This interview presents an in-depth interview with Brian Massumi, a renowned contemporary cultural theorist. Professor Massumi builds upon the philosophical ideas of Whitehead, Deleuze, and others, focusing his research on embodied experience philosophy, art and media theory, and cultural political theory. His article “The Autonomy of Affect” is widely recognized as marking a major theoretical shift in contemporary humanities research — the affective turn. This interview explores the contemporary significance of Deleuzian thought, the theoretical core of the affective turn and its interplay with process philosophy, and the political potential of art as a field of practice for nonsensuous similarity. The interview also reflects critically on the current affective turn in the humanities, addresses related controversies, and envisions art's experimental role in political potentiality and collective becoming.

Since the spatial turn emerged in the field of world literature studies in the 1990s, it has evolved into an important literary phenomenon. This article examines the representative perspectives within the spatial turn in world literature studies, aiming to explore its approaches, development causes, and its impact on the concept of world literature. This study discerns that the spatial turn in world literature studies has traversed three approaches: firstly, the construction of the world literary system; secondly, the pursuit of spatial justice in world literature; and thirdly, the remapping of world literature. The approaches adapt to changes in the international political and economic situations and prevailing cultural trends, thereby reshaping the concept of world literature. An examination of the spatial turn in world literature studies can complement existing theories of world literature and shed new light on its interdisciplinary studies.

This article systematically traces the historical development and theoretical transformation of modern German music criticism, revealing the core contradictions of artistic modernity embedded within it. In the Enlightenment, music criticism acquired its public-sphere attributes, consolidating the conflict between the aesthetics of genius and rule-based poetics, as well as the initial tension between aesthetic and social references. In the Romantic era, criticism assumes a more productive character, transcending interpretive frameworks and transforming itself from instrumental analysis into a dynamic artistic mechanism. By the second half of the nineteenth century, it had begun to establish historical standards, and by the twentieth century, it entered a phase of systematic theoretical construction. Scholars pursued methodological self-awareness through hierarchical models but remained constrained by empirical limitations. From a historical-philosophical perspective, Adorno critiqued empiricism, arguing that criticism must unveil artistic truthfulness within dynamic historical processes. Dahlhaus, by contrast, stressed the equal importance of value and factual judgments, advocating the integration of subjective experience and objective cognition. Fundamentally, the history of German music criticism exemplifies the contradictions of modernist artistic culture, and its trajectory profoundly reflects the enduring tension between aesthetic autonomy and social heteronomy.

The practice of pairing Liu Zongyuan and Wang Anshia was a common trend in the literary circles of the mid-to-late Qing dynasty. The “Liu-Wang” pairing was substantively established in Mao Kun's Anthology of Prose by the Eight Great Masters of the Tang and Song during the early Wanli era of the Ming. The pairing made a well-deserved name in Mao Xianshu's “On the Merits of Liu and Wang” in the late Shunzhi era of the Qing. The commonalities in the “moral character” and “literary quality” of Liu and Wang served as the basis for legitimizing the establishment of the “Liu-Wang” name. Based on the historical conditions created by the framework of the “Eight Great Prose Masters of the Tang and Song,” the “Liu-Wang” pairing not only aligned with mainstream literary concepts but also played a supportive role in scholars' pursuit of advancing classical prose, thereby was widely circulated. Formed and disseminated through interactions with socio-cultural dynamics, the “Liu-Wang” pairing facilitated a reevaluation of existing viewpoints in the research history of both figures and helped their writings to become models suited to the cultural choices of the time.

The critical theory of Frankfurt School was profoundly influenced by Heidegger's Being and Time, and its theoretical coordinate was established through absorbing and criticizing Heidegger's thoughts. In the context of the two world wars, Heidegger's views on death became the focus of Frankfurt School. Criticizing Heidegger's death metaphysics, Horkheimer, Adorno, and Marcuse argued that Heidegger not only ignored the social-historical character of death, but also, in the process of ontologizing death, rendered death into an ideology to maintain social domination. Critical theory emphasizes the meaninglessness of death, pointing out that art provides the real death experience and holds the historical truth about death. Therefore, art has the potential to resist philosophical ideology. In the process of criticizing Heidegger's death metaphysics, critical theory forms the utopian spirit that opposes “being-towards-death” as well as a spirit that depends on death.

