Belief in Meaninglessness, Belief in Literature — Religious Imaginations in the Contemporary Chinese Fiction

Literature and religion communicate and collaborate all the time. The Chinese contemporary fiction abounds in examples of their growing connection. Instead of choosing to focus on writers known to be religious themselves, adept to reflect their faith and religious practices in their works (ex. openly Christian Bei Cun, Muslim Zhang Chengzhi), I look to writers non believers (mainly Mo Yan and Can Xue) but whose works are pervaded by a profound religious feeling. By examining the representation of belief in their works, I discover that they imagine a logic by which religious meaning resides precisely in believing in meaninglessness. Meaningless, because the doctrinal content is the least important aspect of religious thoughts, and the referential meaning gives way to the non-semantic aspects of the language in representing the transcendence. The meaningless is not barren but enormously fruitful. I argue that belief without meaning is both a way to maintain the spiritual pursuit and a way to buttress the authority of literature threatened in the commercial culture.