At the turn of the twentieth century, many Chinese translators departed from the mainstream approach to world literature advocated by Western powers and turned their attention to what Chinese theorists call the “literature of weak and small nations.” China’s marginalized position in the international political and economic order of the time prompted the pursuit of a discourse to address imperialism and national identity, as well as problems of social injustice and oppression. This article draws on Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s interpretation of “minor literature” to analyze Lu Xun’s interest in the literature of weak and small nations, which developed against the backdrop of the European formation of a canonical genealogy of world literature ( Weltliteratur). By introducing Chinese readers to relevant literary history and translating selected works of fiction, Lu Xun formed an imagined community of letters joining China to the weak and small nations — despite his heavy reliance on German sources that took a markedly canonical stance. This article focuses on Lu Xun’s translation and interpretation of two short stories by Ivan Vazov, Bulgaria’s pre-eminent modern writer, to explore how the literature of weak and small nations assisted Lu Xun in negotiating not only with Western cultural hegemony but also with Chinese tradition and nationalism.
{"title":"Minor Literature as a Vital Component of World Literature: Lu Xun’s Translation of Bulgarian Literature via German Sources","authors":"Xiaolu Ma","doi":"10.3366/mclc.2023.0026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/mclc.2023.0026","url":null,"abstract":"At the turn of the twentieth century, many Chinese translators departed from the mainstream approach to world literature advocated by Western powers and turned their attention to what Chinese theorists call the “literature of weak and small nations.” China’s marginalized position in the international political and economic order of the time prompted the pursuit of a discourse to address imperialism and national identity, as well as problems of social injustice and oppression. This article draws on Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s interpretation of “minor literature” to analyze Lu Xun’s interest in the literature of weak and small nations, which developed against the backdrop of the European formation of a canonical genealogy of world literature ( Weltliteratur). By introducing Chinese readers to relevant literary history and translating selected works of fiction, Lu Xun formed an imagined community of letters joining China to the weak and small nations — despite his heavy reliance on German sources that took a markedly canonical stance. This article focuses on Lu Xun’s translation and interpretation of two short stories by Ivan Vazov, Bulgaria’s pre-eminent modern writer, to explore how the literature of weak and small nations assisted Lu Xun in negotiating not only with Western cultural hegemony but also with Chinese tradition and nationalism.","PeriodicalId":43027,"journal":{"name":"Modern Chinese Literature and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45826878","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Contributors","authors":"","doi":"10.3366/mclc.2023.0032","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/mclc.2023.0032","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43027,"journal":{"name":"Modern Chinese Literature and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136350780","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In Chinese online romances and TV dramas, the “overbearing CEO” (badao zongcai) is a recurring motif. The stories follow a stereotypical formula, depicting the love between a wealthy and domineering young man, such as a successful businessman, and a girl of humble background. Although there are many variations, the essential constituents present a Cinderella-type fantasy that normalizes patronizing male protagonists and female protagonists who adapt their behaviors to deserve them. Even dramas featuring strong and ambitious women sometimes repeat this motif of romancing an even wealthier male partner. This article situates the “overbearing CEO” stereotype within the wider context of gender subjectivity and class in China today. By close readings of TV dramas, such as Boss and Me ( Shanshan laile), and drawing on data collected from online commentaries and focus group discussions, I examine the ongoing negotiations surrounding gender politics and subjectivity in television’s reproduction of social power relations. I argue that China’s gender hierarchy and ideals are closely associated with “positive energy” (zheng nengliang) moral values, which effectively serve as a new mode of governance in China. As a result, the socialist discourse on gender equality and women’s liberation has to coexist with the interests of a market that pragmatically promotes self-governing subjects. The stories promoting women’s agency as part and parcel of postsocialist modernity thereby paradoxically end up reinforcing the patriarchal gender order.
