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Acknowledgements to My Undergraduate Thesis

Ivan Yi-fan Hu · 2026.5.22

"The shortcomings of a book are often identified with the empty intentions it failed to fulfil. In this sense, stating one's intentions displays a real modesty in comparison with the ideal book. It is often said that a preface should be read last. Conversely, a conclusion should be read first; so it is with this book: once one has read the conclusion, reading the rest is superfluous." So Deleuze writes at the opening of the preface to the principal thesis he submitted for the French state doctorate in 1968, the work that would become famous as Difference and Repetition.

I suspect I am not alone in opening a book that calls itself scholarly only to linger in its preface, foreword, or prologue, or to take a detour straight to the afterword, postscript, or acknowledgements. Whatever pleasure I once took in reading these things with my hands comfortably behind my back, I now feel a corresponding unease as my own turn to write acknowledgements arrives. A few friends, hearing this, told me: "It's an examination, after all." Even so, it would be consolation enough if the few readers of this thesis could recognise that it was not written merely to get by. Still, there are forms to be observed, and acknowledgements must be written. I therefore made a special effort to read through recent examples: see how my contemporaries did it, and follow their lead. This proved surprisingly difficult. One can borrow a form, but not another person's experience; and prose that lays out its scenery so effortlessly seems all too willing to let a certain "interiority" proliferate. What goes by the name of thanks becomes self-praise. I neither dare nor wish to take that liberty. Readers who have come especially for these acknowledgements will therefore find only what Foucault described in his 1980 lectures on the "hermeneutics of the self": "the obligation to tell the truth about oneself, the role of the master and of the master's speech, the long road at the end of which the self finally appears."

My first and greatest thanks for this thesis go to my supervisor, Professor Wang Min'an. When my early plans sprawled without restraint, he reminded me to steady myself, narrow my focus, and draw things together. When the writing duly became difficult, he encouraged me not to worry, but simply to keep going. Four years ago, also in early summer, I was reaching the end of an impassioned and bewildering first year. Living day and night in a basement, I was absorbed in assorted old and new Western mysteries that seemed rather fashionable. At first, I was merely collecting electronic copies of every issue of Production, as though collecting stamps online. I soon realised that this series, along with the "Intellectuals' Library," "Discourse and Action Translation Series," and "Human Sciences Translation Series" that had already captivated me, owed much to Professor Wang's work in bringing these currents into China. I began to entertain the rather heady wish of studying with him. After anxiously weighing every word, I rashly sent the email, and soon received his generous, forthright reply. Over the following four years, he witnessed all my radicalism and conservatism. He never interfered with these inevitably immature declarations of who I thought I was, yet I always felt the protection and encouragement of his continuing presence. It was this that helped me make my way through the ordinary and extraordinary alike, and allowed five undergraduate years to lead into another three years, or more, of a life in theory. I hope this thesis can serve as a modest interim response to the great question in his reply four years ago: "What matters, above all, is whether you are truly interested, whether you truly wish to do academic work." The thesis certainly still has its omissions and shortcomings. Perhaps these are also what point towards the time still ahead.

In five undergraduate years, I took almost every course relating to theory. I formally enrolled in "Literary/Cultural Theory" four times: credits were not the point; a vocation was. My thanks go to Professors Luo Gang, Wang Min'an, and Zhang Ying, who taught this course. Each brought different strengths and emphases; together, for a student beginning to learn, they assembled a panoramic view of "literary/cultural theory." Perhaps this was a particular blessing of spending five years as an undergraduate. I also thank Professors Xie Zhixi, Ge Fei, Xi Du, and Xiong Ying, and Associate Professors Fan Jiani, Yuan Xianxin, and Zhang Fen. Their rigorous training in modern and contemporary Chinese literature and comparative literature impressed upon a beginner the need to "bring history and theory together": one needs rules and bearings to aim true. My thanks, tinged with embarrassment, also go to Yan Cheng and Qiu Weiyun, who taught "Digital Humanities." Nearly three years after the course ended, I still often recall their care, along with the guilt of never having submitted work that satisfied me. Now that I have chosen technology and media theory as a future direction, I feel ever more strongly the need to return and make good on that unfinished work. There is still time, I hope. I thank Professor Wang Min'an, Professor Zhang Ying, and Sun Yi for all their valuable advice on this thesis. I hope its final form gives my teachers some satisfaction, and hope still more for further opportunities to learn from their teaching and corrections during the theoretical apprenticeship to come. In scholarship and in life, I thank all the teachers and friends who have protected and encouraged me.

There are also the friends I have met and come to know along the way. Upright friends, sincere friends, well-read friends: the nourishment we give one another has become almost tacit. I do not have many friends in the Garden, and the friendships made all the more precious by that scarcity are a guarantee in themselves, pure and simple. Laughter and anger alike find their way into writing. Even without a list of names, these friends will find something of their own between the lines of this thesis. "Once we come into the world, we are brothers; why must we be kin by blood?" The road ahead is long. Before the age truly arrives when people would rather interact with AI than with another person, let us cherish these friendships that leave no trace, yet are utterly real.

I thank my family. "Scholarship" seems never to have figured in our family lineage. Yet the more I have come to understand everything my family has lived through in our Huaihai homeland, the more I value their tolerance and support for the choices of a younger generation, even if they may never understand this thesis, have no need to do so, or find the path I intend to take equally obscure. And yet: "The person standing on the earth may be one who comes from the earth, is nourished within it, and stands upon it. This is something originary, something that often shakes me through my body and mood: as when I hold the plough across cultivated land, walk a lonely field path through ripened crops, through wind, mist, sun, and snow, this is what keeps my mother's blood, and that of her ancestors, circulating and its pulse beating." Most of this thesis was written after the beginning of spring, while I lived alone in an old house beside the Beijing–Shanghai railway. As I travel farther, I ought to leave more for my native soil.

Incidentally, the reading strategy from the preface to Deleuze's state doctoral thesis, quoted at the outset, applies to this thesis too. But I hope readers might also read the "Introduction"; if they include the translation in the appendix, so much the better.

Finally, to myself, always hesitating and faltering, "repeatedly recoiling before the infinite magnitude of my own aims, until a situation is created that makes all retreat impossible": there is time ahead. So:

Here is Rhodes; jump here!

Here is the rose; dance here!

Midnight, 2026.5.22, on the walk from Tsinghua Xuetang to Yejiaxuan

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