The productive nature of this novel may lie in the uneasy cohabitation of these various discursive fields and in the variability of their coding – it may undercode at times and overcode at others.

My mother and Cordelia were blackberrying along the woods edge of a nearby meadow.

Ah, child, thou art but half thy darling mother’s; Hers couldst thou wholly be, My light in thee would outglow all in others; She would relive to me. But niggard Nature’s trick of birth Bars, lest she overjoy, Renewal of the loved on earth Save with alloy.

Liu’s person and his public meaning became completely estranged: the former was cut off from the instruments of policy and sequestered in his official residence at Chungnanhai, but the other “Liu” became the animating spirit of opposition against which the GPCR was waged, and indeed proved so dauntless and resourceful an opponent that he could be vanquished only after two years of fierce “struggle.”