Fantasy is More Believable: The Shadow Civil Sphere in Chinese Online Fiction

Abstract

Using online fiction in China, this chapter explores whether there is still space to express civil values in a “subjective” civil sphere when that civil sphere lacks institutionally protected legal and communicative spaces. Based on online observations, interviews with online fiction writers and readers, and content analysis of selected popular works of online fiction, I argue that online fiction has created survivalist and revenge-themed fantasy worlds that act as a shadow civil sphere. On the one hand, shadow refers to the dark side of the civil sphere wherein people use extremely anti-civil online fictions to reject the empty moral values promoted by the state. On the other hand, in the shadow people are still expressing moral ideals through cynicism. By creating a fantasy world that’s more nasty and brutish than reality, they are expressing their cynicism regarding the society, the social system and the pretense of the public world. However, their cynicism actually articulates their belief in those civil values.