‘Going Mad’ as Narrative and Resistance: Contemporary Chinese University Students’ Collective Interpretation and Meaning Construction of ‘Madness Literature’
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This study examines the phenomenon of ‘Madness Literature,’ which is characterized by exaggeration, playfulness, and irrationality, and is gaining popularity among contemporary Chinese youth in cyberspace. This phenomenon is regarded as a significant expression of culture where the youth are in the process of dealing with structural pressures like ‘involution’ and ‘lying flat.’ Employing a core framework of encoding/decoding theory and everyday practices theory, with an affective sociology approach, the study conducted a June-August 2026 focus group interview with 26 university students and aims to explore how this group perceives and uses ‘Madness Literature’ while constructing their personal and shared meanings of such works. Reflective thematic analysis shows that ‘Madness Literature’ is a sophisticated mechanism of emotional coding in young people, acting as a personal safety valve for the emotions of an individual and a social connector as well. It is a highly contextualized day-to-day strategy, with university students being seen as ‘digital tacticians’ who execute differentiated movements across spaces and provide micro-resistance by poaching mainstream discourse. This in the end leads to a contradictory, suspended resistance identity which is between true madness and meme play, creating a symbolic posture that is both catharsis and futile.
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