“Yellow Orpheus in the Voice Battlefield—the Contradictory Symbiotic Relationship between Western Music and Asian American Subjects in Asian American Literature” was delivered by Professor Zhang Lei from China University of Political Science and Law (CUPL) on the morning of December 5th, 2019,in Meeting Room 301 of the SFS Building. The lecture was hosted by Dr. Fan Yiting, Director of the English Department, with teachers, doctoral and graduate students attended.
Serving at China University of Political Science and Law (CUPL), professor Zhanglei is the deputy dean and master’s supervisor of School of Foreign Studies, in charge of an Academic Innovation Team of Young Teachers. He got his doctor degree of English and American Literature at Beijing Foreign Studies University and he once studied as visiting scholar in School of Arts and Humanities at University of Cambridge and School of Arts at the University of Auckland. He is the director of 1 NSSF program and 1 Beijing Social Science Foundation program. He has published 7 monographs and 2 translations, and many papers in core journals such as Music & Letters, Journal of Cambridge Studies, Foreign Literature, Foreign Literature Studies, Dushu and Journal of CUPL.
Professor Zhang first explained the source of “yellow Orpheus”, then analyzed Song Tian, a major character in Hunger by Chinese writer Zhang Lan and Franklin Hata, a main character in A Gesture Life by Korean writer Chang-rae Lee. Professor Zhang thought Orpheus who created order with music, valued sensibility, love and self-realization is in the spotlight of both western and Chinese culture. Herbert Marcuse wrote in his Eros and Civilization that Orpheus as an archetype, symbolizing liberator and creator,in whom art, freedom and culture are integrated. Black Orpheus was proposed by Sartre in the preface to Black and Malagasy French New Poems, hence professor Zhang raising the concept of yellow Orpheus in the process of analyzing Asian American works.
In professor Zhang’s opinion, Song Tian who tried to establish a stable relationship between diapason and success was a “pseudo-diapason-subject”. The Chinese American thought diapason was stable and could help him realize his American dream, which was completely contrary to the meaning of “diapason-subject”, raised by Jean-Luc Nancy, a French philosopher, who believed that the “diapason-subject” was in eternal changes, echoing the performativity and fluidity of identity. Besides, there was a complicated symbiotic relationship between Song Tian and the violin.