Textual Corrosion and Corrosive Text: Bacteria, Intellectuals, and Science Fiction in the Reform Era

Abstract

Dedicated to scientist Peng Jiamu, who mysteriously disappeared in 1980, Ye Yonglie’s “Corrosion” weaves together a thriller of battling extraterrestrial microbes, Ye’s roundabout apologia for Peng’s questioned adherence to socialism, and an uncanny prefiguration of science fiction’s fate in 1980s China. This essay examines the story’s textual dynamics and contextual environment that revolve around the metaphor of invisible, corrosive bacteria. “Corrosion” represents the socialist subject-making of intellectuals as a trial of overpowering biological and ideological threats in a microbial form. However, this logic of political hygiene also underlies the later victimization of Ye and science fiction. This article argues that the prevalence of microbial threat in cultural and political discourses attests to a shared sense of uncertainty toward China’s reforms and allows us to detect the changing structure of feeling of the time.