, and even classificatory tables are all effective means of discipline, and that they jointly shape the "docile body." We hold that one most important means of discipline is social convention. This is a discipline more universal and more comprehensive than the various other means; it pervades every corner of society and all human activity, and precisely because social convention is hidden and unmanifest, it exercises its disciplinary function all the more effectively. Power in politics, economics, ethnicity, ethics and morality, culture, and even gender relations is mainly carried out, soundlessly, by means of social convention. Social convention forms behavioral habits, and habits are deeply embedded in the human body, remold the body, and make the body a disciplined, submissive body. Conversely, these submissive bodies thereby gain social approval; they are integrated into the social community, reinforce the norming force of social convention, and forge social inertia. Just as in ancient China, foot-binding had already become women's conscious, voluntary behavior; only by mutilating the body—forcibly binding the foot into a "three-inch golden lotus"—could the title of "beautiful woman" be won. Conversely, the "foot-liberation movement" of the Republican period met with resistance from women themselves. Gender power was carried out precisely through social convention; it borrowed women's own hands to harm themselves, willingly prostrate before male power, maintaining an unequal relation. Likewise, the Black slave Tom is sold off by his masters again and again, yet he is always loyal and devoted to his masters, piously being a "good" slave. Therein, besides the slave system, convention is precisely an important factor constraining behavior (Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin).
Bourdieu expounded social differentiation from the angle of cultural capital. He held that the possession of cultural capital determines a person's position and power in society, and that in the very process of the production and reproduction of cultural capital, cultural capital is at the same time conferred upon the individual. In fact, the process in which the human accepts the discipline of social convention is also the process in which the body is symbolized, the process in which he is incorporated into the symbolic system, stamping a specific symbol-mark upon his bodily behavior, marking the mode of life and the rank of cultural value to which he belongs, and at the same time carrying out social differentiation. Therefore Bourdieu says: "Individuals produced under objective conditions possess a common habitus […] this habitus is the system of the conditions of life common to all individuals" (Bourdieu 101). From this angle, the social order of a hierarchical society is jointly maintained by a series of social conventions that are hierarchically differentiated and yet closely related and interwoven. Precisely for this reason, the inequality among persons is embodied not only in the possession of money and power but also invades every aspect of social life and corrodes all the human's modes of life. This makes interpersonal communication and the various contradictions and conflicts appear all the more intricate and full of ups and downs. For example, the awkwardness and mockery that Granny Liu encounters in the Grand View Garden (Cao Xueqin, Dream of the Red Chamber); the cramped embarrassment of the young Bosmans and Margaret, who bustle about all day for work, before the professor-and-lawyer couple the Ferné—the two of them wish to ease the atmosphere, yet whenever they open their mouths, they on the contrary clumsily make the interaction all the more difficult (Modiano, The Horizon); the marketplace-born Cao Qiqiao, married into the great noble house of the Jiang mansion, whose every move appears utterly out of keeping with her surroundings, who cannot but suffer the ridicule of others, and is thereby distorted in personality, brewing the tragedy of her whole life (Eileen Chang, The Golden Cangue). Butler further points out that social convention is itself a social construction, the result of social practice. If "gender" is not what a person "is" but what a person "does"—a person becoming a man or a woman through the repetition of countless acts—then people can also re-endow meaning by repeating different modes of behavior, change social convention, and embody the possibility of resistance and transformation (Butler 136).
Time-travel fiction often describes characters from different eras and different cultural backgrounds placed within one and the same existential situation, constructing dramatic conflict through the collision between behaviors representing two different social conventions. And when the convention of the specific society embodied in a literary work has already changed with the evolution of the times, yet the author deliberately imitates the original convention to recount the characters' behavior, thereby constituting a contradiction and conflict between two sets of social convention, this often creates the effect of burlesque parody. Against the background of the new social convention, the absurdity of the characters' behavior, and even the unreasonableness of the old convention behind the behavior, are both exposed and satirized.
