Occidentalism A Theory of Counter-Discourse in Post-Mao China

by Chen, Xiaomei

• ISBN13: 9780195085792
• ISBN10: 0195085795
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780190282141
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1995-09-07
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• More Book Details

Summary

Xiaomei Chen offers an insightful account of the unremittingly favorable depiction of Western culture and its negative characterization of Chinese culture in post-Mao China from 1978-1988. Chen examines the cultural and political interrelations between the East and West from a vantage point more complex than that accommodated by most current theories of Western imperialism and colonialism. Going beyond Edward Said's construction in Orientalism of cross-cultural appropriations as a defining facet of Western imperialism, Chen argues that the appropriation of Western discourse--what she calls "Occidentalism"--can have a politically and ideologically liberating effect on contemporary non-Western culture. Using China as a focus of her analysis, Chen examines a variety of cultural media, from Shakesperian drama, to Western modernist poetry, to contemporary Chinese television. She thus places sinology in the general context of Western theoretical discourses, such as Eurocentrism, postcolonialism, nationalism, modernism, feminism, and literary hermeneutics, showing that it has a vital role to play in the study of Orient and Occident and their now unavoidable symbiotic relationship. Occidentalism presents a new model of comparative literary and cultural studies that reenvisions cross-cultural appropriation.

Author Biography

Xiaomei Chen is Associate Professor of Chinese and Comparative Literature at Ohio State University.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 3
Occidentalism as a Counter-Discourse: He shang Controversy	p. 27
Occidentalist Theater: Shakespeare, Ibsen, and Brecht as Counter Others	p. 49
"Misunderstanding" Western Modernism: The Menglong Movement	p. 69
A Wildman Between the Orient and the Occident: Retro-Influence in Comparative Literary Studies	p. 99
Wilder, Mei Lanfang, and Huang Zuolin: A "Suggestive Theater" Revisited	p. 119
Fathers and Daughters in Early Modern Chinese Drama: On the Problematics of Occidentalism in Cross-Cultural/Gender Perspective	p. 137
Postscript	p. 157
Notes	p. 169
Glossary	p. 203
Bibliography	p. 215
Index	p. 233
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