Theodor Adorno attributes the symptoms of late capitalist society to a kind of social “powerlessness,” which aims to reveal a close connection between the phenomenon of power and the inner realm of the subject. The dialectical relationship between powerlessness and power may offer an intrinsic clue to reconstruct Adorno's philosophy. This problem-domain intertwines Nietzsche's genealogy with the interdisciplinary research of the early Frankfurt School in the field of psychoanalysis. On the micro level, it narrates how the subject, out of powerlessness, fear, and narcissism, turns to a compensatory identification with the powerful and ultimately is realized in the bourgeois ideal of the ceaselessly “active life.” On the social level, powerlessness is less a psychological condition to be “cured” than a mechanism of integration generated by the social structure itself. On the political level, the phenomenon of powerlessness explains precisely why “Pseudo-Aktivitt” arises amid profound social pathologies and even crises. It can be said that Adorno proposes a kind of sociology of affect, which aims to transcend the bourgeois form of practice, make “non-identity” visible, and promote the radical self-transformation.

The rise of new materialisms in Western academia in the twenty-first century has prompted a critical reexamination of the linguistic paradigm that dominated the humanities and social sciences in the twentieth century. Proponents of new materialism contend that the potential of linguistic constructivism has largely been exhausted and that scholarly attention should now shift toward the ontology of material entities. From this perspective, the relationship between language (words) and matter (things) has been reimagined and reinterpreted. Drawing on speculative realism and agential realisms as key examples, this article examines how new materialisms critique linguistic theory and their limitations. Speculative realism emphasizes the autonomous reality and irreducible otherness of objects, challenging anthropocentric epistemologies that privilege linguistic representation. In contrast, agential realism foregrounds matter's agency and performativity, seeking to transcend the dichotomy between discourse and matter imposed by linguistic theory. By centering diffraction as a methodological paradigm, new materialisms reconstruct the dynamic relationship between “discourse and matter”, highlighting their co-constitutive performativity and addressing the limitations of linguistic theory. It is important to note that new materialisms do not categorically reject linguistic theory. Rather, they supplement it by reintroducing the previously ignored material dimension and broadening our understanding of the world.

John J. Deeney (Li Dasan), a renowned American scholar who promoted the development of comparative literature in China, not only advanced the “Chinese School of Comparative Literature”, but also proposed a series of insightful ideas on such topics as world literature rooted in national character, the global nature of comparative literature, and the application of composite research methods. John Deeney has made significant contributions to the theoretical construction of comparative literature discipline in China since the new period of reform and opening-up. His ideas exert a profound and lasting influence that continues to play an important role today. His theoretical foresight is truly admirable.

Regarding the question of how intelligent agents cognize things, Hubert Dreyfus, a phenomenologist positioned against symbolic AI, opposes the programmed artificial intelligence identified by mediation theory. Instead, he advocates for a “novice—to—mastery” skill acquisition model grounded in embodied action. By applying contact theory to reconstruct an AI agent's intuitive perception of objects, Dreyfus establishes a cognitive triad of “Embodiment—Brain—Intuition.” Dreyfus's highly prescient arguments fill the gap in current research on AI cognition in artificial intelligence films. Through the “embodied agent” in Gestalt holism, the certainty of agent cognition is realized in the form of “brain montage,” which, ultimately under the condition of “skillful coping,” reveals the fourth dimension in AI films: “intuition.”

Building upon his theories of “acceleration” and “resonance”, Hartmut Rosa is currently advancing his thoughts on “social energy”. In this interview, Rosa first explains his emphasis on the “first-person perspective”, connecting his idea of socio-cultural energy with traditional Chinese thought. After addressing the influence of hometown on his “identity” and overall intellectual path, he underscores how the theory of “resonance” transcends previous conceptions of “identity”, highlighting the importance of transformation and of uncontrollability. In the discussion of the Frankfurt School, Rosa acknowledges the significant theoretical and methodological influences of Karl Marx and Max Weber, positioning himself closer to the first generation of Critical Theorists. He also shares his views on his predecessor Hans Joas, his supervisor Axel Honneth, and other contemporaries, while noting the supplementary role of Charles Taylor's philosophy for the Frankfurt School. Regarding his personal interests, Rosa expresses his love for music and nature, as well as his reverence for Nietzsche's insight into deep life forces. He also clarifies the meaning of “resonance”, both in its temporal experience as a rupture and in its significance as a metaphor. Finally, Rosa reflects on the capacity for resonance within AI and social media, advocating for the reconstruction of concrete world-relations as a means to overcome new forms of alienation.

Over the past half century, the study of foreign literature has developed from aesthetic study and formal study to cultural and interdisciplinary study. In this age of rapid advancements in artificial intelligence and big data, foreign literature research is once again facing transformations and re-orientations. The age calls for cross-disciplinary integration between literature and science, to supplement humanistic thinking with scientific methods. Quantitative research is an opportunity as well as a challenge which AI and big data have brought to the study of foreign literature. This article will trace the history of quantitative research in literature, examine various cases of this research paradigm, and hope to demonstrate that quantitative methods have powerful functions in the study of literary history, stylistics, authorship attribution, influence, genre, and textual visualization. It is also hoped that this new research paradigm will provide new inspirations for foreign literature studies in China and precipitate innovation and breakthrough.