In his letter to Minna Kautsky, Engels strongly stressed the true depiction of "real relations" by the novel, so as to shatter the prevailing traditional illusions about these relations and to provoke perpetual doubt about the eternal permanence of existing things (Lu 187). Then how can one truly depict real relations as Engels says? Its key lies in seizing the social convention of the specific society. Only by seizing the structural principle behind real relations—that is, social convention—can one most truly and profoundly display real relations, and only thus is it possible to go on to reveal the operation of power hidden within social convention and the complex political-economic relations concentrated within social convention, to expose from the root the unreasonableness of such social relations, and to expose that these relations are "humanly" constructed rather than ordained by heaven.
Because social convention is inscribed in our very behavior and has become a constituent part of the body—has become Heidegger's "ready-to-hand"—so that we have entirely lost consciousness of it and given up vigilance and critique toward it, literature must, by various defamiliarizing means—such as comedy, satire, and the grotesque—create Brecht's "alienation effect," thereby transforming the "ready-to-hand" into the "manifest," and throw into relief, and criticize, behavior and the social convention contained in behavior. From this angle, the grotesque and the comic have a fundamental difference: comedy pushes the comic character and his behavior into the foreground position, while the behavioral norm of this society is still hidden as background, in an unconscious state. This covertly lures the reader to stand on the established social position and judge the comic character according to the original social convention, while social convention, just as before, maintains its own authority. The grotesque, however, attempts to create a possible world by subverting social convention, granting us a wholly new standpoint—a standpoint of "exteriority" of which Bakhtin speaks—to stand outside the established society and convention and criticize social convention itself, and this brings critique to a new depth. The reason Bakhtin praised the grotesque world as a truly folk world that challenges official culture is precisely that he deeply recognized that social convention is an important channel through which power is exercised, and that unequal relations are concealed within it. The rulers, precisely by borrowing the force of social convention, covertly manipulate and suppress the ruled and soundlessly seize their own interests. The grotesque world subverts and deconstructs this social convention, restores the legitimacy of the desire of the common person, restores the unity of power and the desire of the common person, and therefore truly returns to the folk. Likewise, the reason the story of "Cinderella" is ceaselessly repeated is precisely that it contains the human's wish to throw off the bondage of convention. The true reason the "prince" admires "Cinderella" is that she is less bound by the convention of which he is deeply weary. For the "prince," beautiful women are not lacking; what he treasures is Cinderella's plainness and rusticity, that vitality of life freed from the confinement of stiff, decayed convention.
Social convention is itself constructed; it stands at the juncture of historical transmission and social communication, both relatively stable, continuous, and enduring, and ceaselessly differentiating, fusing, and in flux. Even in times of social upheaval, when political power topples and disintegrates, social convention can still, to some degree, maintain the functioning of society. And when a society outwardly upholds social convention yet in fact practices another set of latent behavioral rules—that is, "hidden rules"—then this society has already, by its hypocrisy and corruption, verged on the brink of disintegration. It is precisely the intrusion of "private power" that distorts social convention and creates the duality of a convention whose outside and inside do not match. With the accumulation of days and months, the "hidden rules" may no longer need to be "hidden"; on the contrary, they become high-sounding and prevail openly.
Only after expounding social convention can we fully recognize the relation between the fictionality and the authenticity of literature: literature creates a fictional world and lets us be intoxicated in this vivid, sensuous world, deeply experiencing the savor of existence within this world. At the same time, because the fictional world of literature is likewise constructed in accordance with social convention, it has a close connection with the real world, and can therefore refer to reality through "exemplification" and thereby gain authenticity and criticalness. And precisely because social convention is a society's intrinsic organizing principle, this critique is the most scientific and profound; and because it does not "denote" some determinate object but refers, through "exemplification," to all related and similar behaviors and events, its critique is the most extensive and universal. "Literature is the production of a certain specific reality through a certain complex process"; it has a duality, "producing at once a reality-effect and a fiction-effect" (Mulhern 52–53). The fictionality of literature and the authenticity of literature are not mutually opposed; on the contrary, the mutual cooperation between the two endows literature with a distinctive mode of existence. It is precisely in this distinctive way that literature participates in the social practice of humankind.
