Organizer: Shuyu Kong, University of British Columbia
Chair and Discussant: Christopher M. Lupke, Bowdoin College
Post-revolutionary China is marked by its promising "openness"—economic as well as ideological. Not only are alternative ideologies, such as individualism and feminism, enthusiastically embraced, but also dominant ideologies, such as nationalism, are challenged and questioned. Literature and cinema once again become a contesting site where the relationships between art and ideology, aesthetics and politics become complicated and therefore fascinating.
This panel examines these relationships carefully by "close-reading" several literary and cinematic texts of the 80s and 90s, from both mainland China and Hong Kong. By examining the representation of sport in mass media and literature, Huazhi Wang discusses how Chinese "nationalism," an age-old historical phenomenon and discourse, is reaffirmed and reconstructed, but at the same time ridiculed and subverted, in post-revolutionary China as individualism resurfaces. Another long-standing discourse, the representation of violence and cannibalism, is investigated by James Keefer. Initiated by Lu Xun and resumed by writers of later generations, like Mo Yan and Yu Hua, writings and rewritings of cannibalism are compared to show an intellectual trajectory ranging from violence in the framework of political ideology through essentalism, to deconstruction. Vivian Lee’s research on Hong Kong cinema during the two decades prior to the colony’s political handover discovers the cinematic representation of Hong Kong to be a feminine space. To explain this phenomenon, she situates it in a post-colonial discourse of cultural representation and cultural identity. Finally, Shuyu Kong approaches contemporary Chinese women’s writing and their textual strategies from a cultural materialist perspective. Against the backdrop of the theorization and commercialization of women’s writing in the 90s, she explores how feminist ideology is "used," both in and beyond literary texts. Working together, these papers showcase the ongoing performance of the dynamics between representation and ideology.
Fighting for the Nation, Fighting Against the Nation: Literary and Cinematic Representation of Sport in Post-Mao China
Huazhi Wang, Cornell University
As historian Eric Hobsbawm points out, international sport is an important means of national identification in modern world. In post-Mao China when conventional socialist ideology against capitalist countries has dissolved, sport games become a symbolic frontier of international struggles. The win and loss of Chinese athletes in international sport contests are often viewed in association with Chinese historical experience of a nation oppressed by Western imperialists and thus arouse sentiments of "sport nationalism."
Through examining several literary and cinematic works that reflect and critique the "sport nationalism," this paper will attempt to show how "China-West binary opposition" is revisited and how the power of the nation-state is questioned in Chinese contemporary culture. Among these works, an obscure short story "Li Hongzhang Went to the Olympics" and a movie comedy "Soccer Heroes in the Capital" tell two farcical stories that signify a contradictory attitude toward the "sport nationalism." This nationalist discourse is contested by a reportage "The Dream for a Strong Nation" and later ruthlessly attacked by Wang Shuo’s novel "Never Take Me for Human," both of which interrogate the power of the nation for its suppression of individual subjectivity. The subversion of the nationalist discourse is also added a feminist dimension by Xu Kun’s short story "The Fucking Soccer." The reading of these texts will indicate a trajectory that displays the transformation of cultural narration on the relationship of the nation and the self in contemporary China.
Locating Violence in Chinese Society: From Lu Xun to Yu Hua
James Keefer, University of Victoria
With the publication of Madman’s Diary in 1918, Lu Xun initiated modern China’s literary discourse on power and violence. Through his fictional diarist he condemned traditional Chinese culture as cannibalistic, characterizing orthodox Confucianism as a fundamentally sadomasochistic ideology that had, over time, destroyed the spirit of the Chinese people. However, while Lu Xun’s primary discourse on social violence focused on its ideological location, it was accompanied by a highly problematic subtext that located the source of violence as a fundamental flaw in the character of the Chinese people themselves.
In coming to terms with the violent spectacle of the Maoist era, young writers, such as Han Shaogong, Mo Yan, and Yu Hua, reanimated the discourse begun by Lu Xun, but in its contemporary formulation, political ideology, for very obvious reasons, was no longer seen as a valid location or source for the social violence so prevalent in Chinese society.
In my presentation I will illustrate that by remaining within the discursive framework of the "Lu Xun critique" both Han Shaogong and Mo Yan are forced to accept the essentialist position that sadomasochistic violence is a fundamental characteristic of the Chinese people. Yu Hua, on the other hand, avoids this highly negative discursive trap by deconstructing Lu Xun’s character/ideology binary. I will argue that the importance of Yu Hua’s deconstruction lies in the fact that it frees contemporary discourse from the narrow framework of Lu Xun’s highly negative vision.
Cinematic Historiography: Mapping the Feminine Space in Hong Kong Cinema in the 80s and 90s
Vivian Lee, University of British Columbia
Hong Kong—as an entity in itself—took on a new light in cinematic representation during the two decades prior to the colony’s political handover to China. As productions from the so-called "new wave" directors increased in number and popularity, a new sense of "identity" and "difference" began to emerge in cinematic discourse at this historical juncture.
Directors such as Yim Ho, Ann Hui, Stanley Kwan and Wong Kar-wei began their career searching for cinematic forms and languages to create their own visions of Hong Kong, a fascinating yet indescribable locale bordering on the unreal. Given their diversity in style and content, the representation of Hong Kong as a feminine space is a prominent "presence" in these visual narratives. This feminine/feminizing tendency in these movies contains within itself a central ambivalence that characterizes both the movies and the cultural context which makes them possible.
Pitting this "feminizing" tendency against the larger context of (de)colonization, I will attempt to articulate some of the underlying tensions that both enrich and unsettle these visual narratives about Hong Kong. By focusing on the feminine/feminizing images of the city, I try to situate this phenomenon within the framework of (post-)colonial discourse and subject formation, as well as show how these visual narratives function as a subversive/coercive force within the "grand narrative" of colonial history.
Publicizing Private Life: Representation of Female Sexuality in Women’s Autobiographical Novels
Shuyu Kong, University of British Columbia
One eye-catching phenomenon of Chinese women’s writing in the ‘90s is the boom in autobiographical novels which focus on female sexual life. In representative works such as Lin Bai’s "A War of One’s Own"(yi ge ren de zhanzheng), and Chen Ran’s "Private Life" (siren shenghuo), not only is an autobiographical strategy employed—in which the lines between writer, narrator and protagonist are deliberately blurred—but also the innermost secrets of human life, sexual experience and sexual fantasy are explicitly displayed.
This so-called "private," "gendered," and "marginal" discourse has, however, received enormous attention from readers of both genders since publication. From demonstrating a feminine mode of subjectivity in writing about the self to satisfying peoples’ erotic and voyeuristic tendencies, the representation of sexuality through autobiographical accounts has appealed to groups with widely varying agendas: feminist critics, the publishing industry and general readers.
By examining these sexual autobiographical novels against the backdrop of the heated theorization and commercialization of woman’s writing in 1990s China, I will complicate the understanding of women’s writing as "cultural artifact," focusing especially on the way in which such writing negotiates with various social forces, and reveals an ambivalent, even two-faced attitude toward presenting "private life."