{"title":"The Overbearing CEO: Cinderella Fantasy and Chinese-style Neoliberal Femininity","authors":"G. Song","doi":"10.3366/mclc.2023.0031","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/mclc.2023.0031","url":null,"abstract":"In Chinese online romances and TV dramas, the “overbearing CEO” (badao zongcai) is a recurring motif. The stories follow a stereotypical formula, depicting the love between a wealthy and domineering young man, such as a successful businessman, and a girl of humble background. Although there are many variations, the essential constituents present a Cinderella-type fantasy that normalizes patronizing male protagonists and female protagonists who adapt their behaviors to deserve them. Even dramas featuring strong and ambitious women sometimes repeat this motif of romancing an even wealthier male partner. This article situates the “overbearing CEO” stereotype within the wider context of gender subjectivity and class in China today. By close readings of TV dramas, such as Boss and Me ( Shanshan laile), and drawing on data collected from online commentaries and focus group discussions, I examine the ongoing negotiations surrounding gender politics and subjectivity in television’s reproduction of social power relations. I argue that China’s gender hierarchy and ideals are closely associated with “positive energy” (zheng nengliang) moral values, which effectively serve as a new mode of governance in China. As a result, the socialist discourse on gender equality and women’s liberation has to coexist with the interests of a market that pragmatically promotes self-governing subjects. The stories promoting women’s agency as part and parcel of postsocialist modernity thereby paradoxically end up reinforcing the patriarchal gender order.","PeriodicalId":43027,"journal":{"name":"Modern Chinese Literature and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42874995","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper explores the life and works of Cao Hanmei as a “misfit” in Chinese cartoon history, who, against the dominant understanding of wartime cartoons as a form of resistance and enlightenment, chose to visualize Jin Ping Mei in occupied Shanghai. I examine the stylistic transformations throughout Cao’s two-decade-long endeavors visualizing the novel and unravel the intricate dynamics between his works and his times. I argue that Cao’s pictorial adaptations of Jin Ping Mei engage with history not only by projecting contemporary struggles, chaos, and trauma onto a well-known ancient story, as other critics have suggested, but more importantly by constructing a “sensual surplus” that defies appropriation by the grand narratives of history. This sensual surplus manifests in his affective combination of the genre hybridity and stylistic anachronism of manhua, the critical re-envisioning of female characters, and the mobilization of feminine details and condensed surfaces. Through Cao’s case, this paper aims to enrich the understanding of the complexity of Shanghai’s visual culture in the 1930s and 1940s, especially the continuities and discontinuities after the Japanese occupation, and to demonstrate the porous boundary between cartoons and other forms of visual arts that approach history through images.
{"title":"The Sensual Surplus of History: Cao Hanmei’s Pictorial Adaptations of Jin Ping Mei in Wartime China","authors":"Dingru Huang","doi":"10.3366/mclc.2023.0027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/mclc.2023.0027","url":null,"abstract":"This paper explores the life and works of Cao Hanmei as a “misfit” in Chinese cartoon history, who, against the dominant understanding of wartime cartoons as a form of resistance and enlightenment, chose to visualize Jin Ping Mei in occupied Shanghai. I examine the stylistic transformations throughout Cao’s two-decade-long endeavors visualizing the novel and unravel the intricate dynamics between his works and his times. I argue that Cao’s pictorial adaptations of Jin Ping Mei engage with history not only by projecting contemporary struggles, chaos, and trauma onto a well-known ancient story, as other critics have suggested, but more importantly by constructing a “sensual surplus” that defies appropriation by the grand narratives of history. This sensual surplus manifests in his affective combination of the genre hybridity and stylistic anachronism of manhua, the critical re-envisioning of female characters, and the mobilization of feminine details and condensed surfaces. Through Cao’s case, this paper aims to enrich the understanding of the complexity of Shanghai’s visual culture in the 1930s and 1940s, especially the continuities and discontinuities after the Japanese occupation, and to demonstrate the porous boundary between cartoons and other forms of visual arts that approach history through images.","PeriodicalId":43027,"journal":{"name":"Modern Chinese Literature and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49485210","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Visitors are to museums what readers are to texts. Yet little attention has been paid to the reception of literary spaces, such as the National Museum of Taiwan Literature (NMTL), a literature museum established in Tainan in 2003. Going beyond exposing the museum’s political message, this study argues that a constructed sense of belonging to a nation is but one form of identification that comes into play in the museum visit. By juxtaposing production and reception in a two-week window in 2011, this paper shows how politics are written into the museum displays, but also how politics are neglected, confirmed, debated, and rejected by visitors in their spatial readings of the displays. The analysis is based on interviews that inquire about visitors’ concrete experiences. This study examines what motivates visitors to come to the NMTL, which aspects of their visit are most memorable, and to which exhibits visitors ascribe meaning. The reception of the NMTL is then placed into the context of its “authorship” by presenting insights into curatorial practices and planning from the perspective of museum staff, including Director Li Ruiteng. The interviews show that visitors actively select objects to which they assign meaning. I argue that visitors are most likely to choose exhibits with the strongest connection to their everyday life and their personal past. These meanings and experiences can bear a relation to Taiwanese, Chinese, or other forms of collective identities and yet enable them to engage with an identity discourse that is potentially disconnected from politics.
