Re-articulating Literary Dissent: an Analysis of Wang Shuo's Playing for Thrills

Wang Shuo established a new discursive space written from the perspective of the liumang or ?player? within the burgeoning pop culture of the late 1980s. Wang Shuo?s roles as a cultural mirror and a social agent are not mutually exclusive, but interact with each other in a complex dialogue involving a number of social and political actors. Re-articulating Literary Dissent seeks to explore the implications of the term ?literary dissent? during the late-1980s in China by examining Wang Shuo?s 1989 novel, Playing for Thrills. After an extensive examination of the novel, the analysis concludes that it is subversive of the ideology of the literary and the political establishment, arguing for the fickle use of the term ?literary dissent? and the inconsistency with which it is used. Labeling something as literary dissent - a rhetorical move to transform artists into political pawns - illuminates more the political motives of the powers who use it than the potentially subversive nature of the works which the term is used to describe. Inconsistent politicization of the term destabilizes its authority and makes visible the political manipulations of representation that inform its use.