Pub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1215/25783491-9646093
Nick Stember
{"title":"Manhua Modernity: Chinese Culture and the Pictorial Turn","authors":"Nick Stember","doi":"10.1215/25783491-9646093","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/25783491-9646093","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":33692,"journal":{"name":"PRISM","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82624376","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1215/25783491-9645882
Jie Lu
A reading of the cinematic representation of the global city in Chinese “new urban films” and in rural-migrant films leads this article to focus on the plurality and dialogism among different chronotopes produced collectively across these films. The article argues that the global city is constructed by visible and invisible urban spaces whose representation offers a restructured urban world and captures the profound transformations of the Chinese city since the onset of this century. In redefining mainstream commercial/popular urban cinema via incorporation of rural-migrant films (often regarded as a separate category), this article also argues that new urban and rural-migrant films share many features. One such feature is the articulation of the neoliberal ideology of individualistic striving and personal improvement that is very much in line with socialist values and crucial to achieving the official Chinese vision of a “harmonious society.”
{"title":"Multiple Time-Spaces","authors":"Jie Lu","doi":"10.1215/25783491-9645882","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/25783491-9645882","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 A reading of the cinematic representation of the global city in Chinese “new urban films” and in rural-migrant films leads this article to focus on the plurality and dialogism among different chronotopes produced collectively across these films. The article argues that the global city is constructed by visible and invisible urban spaces whose representation offers a restructured urban world and captures the profound transformations of the Chinese city since the onset of this century. In redefining mainstream commercial/popular urban cinema via incorporation of rural-migrant films (often regarded as a separate category), this article also argues that new urban and rural-migrant films share many features. One such feature is the articulation of the neoliberal ideology of individualistic striving and personal improvement that is very much in line with socialist values and crucial to achieving the official Chinese vision of a “harmonious society.”","PeriodicalId":33692,"journal":{"name":"PRISM","volume":"22 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80964371","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-01DOI: 10.1215/25783491-9646012
G. Ting
This article draws on Judith Butler's theories of violence and grief in order to outline a self-reflexive narrative of teaching and speaking about the Atlanta shootings of March 2021 as a queer and feminist studies scholar of Japanese studies in Hong Kong. The article briefly explains how teaching about this occurrence of anti-Asian violence in East Asia might lead to important discussions of multiple imperialisms within/around Asia, while providing background on the broader potential of Asian American studies for pedagogical contexts within Asia. However, through a description of the author's own coming into being as a racialized, gendered subject in the act of teaching about the Atlanta shootings in Hong Kong, the focus is on a highly particular account of how grief and vulnerability might offer forms of political solidarity that are not defined by roles as distinct subjects belonging to recognizable groups and communities.
{"title":"Grief, Translation, and the “Asian American Woman” in Hong Kong","authors":"G. Ting","doi":"10.1215/25783491-9646012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/25783491-9646012","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article draws on Judith Butler's theories of violence and grief in order to outline a self-reflexive narrative of teaching and speaking about the Atlanta shootings of March 2021 as a queer and feminist studies scholar of Japanese studies in Hong Kong. The article briefly explains how teaching about this occurrence of anti-Asian violence in East Asia might lead to important discussions of multiple imperialisms within/around Asia, while providing background on the broader potential of Asian American studies for pedagogical contexts within Asia. However, through a description of the author's own coming into being as a racialized, gendered subject in the act of teaching about the Atlanta shootings in Hong Kong, the focus is on a highly particular account of how grief and vulnerability might offer forms of political solidarity that are not defined by roles as distinct subjects belonging to recognizable groups and communities.","PeriodicalId":33692,"journal":{"name":"PRISM","volume":"82 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82140983","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-01DOI: 10.1215/25783491-9290704
Jerôme de Wit
Korean-Chinese literature after the establishment of the People's Republic of China (PRC) predominantly eulogized the lives of farmers. Such literature portrayed farmers' lives and how, through their work, they could transform both their own livelihoods and that of the nation, this time not in the name of imperialism, but communism. Although such stories reflect themes that one finds in Chinese literature from that period, stories written by Korean-Chinese authors are distinct because they do not shy away from depicting their shared historical experiences under Japanese colonial rule in Manchukuo. Moreover, this colonial experience was in fact highlighted to make it play an important role in the creation and fortification of a Korean-Chinese identity. The Korean-Chinese stories from this period focus exclusively on the local to conjure an image of community. Local problems, however, were often construed as colonial remnants from the Japanese rule in Manchukuo and, in turn, stressed the perceived existence of class differences inside Korean-Chinese communities. While their literature was an attempt to expunge such traits and unify the Korean-Chinese community, they inadvertently created new narratives that exacerbated existing tensions and divisiveness instead.