{"title":"Beyond Party Politics? Visitors and Meaning-Making in the National Museum of Taiwan Literature","authors":"E. Graf","doi":"10.3366/mclc.2022.0014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/mclc.2022.0014","url":null,"abstract":"Visitors are to museums what readers are to texts. Yet little attention has been paid to the reception of literary spaces, such as the National Museum of Taiwan Literature (NMTL), a literature museum established in Tainan in 2003. Going beyond exposing the museum’s political message, this study argues that a constructed sense of belonging to a nation is but one form of identification that comes into play in the museum visit. By juxtaposing production and reception in a two-week window in 2011, this paper shows how politics are written into the museum displays, but also how politics are neglected, confirmed, debated, and rejected by visitors in their spatial readings of the displays. The analysis is based on interviews that inquire about visitors’ concrete experiences. This study examines what motivates visitors to come to the NMTL, which aspects of their visit are most memorable, and to which exhibits visitors ascribe meaning. The reception of the NMTL is then placed into the context of its “authorship” by presenting insights into curatorial practices and planning from the perspective of museum staff, including Director Li Ruiteng. The interviews show that visitors actively select objects to which they assign meaning. I argue that visitors are most likely to choose exhibits with the strongest connection to their everyday life and their personal past. These meanings and experiences can bear a relation to Taiwanese, Chinese, or other forms of collective identities and yet enable them to engage with an identity discourse that is potentially disconnected from politics.","PeriodicalId":43027,"journal":{"name":"Modern Chinese Literature and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49487748","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Mainland Chinese writers’ interest in Taiwan surged in the first decade of the twenty-first century after PRC citizens were allowed to travel and study in Taiwan, but Zhang Yiwei is the only writer who continuously published works about Taiwan for several years. Studying in Taiwan from 2010 to 2016, Zhang’s works demonstrate how a post-1980 writer’s cultural identity was informed by the changing cross-Strait relationship from the 1980s to the 2010s. This article examines Zhang Yiwei’s three Taiwan-related works, published in 2013, 2015, and 2016 respectively, arguing that even though Zhang avoids political issues, her narratives of the natural and cultural aspects of Taiwan contest both the PRC’s One-China principle and the young Chinese generation’s “Taiwanese dream.” This article contends that by defining herself as an outsider in Taiwan, her three works present a cross-Strait student migrant’s modification of cultural identity and reterritorialization of the concept of “China.”
{"title":"From the “Taiwanese Dream” to an Alien Land: The Mainland Writer Zhang Yiwei’s Literary Narratives of Taiwan","authors":"P. Huang","doi":"10.3366/mclc.2022.0018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/mclc.2022.0018","url":null,"abstract":"Mainland Chinese writers’ interest in Taiwan surged in the first decade of the twenty-first century after PRC citizens were allowed to travel and study in Taiwan, but Zhang Yiwei is the only writer who continuously published works about Taiwan for several years. Studying in Taiwan from 2010 to 2016, Zhang’s works demonstrate how a post-1980 writer’s cultural identity was informed by the changing cross-Strait relationship from the 1980s to the 2010s. This article examines Zhang Yiwei’s three Taiwan-related works, published in 2013, 2015, and 2016 respectively, arguing that even though Zhang avoids political issues, her narratives of the natural and cultural aspects of Taiwan contest both the PRC’s One-China principle and the young Chinese generation’s “Taiwanese dream.” This article contends that by defining herself as an outsider in Taiwan, her three works present a cross-Strait student migrant’s modification of cultural identity and reterritorialization of the concept of “China.”","PeriodicalId":43027,"journal":{"name":"Modern Chinese Literature and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42728665","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article investigates the artistic and political significance of the Le Moulin poetry society (Fengche shishe) to both Taiwan literature and world literature. Founded in 1933 in occupied Taiwan, the group consisted of Taiwanese and Japanese poets united by their aim to adopt the surrealist poetics that circulated from France via Japan. Although revisionist efforts have been made in the past two decades to integrate Le Moulin into Taiwan’s literary history, existing scholarship has largely adopted postcolonial and Sinophone frameworks. Huang Yali’s 2016 documentary, however, propounds the possibility of considering Le Moulin as world literature in Kuei-fen Chiu’s dual definition — participating in the formation of a world community of cross-cultural exchanges and opening up new literary worlds through aesthetic experimentation. This article expands Chiu’s model by contending that the Le Moulin poets’ subjugation by colonial politics and their controversial articulations of so-called “colonized mentality” were integral parts of their participation in and identification with world literature. This investigation of their political awareness and efforts to participate in the surrealist movement reveals how they unceasingly crusaded for the survival of a “world of literature” against external forces that sought to eliminate literature’s expressive potential in response to its time. Although their unilateral transculturation of French surrealism does not fit with David Damrosch’s model of translation and global circulation, Le Moulin’s contribution to the continuation and maintenance of surrealism and avant-garde poetry prompts us to reconsider and recognize the merits of works of world literature that have so far been marginalized.
