New Wine in Old Bottles: Contemporary Chinese Online Allegorical Ghost Stories as Political Commentary

Mengxing Fu
{"title":"New Wine in Old Bottles: Contemporary Chinese Online Allegorical Ghost Stories as Political Commentary","authors":"Mengxing Fu","doi":"10.24193/MJCST.2019.7.02","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"The phenomenal popularity of the Internet literature in China and the potential for freedom of speech in China’s cyberspace have long fascinated scholars of contemporary China. This article examines the interaction between Chinese Internet literature and the ever-increasing online censorship by focusing on one type of Internet literature in China: the allegorical ghost stories. While observers of censorship in China have expressed worries about the tightening censorship in China’s cyberspace and self-censorship’s damaging effect on literature, this article follows the conceptualization of censorship as co-existing with literary production and seeks to explore how censorship shapes literature. Specifically, it analyses how the contemporary online allegorical ghost stories re-appropriate an old Chinese fictional genre zhiguai (i.e. records of the strange) – a genre that has maintained a paradoxical dissenting and conforming relationship with the state orthodoxy – and use a coded, “Aesopian language” to satirize contemporary Chinese politics and revisit historical atrocities. I argue that these negotiations with censorship (or selfcensorship) resurrect the premodern zhiguai, turning it into a historical documentation of the contemporary and constitute a form of resistance that smuggles into the public discourse a usually hidden transcript.","PeriodicalId":36476,"journal":{"name":"Metacritic Journal for Comparative Studies and Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1000,"publicationDate":"2019-07-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Metacritic Journal for Comparative Studies and Theory","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.24193/MJCST.2019.7.02","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LITERATURE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0

Abstract

The phenomenal popularity of the Internet literature in China and the potential for freedom of speech in China’s cyberspace have long fascinated scholars of contemporary China. This article examines the interaction between Chinese Internet literature and the ever-increasing online censorship by focusing on one type of Internet literature in China: the allegorical ghost stories. While observers of censorship in China have expressed worries about the tightening censorship in China’s cyberspace and self-censorship’s damaging effect on literature, this article follows the conceptualization of censorship as co-existing with literary production and seeks to explore how censorship shapes literature. Specifically, it analyses how the contemporary online allegorical ghost stories re-appropriate an old Chinese fictional genre zhiguai (i.e. records of the strange) – a genre that has maintained a paradoxical dissenting and conforming relationship with the state orthodoxy – and use a coded, “Aesopian language” to satirize contemporary Chinese politics and revisit historical atrocities. I argue that these negotiations with censorship (or selfcensorship) resurrect the premodern zhiguai, turning it into a historical documentation of the contemporary and constitute a form of resistance that smuggles into the public discourse a usually hidden transcript.
查看原文
分享 分享
微信好友 朋友圈 QQ好友 复制链接
本刊更多论文
旧瓶装新酒:当代中国网络寓言鬼故事政治评论
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
求助全文
约1分钟内获得全文 去求助
来源期刊
Metacritic Journal for Comparative Studies and Theory
Metacritic Journal for Comparative Studies and Theory Arts and Humanities-Arts and Humanities (all)
CiteScore
0.90
自引率
0.00%
发文量
15
审稿时长
7 weeks
期刊最新文献
Racialized Modernity in Late-Nineteenth-Century Romanian Literature Worlding the Japanese Literature. The Long Road from the Periphery to Internationalisation In the Literary Neighborhood: The Translated Romanian Novel in (Ex-)Yugoslavia (1918-2020) Jewish Literature & World Literature. Unlearning (Trans)Nationalism Travelling Theory-Fiction. A Romanian Case Study
×
引用
GB/T 7714-2015
复制
MLA
复制
APA
复制
导出至
BibTeX EndNote RefMan NoteFirst NoteExpress
×
×
提示
您的信息不完整,为了账户安全,请先补充。
现在去补充
×
提示
您因"违规操作"
具体请查看互助需知
我知道了
×
提示
现在去查看 取消
×
提示
确定
0
微信
客服QQ
Book学术公众号 扫码关注我们
反馈
×
意见反馈
请填写您的意见或建议
请填写您的手机或邮箱
已复制链接
已复制链接
快去分享给好友吧!
我知道了
×
扫码分享
扫码分享
Book学术官方微信
Book学术文献互助
Book学术文献互助群
群 号:481959085
Book学术
文献互助 智能选刊 最新文献 互助须知 联系我们:info@booksci.cn
Book学术提供免费学术资源搜索服务,方便国内外学者检索中英文文献。致力于提供最便捷和优质的服务体验。
Copyright © 2023 Book学术 All rights reserved.
ghs 京公网安备 11010802042870号 京ICP备2023020795号-1