Postmodernism & China

by Dirlik, Arif; Zhang, Xudong; Ning, Wang (CON); King, Anthony D. (CON)

• ISBN13: 9780822325444
• ISBN10: 0822325446
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-11-01
• Publisher: Duke Univ Pr

Summary

Few countries have been so transformed in recent decades as China. With a dynamically growing economy and a rapidly changing social structure, China challenges the West to understand the nature of its modernization. Using postmodernism as both a global frame of periodization and a way to break free from the rigid ideology of westernization as modernity, this volumers"s diverse group of contributors argues that the Chinese experience is crucial for understanding postmodernism. Collectively, these essays question the implications of specific phenomena, like literature, architecture, rock music, and film, in a postsocialist society. Some essays address Chinars"s complicity in-as well as its resistance to-the culture of global capitalism. Others evaluate the impact of efforts to redefine national culture in terms of enhanced freedoms and expressions of the imagination in everyday life. Still others discuss the general relaxation of political society in post-Mao China, the emergence of the market and its consumer mass culture, and the fashion and discourse of nostalgia. The contributors make a clear case for both the historical uniqueness of Chinese postmodernism and the need to understand its specificity in order to fully grasp the condition of postmodernity worldwide. Although the focus is on mainland China, the volume also includes important observations on social and cultural realities in Hong Kong and Taiwan, whose postmodernity has so far been confined-in both Chinese and English-speaking worlds-to their economic and consumer activities instead of their political and cultural dynamism. First published as a special issue ofboundary 2,Postmodernism and Chinaincludes seven new essays. By juxtaposing postmodernism with postsocialism and by analyzing China as a producer and not merely a consumer of the culture of the postmodern, it will contribute to critical discourses on globalism, modernity, and political economics, as well as to cultural and Asian studies.Contributors. Evans Chan, Arif Dirlik, Dai Jinhua, Liu Kang, Anthony D. King, Jeroen de Kloet, Abidin Kusno, Wendy Larson, Chaoyang Liao, Ping-hui Liao, Sebastian Hsien-hao Liao, Sheldon Hsiao-peng Lu, Wang Ning, Xiaobing Tang, Xiaoying Wang, Chen Xiaoming, Xiaobin Yang, Zhang Yiwu, Xudong Zhang

Table of Contents

Introduction: Postmodernism and China	1	(21)
Arif Dirlik
Xudong Zhang
i. mapping the postmodern
The Mapping of Chinese Postmodernity	21	(20)
Wang Ning
On Be(ij)ing in the World: ``Postmodernism,'' ``Globalization,'' and the Making of the Transnational Space in China	41	(27)
Anthony D. King
Abidin Kusno
Postmodern Literary Discourse and Contemporary Public Culture in Taiwan	68	(21)
Ping-hui Liao
Hong Kong, China, and the Question of Postcoloniality	89	(34)
Xiaoying Wang
ii. cultural politics
Popular Culture and the Culture of the Masses in Contemporary China	123	(22)
Liu Kang
Global Postmodernization: The Intellectual, the Artist, and China's Condition	145	(30)
Sheldon Hsiao-peng Lu
Becoming Cyborgian: Postmodernism and Nationalism in Contemporary Taiwan	175	(30)
Sebastian Hsien-hao Liao
iii. cultural studies
Imagined Nostalgia	205	(17)
Dai Jinhua
The Mysterious Other: Postpolitics in Chinese Film	222	(17)
Chen Xiaoming
``Let Him Fucking See the Green Smoke Beneath My Groin'': The Mythology of Chinese Rock	239	(36)
Jeoren de Kloet
Borrowed Modernity: History and the Subject in A Borrowed Life	275	(19)
Chao-yang Liao
Postmodernism and Hong Kong Cinema	294	(31)
Evans Chan
iv. literary interventions
Postmodernism and Chinese Novels of the Nineties	325	(12)
Zhang Yiwu
Women and the Discourse of Desire in Postrevolutionary China: The Awkward Postmodernism of Chen Ran	337	(21)
Wendy Larson
Melancholy against the Grain: Approaching Postmodernity in Wang Anyi's Tales of Sorrow	358	(21)
Xiaobing Tang
Whence and Whither the Postmodern/Post-Mao-Deng: Historical Subjectivity and Literary Subjectivity in Modern China	379	(20)
Xiaobin Yang
Epilogue: Postmodernism and Postsocialist Society---Historicizing the Present	399	(44)
Xudong Zhang
Selected Glossary of Terms and Titles	443	(2)
Contributors	445	(2)
Index	447