{"title":"“World Literature” between Transcultural Poetics and Colonial Politics: Yang Chichang, Le Moulin, and Surrealism in Taiwan","authors":"Fang-Ping Chen","doi":"10.3366/mclc.2022.0016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/mclc.2022.0016","url":null,"abstract":"This article investigates the artistic and political significance of the Le Moulin poetry society (Fengche shishe) to both Taiwan literature and world literature. Founded in 1933 in occupied Taiwan, the group consisted of Taiwanese and Japanese poets united by their aim to adopt the surrealist poetics that circulated from France via Japan. Although revisionist efforts have been made in the past two decades to integrate Le Moulin into Taiwan’s literary history, existing scholarship has largely adopted postcolonial and Sinophone frameworks. Huang Yali’s 2016 documentary, however, propounds the possibility of considering Le Moulin as world literature in Kuei-fen Chiu’s dual definition — participating in the formation of a world community of cross-cultural exchanges and opening up new literary worlds through aesthetic experimentation. This article expands Chiu’s model by contending that the Le Moulin poets’ subjugation by colonial politics and their controversial articulations of so-called “colonized mentality” were integral parts of their participation in and identification with world literature. This investigation of their political awareness and efforts to participate in the surrealist movement reveals how they unceasingly crusaded for the survival of a “world of literature” against external forces that sought to eliminate literature’s expressive potential in response to its time. Although their unilateral transculturation of French surrealism does not fit with David Damrosch’s model of translation and global circulation, Le Moulin’s contribution to the continuation and maintenance of surrealism and avant-garde poetry prompts us to reconsider and recognize the merits of works of world literature that have so far been marginalized.","PeriodicalId":43027,"journal":{"name":"Modern Chinese Literature and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41408527","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Hong Kong has brought to world literature some of the most prolific and best-loved fiction writers in modern Chinese history. Dung Kai-cheung is one of them — a Hong Kong-based writer who has found the city to be a constant source of inspiration. This article discusses the significance of multiplicity in Dung’s fictional representation of Hong Kong (“the V-City”), focusing on his 2007 novel Histories of Time: The Luster of Mute Porcelain. In this novel, Dung explores the narrative possibility of perceiving Hong Kong as a multi-historical space through the lens of multiplying temporalities. I have coined the term “V-shaped time” to refer to this multiplication of characters and archaeology of ideas. Time, in Dung’s work, fans out with multiple possibilities of individual and collective experiences in history, with mirrored Vs resembling an hourglass. In this stratified narrative, characters create their fictional selves in their own writing. Identifying the creative self as a literary architect, Dung’s fictional writing challenges the reader to rethink a local history that has been marginalized in the linear narrative of colonial modernity.
{"title":"Fanning Out Possibilities: Dung Kai-cheung and the Multiplicities of Time","authors":"Meng Wu","doi":"10.3366/mclc.2022.0020","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/mclc.2022.0020","url":null,"abstract":"Hong Kong has brought to world literature some of the most prolific and best-loved fiction writers in modern Chinese history. Dung Kai-cheung is one of them — a Hong Kong-based writer who has found the city to be a constant source of inspiration. This article discusses the significance of multiplicity in Dung’s fictional representation of Hong Kong (“the V-City”), focusing on his 2007 novel Histories of Time: The Luster of Mute Porcelain. In this novel, Dung explores the narrative possibility of perceiving Hong Kong as a multi-historical space through the lens of multiplying temporalities. I have coined the term “V-shaped time” to refer to this multiplication of characters and archaeology of ideas. Time, in Dung’s work, fans out with multiple possibilities of individual and collective experiences in history, with mirrored Vs resembling an hourglass. In this stratified narrative, characters create their fictional selves in their own writing. Identifying the creative self as a literary architect, Dung’s fictional writing challenges the reader to rethink a local history that has been marginalized in the linear narrative of colonial modernity.","PeriodicalId":43027,"journal":{"name":"Modern Chinese Literature and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46480382","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper investigates how the transformation of the Taiwanese writer Wu Ming-Yi, from a peripheral writer to a world literature writer, takes place. It first defines the status of Wu as a world literature writer with a discussion of the international reception of Wu’s translated works. It then studies how Wu overcomes the four obstacles for small literature writers: literary destitution, backwardness, remoteness, and invisibility. While Wu appropriates foreign patrimonies to deal with the obstacle of literary destitution, he establishes a modern profile of himself as a writer on a par with internationally acclaimed writers to counter the problem of backwardness. This study examines the complex meanings of Wu’s magical realist mode of storytelling. It argues that the global currency of this consecrated mode helps Wu address the problem of remoteness. At the same time, the magical realist mode works to reflect Wu’s planetary vision and generates the literariness that is missing in many works of environmental world literature. In addition to the literary performance of the writer, the study discusses how Wu’s agents, publishers, and the Taiwanese government join efforts to tackle the problem of invisibility.