{"title":"The Cultural Creation of the Ethnic Korean Minority in China","authors":"Jerôme de Wit","doi":"10.1215/25783491-9290704","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/25783491-9290704","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Korean-Chinese literature after the establishment of the People's Republic of China (PRC) predominantly eulogized the lives of farmers. Such literature portrayed farmers' lives and how, through their work, they could transform both their own livelihoods and that of the nation, this time not in the name of imperialism, but communism. Although such stories reflect themes that one finds in Chinese literature from that period, stories written by Korean-Chinese authors are distinct because they do not shy away from depicting their shared historical experiences under Japanese colonial rule in Manchukuo. Moreover, this colonial experience was in fact highlighted to make it play an important role in the creation and fortification of a Korean-Chinese identity. The Korean-Chinese stories from this period focus exclusively on the local to conjure an image of community. Local problems, however, were often construed as colonial remnants from the Japanese rule in Manchukuo and, in turn, stressed the perceived existence of class differences inside Korean-Chinese communities. While their literature was an attempt to expunge such traits and unify the Korean-Chinese community, they inadvertently created new narratives that exacerbated existing tensions and divisiveness instead.","PeriodicalId":33692,"journal":{"name":"PRISM","volume":"5 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91092660","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-01DOI: 10.1215/25783491-9290672
M. Bender
Since the 1980s ethnic minority poets writing in the borderlands of Southwest China and Northeast India emerged on the world stage from within currents of dramatic environmental, political, economic, and demographic change, cresting in momentum by the 2010s. Within these borderlands of the Eastern Himalayas, burgeoning populations, propelled by sociopolitical agendas, ecological disasters, and other factors, stress borders and resources in areas increasingly open to exploitation by regional and international corporations and governments. Minority poetic voices throughout the region often respond to these radical environmental and cultural shifts with imagery of the environment delivered in very personal terms. Poets not only assume individual voices but also take on metonymic personae, speaking for concerns of their own groups via print, live performance, and digital formats. Mutual awareness of these cross-border poetries is slowly emerging, revealing that themes of poems from within these border areas are often parallel, with common concerns, though local characteristics. Cultural shifts and accommodation to new or revised modes of living and reactions to increasingly severe challenges to the local and regional environments surface repeatedly in the poetry. Some poems tread boundaries between the human and nonhuman inhabitants of these border areas, speaking for—or as—plants, animals, and geographic features.
{"title":"Treading Poetic Borders in Southwest China and Northeast India","authors":"M. Bender","doi":"10.1215/25783491-9290672","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/25783491-9290672","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Since the 1980s ethnic minority poets writing in the borderlands of Southwest China and Northeast India emerged on the world stage from within currents of dramatic environmental, political, economic, and demographic change, cresting in momentum by the 2010s. Within these borderlands of the Eastern Himalayas, burgeoning populations, propelled by sociopolitical agendas, ecological disasters, and other factors, stress borders and resources in areas increasingly open to exploitation by regional and international corporations and governments. Minority poetic voices throughout the region often respond to these radical environmental and cultural shifts with imagery of the environment delivered in very personal terms. Poets not only assume individual voices but also take on metonymic personae, speaking for concerns of their own groups via print, live performance, and digital formats. Mutual awareness of these cross-border poetries is slowly emerging, revealing that themes of poems from within these border areas are often parallel, with common concerns, though local characteristics. Cultural shifts and accommodation to new or revised modes of living and reactions to increasingly severe challenges to the local and regional environments surface repeatedly in the poetry. Some poems tread boundaries between the human and nonhuman inhabitants of these border areas, speaking for—or as—plants, animals, and geographic features.","PeriodicalId":33692,"journal":{"name":"PRISM","volume":"100 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78532653","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-01DOI: 10.1215/25783491-9290639
Yanshuo Zhang
This article investigates the underexamined ethnic motifs of the modern literary master Shen Congwen's 沈從文 fictional creations. In the field of Chinese literary scholarship, Shen is widely recognized as a leading figure of the May Fourth “native soil” literary tradition and is usually labeled as a “regionalist” writer. Yet as an ethnically hybrid author, Shen's ethnographically inspired, mythologizing accounts of indigenous non-Han tribes place him in a long tradition of searching for moral truths in borderland societies in Chinese literary and cultural history. The article argues that ethnicity is an important motif that runs throughout the early Shen Congwen's literary oeuvre, particularly in the Miao-themed stories that he crafted in the 1920s and 1930s. Shen idealizes non-Han peoples, particularly the Miao in southern China's borderland, as the ultimate source of moral courage and aesthetic perfection in his vision of a wholesome China. Through his ethnically themed novellas and short stories, Shen is both heir to and questions the Confucian tradition of locating a civilizational “other” in the non-Sinitic/non-Han border regions. The article further reveals how Shen embodies contradictory motifs with regard to ethnicity in China: on the one hand, he romanticizes the Miao as moral agents living freely in a timeless society, governed only by divine powers and unruly passions. On the other hand, Shen laments the historical discrimination experienced by the Miao and assumes a sober voice as he calls for ethnic equality. Simultaneously lyrical and political, Shen's ethnically themed works are significant for forming new scholarly understandings of both May Fourth literature and the broader discourse of ethnicity, which underpins the very notion of Chineseness in modern China.