In 1926, Yu Dafu traveled twice to Guangdong, the center of peasant movement. His interactions with the leaders of the Communist Party of China's the Rural Movement enriched his political experience and deepened his understanding of the national revolution. Amidst the debates over the proletarian literature, Yu Dafu distinguished between pastoral literature and peasant literature, advocating for the latter in his publications such as Flood, The People and Literaturo por Homaro. His original theorization of “peasant literature and art” reflected the early peasant movement theory of the Communist Party of China, offering a vivid interpretation of political praxis in literature. The affirmations and questions surrounding his theory illustrate his dialectical approach to the relationship between revolution and rational enlightenment. During the 1920s, as East Asia was focused on peasant modernity, Yu Dafu responded with a more comprehensive theoretical engagement. His “turn” exemplified how modern Chinese intellectuals reexamined themselves by rethinking the figure of the peasants, thereby established an important path for the construction of intellectual subjectivity. This holds lasting value for understanding the modern character of Chinese literature.

The concept of poetic style provides an in-depth approach to studying retro poetics during the reigns of Emperors Hongzhi (14881505) and Zhengde (15061521). During this period, the concepts of poetic style of Li Mengyang and He Jingming, leaders of the retro movement, gradually deepened. During the reign of Emperor Hongzhi, the two did not yet possess mature ideas on venerating specific styles. Only after the early years of the Zhengde reign did they form an awareness of revering the Han and Wei dynasties while also modeling on the Jin and Song for the ancient style, and revering Du Fu and the High Tang for the recent style. As their concepts of poetic style became increasingly refined and rigorous, they began to disagree on various details, triggering the debate between Li Mengyang and He Jingming around 1517. The “Debate between Li and He” was not a dispute between imitation and creation, but rather a contestation of stylistic rules and methods within a shared adherence to retro style. It is from the perspective of style analysis that we can more profoundly understand the logic behind the literary practices of retro poets like Li and He and in turn grasp the internal rationale for the evolution of their poetics.

In 1964, the seventh issue of Philosophical Translation Series (Zhexue Yicong), a special issue on dialectical problems, featured “Contradiction and Overdetermination”—the first Chinese translation of Louis Althusser's seminal essay “Contradiction et Surdétermination”. This seemingly incidental translation is closely linked to the distinctive modes of translation practices within “New China's Literary Theory” and the global discourse on the “Young Karl Marx” in the 1960s. In his concise yet scholarly translator's note, Ding Xianggong introduces the debates sparked by “Contradiction and Overdetermination” in French theoretical circles and offers insights into the rationale behind the translation of the French term surdétermination into Chinese. Through the Sinicization of “Contradiction and Overdetermination”, Chinese scholars not only engaged with alternative interpretations of the Hegel—Marx relationship offered by their Western counterparts, but also indirectly introduced the prominent Western Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci to China. A close reading of Ding Xianggong's 1964 translation in comparison with Gu Liang's 1984 version reveals a concise and assertive translation style that reflects the militant and revolutionary ethos characteristic of translation efforts in the 1960s.

Although Wang Yangming's philosophy of mind declined and fell into disrepute in the early Qing dynasty, it continued to exert a significant influence on the development of ancient prose. Wei Xi (16241681) was among the early Qing scholars deeply shaped by Wang Yangming's thought. Wang's life, his doctrine of “the unity of knowledge and action”, and his practical moral concerns profoundly informed Wei Xi's intellectual orientation. In his theory of ancient prose, Wei Xi emphasized the cultivation of the writer's moral character prior to composition and placed comparatively less emphasis on technical aspects of writing. His notions of “partial perfection” and the “accumulative relationship between knowledge and practice” clearly reflect the influence of Wang Yangming's philosophy of the mind. Wei Xi's essay style — marked by the “counselor (ceshi)” mode — was also closely related to Wang Yangming's way of thinking and writing. However, many early evaluations of Wei Xi's ancient prose have failed to align with his ideological background. Immersed in Wang Yangming's study of the mind, Wei Xi valued authenticity of character and rejected artificial imitation, thereby developing a distinctive style of his own. Uncovering the long-overlooked intellectual ties between early Qing prose and Wang Yangming's thought allows for a fuller appreciation of the diverse and dynamic literary landscape of the early Qing Dynasty.