V
As a distinctive form of social convention, cultural convention is established through negotiation in the long process of discursive activity; it is the rule-system of discourse of a certain specific national language, and even of a certain specific genre, and at the same time is acquired by the individual in concrete discourse-use, and especially in the use of literary discourse. If social convention exists in every domain of social activity and norms all the human's modes of behavior—including the human's movements, postures, appearance, expression, speech, and dress—then cultural convention refers specifically to the rules of the domain of discursive activity, and moreover to the other latent rules outside of grammar. What grammar stresses is the boundary between "right" and "wrong" in discursive expression; cultural convention, by contrast, attends more to "appropriate" and "inappropriate," "fitting" and "unfitting"; it endows a certain genre with distinctiveness and, at the same time, delimits, from both macro and micro angles, the use of discourse, norming and guiding discursive expression and communication.
Since cultural convention is a distinctive form of social convention, it likewise implies ideology and power relations, only that this relation is more indirect, circuitous, and obscure. Cultural convention embodies what Roland Barthes calls the "symbolic order," which is legitimized, universalized, and naturalized by ideology. It always opens up certain horizons while obscuring others, stresses certain contents while weakening others, centralizes certain objects while marginalizing others. Cultural convention stands at the intersection of historical transmission and the manipulation of social power, and internally cannot avoid undergoing ruptures—for example, the difference between elite literature and popular literature; the vying for supremacy and the succession among various different schools of literature and art and among different genres; or again, the literary writing of China's May Fourth period, in which, owing to the conflict and fusion of Chinese and Western culture, even within one and the same literary work there clearly exists a contradiction between old and new conventions. As a latent cultural power, cultural convention always has interwoven within it the contradiction between tradition and the contemporary, as well as the contest among various cultural forces. Therefore literary criticism, besides being directed at social convention, also points the spearhead of its critique at the ideology and power relations implied by cultural convention.
In discussing avant-garde poetry, Marjorie Perloff made a penetrating analysis. She points out that if the reader reads these poems according to traditional, "official" convention, he will feel that the poems' words are chaotic, the semantics ruptured, the imagery obscure, and find them impossible to understand. In fact, it is not that the poetry itself is unintelligible, but that the reader still clings stubbornly to the original convention and has a preconception about how poetry ought to express and connect imagery. Avant-garde poets refuse to use "conventional" word order or refuse to preserve the integrity of sentence structure, introducing mysterious and abstruse vocabulary and bewildering referential meanings—and this manner of writing precisely simulates the awakening of people's thought and consciousness in the face of the endless surplus information of the media age. Therefore, "what obstructs the reader's understanding is not the obscurity of the text but convention" (Perloff 156). That is to say, in poetic creation there exists a contest of discursive power, and one important aspect of it is the control over the legislative power of cultural convention. Avant-garde poets intend to break the old poetic convention and establish a new convention—a convention that still belongs only to the avant-garde itself and to a small literary coterie.
In literary activity—including the processes of writing and reading—social convention and cultural convention are two norming forces that exist simultaneously; they are always entangled together, either mutually adapting or mutually contradicting, either welcoming or refusing one another, and jointly norm the discourse-act from different levels. John Searle once proposed the "horizontal conventions" that constrain discursive activity. At this point, we should give the following concretization to the "horizontal conventions" Searle proposed: the so-called "horizontal conventions" are in fact woven together out of the interweaving and fusion of "social convention" and "cultural convention." The former is the organizing principle of characters' behavior and the organizing principle of society—that is, the structural principle of the literary work; the latter is the organizing principle of literary discourse. Both are conventions that literary writing and literary reading cannot but follow. Apart from social convention, we cannot effectively act and communicate, cannot understand behavior and society, and therefore cannot create or understand literary works; apart from cultural convention, we can neither write, nor read, nor understand the true meaning of literary language. And for an author who dares to innovate, consciously challenging cultural convention—following his own life-demands and giving rein to life itself in order to break through the constraints of cultural convention—may precisely become an important path by which he establishes his own distinctive style. The so-called "sincerity" of literary writing, viewed from one important aspect, is precisely the author's striving to command cultural convention, to make it serve his own inner demands and writing intention, to declare his own cultural power, or to let the conflict between himself and convention be exposed—rather than being forced to grovel before cultural convention, hemming and hawing, speaking against his own heart.
