The Gothic in Yiyun Li’s <i>The Vagrants</i> and Its Implications in the Post-Truth Age

Abstract

 Set in Muddy River, a fictional, generic town in China in the late 1970s, Yiyun Li’s novel The Vagrants opens with the denunciation ceremony of a young dissenter, Gu Shan, and provides a panorama of the townspeople’s perception of and reaction to this event. This article reads Li’s work through the lens of the Gothic, first examining how the tropes of graphic violence and ghosts reveal undercurrents of Muddy River that elude the official discourse. It further argues that the narrative’s Gothicism lies in its multiple perspectives. In this regard, the focus on social outsiders and their localised, personal experiences highlights the tension between centre and margin, totality and alterity. Using The Vagrants as an illustration, the study also explores the relevance of literature in the current age of post-truth. It contends that literature’s capacity to cultivate critical faculties, which are important in combating post-truth, is realised through Li’s particular Gothic approach. While emotional appeal and perspectivism are utilised by post-truth rhetors to disseminate biases, in Li’s hands, they function positively to promote reflection and slow reading. The novel demonstrates the importance of literary reading in an era of dishonesty and misinformation.