What sort of science for what sort of democracyÂ? Lu Xun and his fiction in the May Fourth movement | Quelle science pour quelle démocratie? Lu Xun et la littérature de fiction dans le mouvement du 4 mai

Abstract

The May Fourth movement of  1919 is generally associated with calls by activists like Chen Duxiu in support of “Mr Science and Mr Democracy.� However, their theories often remain within the framework of a scientistic and instrumental understanding of science, leading directly from Social Darwinism to Marxism. On the other hand, the call to literature as a vector for the “new thinking� resulted in a distinct current of thought that can be associated with writer Lu Xun. This essay attempts to show how, in his fiction, Lu Xun rejected the instrumentalisation both of literature and of the knowledge on human society that it encapsulates. Turning away from both moralism and biological culturalism, Lu Xun discussed the difficulties encountered by democracy in China by analyzing the social mechanisms through which individual autonomy was repeatedly repressed. By virtue of this epistemological turn, and of his systematic attention to the reflexive position of the writer as an observer of social reality, Lu Xun can be considered as a pioneer in the emergence of a discourse of modern social sciences in China.