Themes in literary criticism in Sarawakian literature in Chinese (1959-2002)

Sarawak Chinese literature entered the Anti-British period after the Second World War. In 1955, the Afro-Asian Conference (also known as Bandung Conference) was held and thereafter the third world countries responded enthusiastically to the slogans of anti-colonialism, anti-imperialism and peaceful self-government. The people of Sarawak were also deeply motivated by these emotions and such a situation had affected the development of Sarawak Chinese literary criticism, particularly the arguments on two major issues: the paths of left-wing writings and the target groups that literature should serve. During this period, Sarawak Chinese literary criticism, then deeply influenced by the left-wing literature in China, was dominated by the view that literature should serve the masses in the toiling proletariat class as well as their existing political struggle for the self-government and independence of Sarawak. This led to the antagonism between writers of left-wing realism and those of modernism in the 1960s. These writers wrote to the newspapers to argue out their views in four battles of words and the enmity between them lasted for about 10 years. In the 1990s, there came a turning point when criticism of diverse voices was gradually taking shape. Tian Si was the first to propose the idea of ‘Borneo Writings’ which attracted considerable response from critics in the country and abroad. It was also at this time that writings with styles of postmodernism began to emerge. ‘Organic Literature’ as initiated by Yang Chi advocated literary writings that are all encompassing in contents, with light and easy ways of conveying emotions and intentions. These are revelations that in the past 60 years, Sarawak Chinese literary criticism had developed from the left-right rivalry in the cold war era to the localised and pluralistic discourse in the post-cold war period.

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