{"title":"The Making of Small Literature as World Literature: Taiwanese Writer Wu Ming-Yi","authors":"Kuei-fen Chiu","doi":"10.3366/mclc.2022.0015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/mclc.2022.0015","url":null,"abstract":"This paper investigates how the transformation of the Taiwanese writer Wu Ming-Yi, from a peripheral writer to a world literature writer, takes place. It first defines the status of Wu as a world literature writer with a discussion of the international reception of Wu’s translated works. It then studies how Wu overcomes the four obstacles for small literature writers: literary destitution, backwardness, remoteness, and invisibility. While Wu appropriates foreign patrimonies to deal with the obstacle of literary destitution, he establishes a modern profile of himself as a writer on a par with internationally acclaimed writers to counter the problem of backwardness. This study examines the complex meanings of Wu’s magical realist mode of storytelling. It argues that the global currency of this consecrated mode helps Wu address the problem of remoteness. At the same time, the magical realist mode works to reflect Wu’s planetary vision and generates the literariness that is missing in many works of environmental world literature. In addition to the literary performance of the writer, the study discusses how Wu’s agents, publishers, and the Taiwanese government join efforts to tackle the problem of invisibility.","PeriodicalId":43027,"journal":{"name":"Modern Chinese Literature and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49659636","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper investigates the contemporary cinematic representation of the White Terror period (1949–1987) in Taiwan. The government started the process of Transitional Justice in 2017, uncovering and articulating the violence of the martial law period, which has coincided with Taiwan’s search for visibility and recognition on the international stage. Meanwhile, the PRC’s military threat to annex Taiwan turns the collective memory of White Terror into a cautionary tale of dictatorship. Considering this historical and political context, I examine two commercial films set against the martial law period, Detention (2019) and Your Name Engraved Herein (2020). I argue that the two films, in their criticism of authoritarianism, construct antagonism between a paternalistic state apparatus and innocent, idealistic youth in melodramatic romantic narratives. With their hyperbolic expression of physical and psychological struggles, the pursuit of love and freedom is upheld as the ultimate expression of humanity. The romantic subjectivity formed in the melodramatic love stories eventually displaces the historical trauma, turning into escapism or gender binarism. Rather than locating and mediating the complexity of trauma, the two films celebrate liberalism by perpetuating stereotypes and exclusionism.
{"title":"To Love and Freedom: Post-martial Law Subjectivity in Detention and Your Name Engraved Herein","authors":"Chialan Sharon WANG","doi":"10.3366/mclc.2022.0017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/mclc.2022.0017","url":null,"abstract":"This paper investigates the contemporary cinematic representation of the White Terror period (1949–1987) in Taiwan. The government started the process of Transitional Justice in 2017, uncovering and articulating the violence of the martial law period, which has coincided with Taiwan’s search for visibility and recognition on the international stage. Meanwhile, the PRC’s military threat to annex Taiwan turns the collective memory of White Terror into a cautionary tale of dictatorship. Considering this historical and political context, I examine two commercial films set against the martial law period, Detention (2019) and Your Name Engraved Herein (2020). I argue that the two films, in their criticism of authoritarianism, construct antagonism between a paternalistic state apparatus and innocent, idealistic youth in melodramatic romantic narratives. With their hyperbolic expression of physical and psychological struggles, the pursuit of love and freedom is upheld as the ultimate expression of humanity. The romantic subjectivity formed in the melodramatic love stories eventually displaces the historical trauma, turning into escapism or gender binarism. Rather than locating and mediating the complexity of trauma, the two films celebrate liberalism by perpetuating stereotypes and exclusionism.","PeriodicalId":43027,"journal":{"name":"Modern Chinese Literature and Culture","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48778088","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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