The term yuefu yiqu (yuefu poetry in melody-reliant form) in Wen Tingyun's Funerary Inscription for Yang Nian does not denote a poetic composition dependent on meldoy, but rather reflects the poet's vision of yuefu poetry's “melody-reliant” nature — an expressive aspiration to adapt works according to yuefu conventions. Guo Maoqian's classification of Wen Tingyun's self-composed yuefu poems with new titles as yuefu yiqu in his Collection of Yuefu Poetry directly follows Wen's original intent. Wen's emphasis on the musical essence of yuefu poetry constitutes a response to the New Yuefu faction's shift toward meaning-centered, rather than music-centered interpretation. In his own compositions, Wen drew on the Han-Wei tradition for titles and forms, absorbed the diction and emotional expression of the Southern Dynasties, and inherited Li He's focus on musicality and lyricism. Amid the late Tang context of the flourishing qu-lyrics and the decline of ancient yuefu traditions, Wen Tingyun consciously sought to reintegrate sound, music and poetry in yuefu composition. His practice represents an intellectual effort to revive the classical yuefu spirit against the backdrop of prevailing entertainment trends.

The formation of Yan'an literature and art represents a significant reconstruction of the literary and artistic field, with “North China literature and art” serving as its foundation. Building upon the legacy of the Soviet-area literature and art, literary and artistic practices in the North China base areas evolved into a distinctive “North China path,” giving rise to the “North China experience”. This experience markedly differed from the literary activities in Yan'an prior to the “Talks at the Yan'an Forum on Literature and Art”. While North China's literary works were shaped by wartime exigencies, emphasizing broad popularization and mass participation, the pre-Talk cultural scene in Yan'an, situated in a relatively stable environment, placed greater emphasis on artistic refinement and elevation. Thus, the North China model served as an essential regional pathway in the development of the Yan'an cultural paradigm. The Yan'an central leadership recognized and absorbed the North China experience, transforming and restructuring the existing literary field. Yan'an literature and art ultimately took shape within this dynamic process. The subsequent promotion of literary activities and cultural orientations across the Liberated Areas after the Yan'an Forum further confirms the formative influence of the North China experience on the development of Yan'an literature and art.

Although artificial intelligence increasingly rivals the data processing capacity of the human brain, its intelligence can never equal that of humans, especially in the literary realm. Language, narration, and empathy serve as three key dimensions that distinguish human “storytelling” from that of artificial intelligence. First, is language merely a description and representation of the external world or an expression and manifestation of the speaker's individual perception? Second, is storytelling an inorganic assemblage of heterogeneous materials, or an organic synthesis of the storyteller's embodied memory and associations? Third, do humans understand the world through self—understanding, or understand themselves through understanding of the world? In other words, do they create imaginative and spiritual communities through storytelling, or do they become trapped in an “information cocoon” that isolates them from the world and atomizes their existence? Unlike human literary writing, artificial intelligence language models and automated writing systems are fundamentally disembodied. Consequently, they cannot grasp the true meaning of linguistic expressions or storytelling as grounded in embodied perception. For this reason, they are incapable of genuine empathy or emotional resonance.

The authors comparing themselves to a reincarnation of Su Shi, aka Su Dongpo, is a peculiar phenomenon in classical Chinese literature, and this phenomenon, termed as “Dongbo reincarnation,” has its complex realistic orientation and rich literary expression. Ming and Qing literati departed from the religious implications of the original narrative of Su Shi reincarnation, displaying a more secular and literary inclination. In their literary representation, they exemplified a “dual interaction” between Su Shi's literary activities and poetry creation. By invoking coincidences and resemblances with Su Shi's life stories in terms of time, space, and material details, they established correspondences and intertextual relationships with his original works. This process reveals the reproduction, expansion, and continuation of Su Shi's individual literary memory. The “Dongpo reincarnation” phenomenon reflects the evolving history of literati, embodying their reflection upon and transcendence of officialdom, life, and death. Through their varied interpretations and selective appropriation of Su Shi's literary ideas and stylistic traits, figures such as Wang Shizhen, Yuan Hongdao, and Weng Fanggang exemplified the notion that “Dongpo validates me” within their literary practice. This phenomenon also illuminates the transformation of Song-dynasty literature from concealment to prominence during the Ming and Qing dynasties.

Japanese pure love films and TV dramas have a particular preference for incurable diseases, such as leukemia. To view these illnesses merely as a means to preserve the beauty of the characters is not only inconsistent with the plot but also obscures the cultural—political implications of this obsessive fixation, which clearly exhibits compulsive traits. In fact, by repeatedly emphasizing leukemia, Japanese pure love films and TV dramas complete a higher—order symbolic identification with the victims of the atomic bombings, thereby perpetuating the victim logic upheld in Japanese atomic bomb literature. As a unique trauma narrative, these works skillfully evade both historical and moral scrutiny. Thus, the history of the atomic bombing, as metonymically represented by leukemia, is continually reintroduced through this narrative mechanism and, in the process, achieves global recognition within an eternal synchronicity. In this way, leukemia subtly converges with what Auschwitz symbolizes: the universal suffering and cruelty of humanity. Through this narrative device, Japan's crimes as an aggressor and perpetrator in World War II are, to some extent, cleansed.