Notes
(1) Goodman divides "reference" into two different modes, "denotation" and "exemplification," and holds that literature and art mainly use exemplification to refer. See Nelson Goodman, Ways of Worldmaking, trans. Ji Zhichuang (Shanghai: Shanghai Translation Publishing House, 2008), p. 71; and Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols, trans. Chu Shuowei (Beijing: Guangming Daily Press, 1990), pp. 64–65, 224.
(2) The importance of the epic for ancient society lies not only in commemorating one's own ancestors but, more importantly, in transmitting behavioral norms through this ritual and ceaselessly reinforcing social convention. Children's stories also have this function: it is precisely by listening to stories while asking why things must be so that the child gradually establishes the various norms, preparing the conditions for later understanding life and adapting to society. From this angle, social convention too is shaped and constructed by way of linguistic signs.
(3) The reason the human needs a private space is precisely that being alone can give the human a free space unconstrained by social convention. With the strengthening of the human's individuality and the birth of the modern subject, the differentiation of private space from public space became inevitable. As for the exposure of personal privacy in postmodern society, this is precisely a challenge to and deconstruction of social convention, and it is often possible only in times of social change, by means of the force of electronic media. From this angle, the age of electronic media is bound to bring about great changes in the human's modes of behavior, modes of existence, and even social structure.
(4) Characters' behavior and plot embody the human's destiny. It is precisely concern for human destiny that makes characters' behavior and plot the focus of the reader's attention and gives social convention an important position in the structure of the work.
Works Cited
Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984.
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London: Routledge, 1990.
Chen, Yue, ed. Philosophy and Politics: A Louis Althusser Reader. Changchun: Jilin People's Publishing House, 2003.
Du, Xiaozhen, ed. Selected Works of Foucault. Shanghai: Shanghai Far East Press, 2003.
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish. Trans. Liu Beicheng and Yang Yuanying. Beijing: SDX Joint Publishing Company, 2003.
Giddens, Anthony. Modernity and Self-Identity. Trans. Zhao Xudong and Fang Wen. Beijing: SDX Joint Publishing Company, 1998.
Hobsbawm, E., and T. Ranger. The Invention of Tradition. Trans. Gu Hang and Pang Guanqun. Nanjing: Yilin Press, 2004.
Huang, Lin, and Han Tongwen, eds. Selected Works on Chinese Fiction across the Dynasties. Vol. 1. Nanchang: Jiangxi People's Publishing House, 1982.
Lu, Meilin, ed. Marx and Engels on Literature and Art. Vol. 1. Beijing: People's Literature Publishing House, 1982.
Mulhern, Francis, ed. Contemporary Marxist Literary Criticism. Trans. Liu Xiangyu et al. Beijing: Peking University Press, 2002.
Perloff, Marjorie. Radical Artifice: Writing Poetry in the Age of Media. Trans. Nie Zhenzhao et al. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 2013.
Potter, Jonathan, and Margaret Wetherell. Discourse and Social Psychology: Beyond Attitudes and Behaviour. Trans. Xiao Wenming et al. Beijing: China Renmin University Press, 2006.
Simmel, Georg. The Philosophy of Fashion. Trans. Fei Yong. Beijing: Culture and Art Publishing House, 2001.