{"title":"Shen Congwen's Idealized Ethnic","authors":"Yanshuo Zhang","doi":"10.1215/25783491-9290639","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/25783491-9290639","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article investigates the underexamined ethnic motifs of the modern literary master Shen Congwen's 沈從文 fictional creations. In the field of Chinese literary scholarship, Shen is widely recognized as a leading figure of the May Fourth “native soil” literary tradition and is usually labeled as a “regionalist” writer. Yet as an ethnically hybrid author, Shen's ethnographically inspired, mythologizing accounts of indigenous non-Han tribes place him in a long tradition of searching for moral truths in borderland societies in Chinese literary and cultural history. The article argues that ethnicity is an important motif that runs throughout the early Shen Congwen's literary oeuvre, particularly in the Miao-themed stories that he crafted in the 1920s and 1930s. Shen idealizes non-Han peoples, particularly the Miao in southern China's borderland, as the ultimate source of moral courage and aesthetic perfection in his vision of a wholesome China. Through his ethnically themed novellas and short stories, Shen is both heir to and questions the Confucian tradition of locating a civilizational “other” in the non-Sinitic/non-Han border regions. The article further reveals how Shen embodies contradictory motifs with regard to ethnicity in China: on the one hand, he romanticizes the Miao as moral agents living freely in a timeless society, governed only by divine powers and unruly passions. On the other hand, Shen laments the historical discrimination experienced by the Miao and assumes a sober voice as he calls for ethnic equality. Simultaneously lyrical and political, Shen's ethnically themed works are significant for forming new scholarly understandings of both May Fourth literature and the broader discourse of ethnicity, which underpins the very notion of Chineseness in modern China.","PeriodicalId":33692,"journal":{"name":"PRISM","volume":"75 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90490788","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-01DOI: 10.1215/25783491-9290712
Jianing Tuo
The Mengjiang 蒙疆 puppet regime was established in Inner Mongolia by Japanese colonizers, in collaboration with the Mongolian Prince Demchugdongrub, during the Second Sino-Japanese War. The Mengjiang regime tried to revive Mongolian culture in the name of resisting Chinese despotism. However, the Japanese supported the Mongols' desire for “self-determination” merely to use it as a vehicle for their colonial designs. Through a close reading of several texts that appeared in Sinophone magazines published in Japanese-occupied Inner Mongolia during the war, this article explicates the distinctions between Han writers' and Mongol intellectuals' nationalist writings, in order to theorize the dual oppression of the Mongol minority culture under Japanese colonialism and Chinese despotism. Despite the mission of this so-called Mongolian nation-state to write in a Mongolian style, the Han writers in Mengjiang expressed their ethnic identity through Sinophone literature; at the same time, Sinicized Mongol intellectuals failed to revive Mongolian culture through the same vehicle. In the end, both the former Han despots and the new Japanese colonizers tried to instrumentalize Mongol minority culture to establish their own cultural hegemony. Under this dual oppression of foreign colonialism and native despotism, the Sinophone nationalist writings of the Han majority and the Mongol minority problematize any simple binarism of colonizer and colonized.
