Literary Resonances against Ideological Echo Chambers: Wu Zhuoliu’s Orphan of Asia and the Necessity of World Literature

Abstract

"With Orphan of Asia as a specific example, this article [seeks] to demonstrate how the post-critical approach takes more seriously the intricate production and flow of resonance and wonder of the text and explores its potential to challenge preconceived and reductive readings. The diverse political and affective responses of readers and critics toward Taiming’s constant spatial and temporal displacements, together with Wu’s autobiographical employment of actual historical events in the novel, serve to illustrate my key arguments with regards to the concept of resonance in literary and cultural studies: Wonder and resonance cannot be separated; it is
productive for resonances and echoes to be conceptually differentiated, and such differentiations can take place at both textual and extra-textual levels; and post-critical reading is not against contextual matters, but instead aims to do justice to a text’s wonder and resonance and remains alert against ideological echo chambers created by the discursive power of reductive interpretations."