Chinese Modernity and Global Biopolitics: Studies in Literature and Visual Culture

Sheldon Hsiao-peng Lu

Published by University of Hawaii Press 2007

Chinese Modernity and Global Biopolitics

Studies in Literature and Visual Culture

Sheldon Hsiao-peng Lu

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780824861865

Overview
Contents

About this book

This ambitious work is a multimedia, interdisciplinary study of Chinese modernity in the context of globalization from the late nineteenth century to the present. Sheldon Lu draws on Chinese literature, film, art, photography, and video to broadly map the emergence of modern China in relation to the capitalist world-system in the economic, social, and political realms. Central to his study is the investigation of biopower and body politics, namely, the experience of globalization on a personal level.

Lu first outlines the trajectory of the body in modern Chinese literature by focusing on the adventures, pleasures, and sufferings of the male (and female) body in the writings of selected authors. He then turns to avant-garde and performance art, tackling the physical self more directly through a consideration of work that takes the body as its very theme, material, and medium. In an exploration of mass visual culture, Lu analyzes artistic reactions to the multiple, uneven effects of globalization and modernization on both the physical landscape of China and the interior psyche of its citizens. This is followed by an inquiry into contemporary Chinese urban space in popular cinema and experimental photography and art. Examples are offered that capture the daily lives of contemporary Chinese as they struggle to make the transition from the vanishing space of the socialist lifestyle to the new capitalist economy of commodities. Lu reexamines the history and implications of China’s belated integration into the capitalist world system before closing with a postscript that traces the genealogy of the term "postsocialism" and points to the real relevance of the idea for the investigation of everyday life in China in the twenty-first century.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
List of Illustrations Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
Introduction: China and the Global Biopolitical Order Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Part 1. Literature and Biopolitics
1. Waking to Global Modernity: The Classical Tale in the Late Qing Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	23
2. When Mimosa Blossoms: Blockage of Male Desire in Yu Dafu and Zhang Xianliang Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	38
3. Body Writing: Beauty Writers at the Turn of the Twenty-fi rst Century Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	53
Part 2. Art: From the National to the Diasporic Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	69
4. The Naked Body Politic in Postsocialist China and the Chinese Diaspora Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	71
5. “Beautiful Violence”: War, Peace, Globalization Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	93
Part 3. Sinophone Cinema and Postsocialist Television
6. Hollywood, China, Hong Kong: Representing the Chinese Nation-State in Filmic Discourse Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	115
7. History, Memory, Nostalgia: Rewriting Socialism in Film and Television Drama Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	130
8. Dialect and Modernity in Twenty-fi rst- Century Sinophone Cinema Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	150
Part 4. Cityscape in Multimedia
9. Tear Down the City: Reconstructing Urban Space in Cinema, Photography, Video Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	167
Historical Conclusion: Chinese Modernity and the Capitalist World-System Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	191
Postscript: Answering the Question, What Is Chinese Postsocialism? Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	204
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	211
Chinese Glossary Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	233
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	241
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	255
About the Author Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	265

Language: English
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 280
Illustrations
- Other: 43 illus.

eBook

Published: May 31, 2007
ISBN: 9780824861865