{"title":"Between Colonialism and Despotism","authors":"Jianing Tuo","doi":"10.1215/25783491-9290712","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/25783491-9290712","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The Mengjiang 蒙疆 puppet regime was established in Inner Mongolia by Japanese colonizers, in collaboration with the Mongolian Prince Demchugdongrub, during the Second Sino-Japanese War. The Mengjiang regime tried to revive Mongolian culture in the name of resisting Chinese despotism. However, the Japanese supported the Mongols' desire for “self-determination” merely to use it as a vehicle for their colonial designs. Through a close reading of several texts that appeared in Sinophone magazines published in Japanese-occupied Inner Mongolia during the war, this article explicates the distinctions between Han writers' and Mongol intellectuals' nationalist writings, in order to theorize the dual oppression of the Mongol minority culture under Japanese colonialism and Chinese despotism. Despite the mission of this so-called Mongolian nation-state to write in a Mongolian style, the Han writers in Mengjiang expressed their ethnic identity through Sinophone literature; at the same time, Sinicized Mongol intellectuals failed to revive Mongolian culture through the same vehicle. In the end, both the former Han despots and the new Japanese colonizers tried to instrumentalize Mongol minority culture to establish their own cultural hegemony. Under this dual oppression of foreign colonialism and native despotism, the Sinophone nationalist writings of the Han majority and the Mongol minority problematize any simple binarism of colonizer and colonized.","PeriodicalId":33692,"journal":{"name":"PRISM","volume":"33 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78343176","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-01DOI: 10.1215/25783491-9290696
Kyle Shernuk
By interrogating the borderlands of the discipline of Chinese literature, this article argues that Chinese literary studies should recognize non-Sinitic-language literatures that engage with issues of Chineseness as proper objects of study. Prevailing frameworks in Chinese and Sinophone literary studies range from an implicit aversion to non-Sinitic-language texts to their explicit exclusion. The consequence, however, is that texts that would otherwise be considered works of Chinese literature based on their content and/or combinations of other factors are condemned to a “literary no-man's land.” By removing the minimum threshold of language for consideration in the Chinese literary tradition and permitting texts that otherwise reflect or participate in the production of discourses of Chineseness—which the author theorizes as an embrace of the xenophone—the study of Chinese literature recuperates previously excluded expressions of Chineseness and begins writing a new branch of Chinese literary history. As case in point, the author analyzes the Spanish-language Chinese literature of Chinese Peruvian American writer Siu Kam Wen, specifically, his first collection of short stories, El tramo final (The Final Stretch). From offering new ideas of what it means to be Chinese to rewriting the history of China's red legacies, Siu's work represents a needed intervention in Chinese literary studies that would otherwise be excluded owing to its language of composition.
{"title":"Embracing the Xenophone","authors":"Kyle Shernuk","doi":"10.1215/25783491-9290696","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/25783491-9290696","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 By interrogating the borderlands of the discipline of Chinese literature, this article argues that Chinese literary studies should recognize non-Sinitic-language literatures that engage with issues of Chineseness as proper objects of study. Prevailing frameworks in Chinese and Sinophone literary studies range from an implicit aversion to non-Sinitic-language texts to their explicit exclusion. The consequence, however, is that texts that would otherwise be considered works of Chinese literature based on their content and/or combinations of other factors are condemned to a “literary no-man's land.” By removing the minimum threshold of language for consideration in the Chinese literary tradition and permitting texts that otherwise reflect or participate in the production of discourses of Chineseness—which the author theorizes as an embrace of the xenophone—the study of Chinese literature recuperates previously excluded expressions of Chineseness and begins writing a new branch of Chinese literary history. As case in point, the author analyzes the Spanish-language Chinese literature of Chinese Peruvian American writer Siu Kam Wen, specifically, his first collection of short stories, El tramo final (The Final Stretch). From offering new ideas of what it means to be Chinese to rewriting the history of China's red legacies, Siu's work represents a needed intervention in Chinese literary studies that would otherwise be excluded owing to its language of composition.","PeriodicalId":33692,"journal":{"name":"PRISM","volume":"9 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89531336","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-01DOI: 10.1215/25783491-9290631
M. Xie
This article reconsiders the established modern Chinese writer Duanmu Hongliang and his first and most influential work, The Korchin Banner Plains (completed in 1933 and published in 1939), from a borderland perspective. The novel is set in western Manchuria, a multiethnic area of northeastern China that borders Inner Mongolia and was occupied by Japan in the early 1930s. The novel has been read by many as a realistic portrait of the natural and social landscape of the grassland and as an autobiographical account of the author's family history. This article disagrees, and treats the novel as a performative form of “territory-making” that purposefully recreates a Han-centered modern nation from its geographical margin by carefully reorganizing a web of intricate and competing multiethnic and multinational relations in the grassland. In particular, as a self-identified Manchu, Duanmu makes unconventional choices of both themes and literary styles to imply a calculated embrace of a modern nation by an ethnic other. Through a close examination of the spatial-textual negotiations in the novel, the article delineates how a classic work of nationalist literature was produced from the borderland and how this work exposes the precariousness and contradictions inherent in the grand narrative of modern nationhood.
{"title":"The Making and Unmaking of Nationalist Literature from the National Margin","authors":"M. Xie","doi":"10.1215/25783491-9290631","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/25783491-9290631","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article reconsiders the established modern Chinese writer Duanmu Hongliang and his first and most influential work, The Korchin Banner Plains (completed in 1933 and published in 1939), from a borderland perspective. The novel is set in western Manchuria, a multiethnic area of northeastern China that borders Inner Mongolia and was occupied by Japan in the early 1930s. The novel has been read by many as a realistic portrait of the natural and social landscape of the grassland and as an autobiographical account of the author's family history. This article disagrees, and treats the novel as a performative form of “territory-making” that purposefully recreates a Han-centered modern nation from its geographical margin by carefully reorganizing a web of intricate and competing multiethnic and multinational relations in the grassland. In particular, as a self-identified Manchu, Duanmu makes unconventional choices of both themes and literary styles to imply a calculated embrace of a modern nation by an ethnic other. Through a close examination of the spatial-textual negotiations in the novel, the article delineates how a classic work of nationalist literature was produced from the borderland and how this work exposes the precariousness and contradictions inherent in the grand narrative of modern nationhood.","PeriodicalId":33692,"journal":{"name":"PRISM","volume":"35 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79786680","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-01DOI: 10.1215/25783491-9290655
C. Peacock
From early works such as “Ralo” (1997) to the more recent “Black Fox Valley” (2012), the acclaimed Tibetan author Tsering Döndrup has demonstrated a consistent interest in the impact of the Chinese language on Tibetan life. This article examines the techniques and implications of Tsering Döndrup's use of Chinese in his Tibetan language texts, focusing on his recent novella “Baba Baoma” (2019), the first-person account of a rural Tibetan boy who attends a Chinese school and ends up stuck between two languages. In a major departure from Tsering Döndrup's previous work on the language problem, this text directly incorporates untranslated Chinese characters, blending them with Tibetan transliterations and Hanyu Pinyin (i.e., the Latin alphabet) to create a deliberately disorienting linguistic collage. This article argues that this latest work pushes Tsering Döndrup's previous experiments to their logical conclusion: a condition of forced bilingualism, in which the author demands of his readers fluency in Chinese in order to access his Tibetan language fiction. This critique of the Sino-Tibetan linguistic crisis puts the author's work into conversation with global postcolonial literatures and the politics of resistance to language hegemony. By demonstrating the Tibetan language's capacity for literary creation, the story effectively resists the hegemony it depicts, even while it suggests that the Tibetan literary text itself is in the process of being fundamentally redefined by its unequal encounter with the Chinese language.
{"title":"Unsavory Characters","authors":"C. Peacock","doi":"10.1215/25783491-9290655","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/25783491-9290655","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 From early works such as “Ralo” (1997) to the more recent “Black Fox Valley” (2012), the acclaimed Tibetan author Tsering Döndrup has demonstrated a consistent interest in the impact of the Chinese language on Tibetan life. This article examines the techniques and implications of Tsering Döndrup's use of Chinese in his Tibetan language texts, focusing on his recent novella “Baba Baoma” (2019), the first-person account of a rural Tibetan boy who attends a Chinese school and ends up stuck between two languages. In a major departure from Tsering Döndrup's previous work on the language problem, this text directly incorporates untranslated Chinese characters, blending them with Tibetan transliterations and Hanyu Pinyin (i.e., the Latin alphabet) to create a deliberately disorienting linguistic collage. This article argues that this latest work pushes Tsering Döndrup's previous experiments to their logical conclusion: a condition of forced bilingualism, in which the author demands of his readers fluency in Chinese in order to access his Tibetan language fiction. This critique of the Sino-Tibetan linguistic crisis puts the author's work into conversation with global postcolonial literatures and the politics of resistance to language hegemony. By demonstrating the Tibetan language's capacity for literary creation, the story effectively resists the hegemony it depicts, even while it suggests that the Tibetan literary text itself is in the process of being fundamentally redefined by its unequal encounter with the Chinese language.","PeriodicalId":33692,"journal":{"name":"PRISM","volume":"199 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80072221","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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