Wednesday, March 23, 2005
gender and sexuality issue
While comes up with the inquiry of Chinese modernity, focusing on the issue of gender and sexuality might be the last stage despite the emancipation of women or marriage was one of the most important appeal for the youth in May Fourth period and later. Rey Chow brought the issue of the narration and modernity and refereed to Eileen Chang’s descriptions of 'feminity-as-detial' as diminishing the society's dream of a collective humanity. Chow's approach and viewpoint of the conclusion is in the light of various theories of 'de-', such as deconstruction. In reading the story of A Xiao, Rey Chow regarded the servant girl was a contrast with upper-class and educated women characters and revealed a basic resistance in the trivialized and privatized affective structure. I am most willing to appreciate her effort from the peripheral or feminist viewpoint; however, I cannot be as optimistic as Chow as other theories of 'de-' and 'post-.' Concluding the triviality as feminity and as resistance is too easy a way to deconstruct the collective and the whole society.
Masculinity Besieged/ Femininity Beset
Masculinity Besieged/ Femininity Beset
In this week’s reading we are examining the cultural formation of gender as it was constructed in, through and beside the writing of fiction in Modern China, focusing particular on two broad time frames: May 4th and Post Mao. The majority of the works here are feminist in stance, but the variety of approaches, and conclusions is astounding, especially when we consider how these texts would affect our reading/interpretation of A Woman Like Me…are we seeing an internal world that can be categorized as engaging in the creation of a feminine subjectivity…are there traces of “feminine detail” or is the difficulty associated for our protagonist with finding a partner a product of the shadow of death across her when confronting the male of the post Mao era? These texts Lu Tonglin’s baldly titled Misogyny, Cultural Nihilism and Oppositional Politics, Sang Tzelan’s The Emerging Lesbian (which always makes me think of some kind of horror movie…the creature from the black lagoon maybe?} Zhong Xueping’s Maculinity Beseiged and Rey Chow’s Woman and Chinese Modernity. (the title of which I think sums up a lot of my problems with the work, I am reminded of the suffragist quote: “we speak of women and women’s suffrage. We do not speak of Woman with a capital W. That we leave to our enemies.”) in my opinion must all be considered to approach the way in which both (2? More?) genders and sexuality are being understood both through the text and in the wider social context of the time, as exemplified in characterization and importantly criticism. I found Lu Tonglin’s discussions of Can Xue particularly interesting. Lu writes uses a French feminist understanding of linguistic formation as imbued with the phallic, as a jumping off point for re addressing incoherence, logical dissonance and conflict in Can Xue’s work as a challenge to the phallic or phallogocentric order, and a subversive use of the master tool of language violence used with such deliberateness during and if we consider the implementation of bai hua as part of it, before the Maoist Era. I think this is indeed fair, however that is not to say that I believe that can Xue is creating a Chinese version of ecriture feminine in the process…this is also a conclusion which Lu herself seems wary of. Although I find the arguments of Irigaray for the creation of a “feminine order” one concerned with the chora,, the material and the fluid, (to me, nothing less than a great bowing to the construction of the feminine and females within the phallic order and providing no out for those not aligning themselves with either of these two polar choices) generally unconvincing as a means of subversion and reductive analytically, Lu Tonglin’s exploration of the subject matter, language and crucially, I think reception of Can Xue’s work allows her to gently probe the limitations of this theoretical oeuvre in the contemporary Chinese context and point out where Can Xue differs and is similar to her male counterparts contemporary and past. In this regard we may perhaps think of her images of frozen fire and recall the analysis of the dead fire motif of Lu Xun that Lu so successfully unpacks. In this respect, Lu’s writing on this subject suggests that in fact Can Xue’s work does have a precedent, and a lineage, despite her statements that it does not follow a school overtly in the sense that many contemporary male writers do, Can Xue, like everyone else, inherits the discursive history she grew up in, and her outsider status, whether constructed or perceived has benefits as well as problems attached to it…one may ask whether the same critics who accuse her of insanity, of schizophrenia or history would attach the same accusations to the works of say Andre Breton, or Charles Henri Ford? In the end we may think about question of the “hysterical” and the “pathological” in the representation of female identity…to what extent does Can Xue re-incribe and re-inhabit these, bringing out their pitfalls and their subversive potential?
Sang Tzelan’s book, Tthe Emerging Lesbian alongside books by Evans, and Barlow provides us with a loose chart to changes in representations of the self as a sexual and gendered being and the environment that fostered these. Importantly, this and other texts examining gender in modern China take on the issue of language and neologism, the approximation and ambiguities in translation…the variety of meaning of different categories of woman (funu, nuren, nuxing) and the changing meaning of xing, as markers of political and social change. Sang takes an approach inspired by the writings of Foucault and later interpretations by others in the field of Queer Theory to explore the usefulness of a term like “lesbian” (itself decidedly western and basically imbued with synecdoche) in not only a different historical context but a different cultural context to the one in which it is commonly used today. Using the literary she seeks to discover the parameters of same sex relationships in the 20’s, how they operated, how they were understood both by those in them and by the wider society and how they were represented. The revolutionary potential, the political power, and sense of community Sang finds manifested in certain interpretations of this community in writing of the May 4th period, in the context of the brief flowering of the “free love” movement, prior to what we may understand as the codifying of modern morality (the basis of modern literature, according to Chow) is something we may also consider when examining masculinity in this context, as is done by Zhong Xueping.
It seems to me that if Zhong took a little bit more Freud, or perhaps Lacan into her analysis and Chow lost a bit, both books would be more balanced. That Zhong is perpetually bewildered by the mixture of sexuality and death in Half of Man is Woman and Winter’s Gate mystifies me. She traces the trajectory by which the hyper masculine image used frequently as a cultural symbol in the Maoist era (and particularly in the cultural revolution) is in fact de-humanized through his lack of sexuality, but simultaneously portrayed as something of an ubermensch ( I would argue that this image and the ascetic aspect of it may have some traditional links in the idea of dissipation of qi and the Buddhist ascetic), and further shows that there is a strong death impulse associated with the sex imagery of particularly heterosexual intercourse in contemporary literature. Apart from the more obvious Freudian interpretation that would have us view intercourse as castration and the woman as grave, giving free rein to one’s libidinal impulses, in the historical context that arises from the prior disavowal of these same impulses for the creation of the healthy nation (both in cultural, literary and scientific formations of modern china) must be seen to be supremely human, and thus utterly imbued with the concept of mortality. The “masculine” that these male writers and protagonist strive for does not exist. The man’s man, the real man, does not exist in the same place as the human and in order to bring him about one’s humanity, the “he” of Half of Man is Woman, and the genital must be destroyed even as in a complex way potency must be manifested through them.
In other works that we have read in previous weeks it has been suggested that as a consequence of the iconoclastic bent of the May 4th movement, the Law of the Father was, if not entirely absent, much diminished in the cultural milieu of contemporary China. It seems to me that rather, the phallus continues to cast a long shadow. ☺
In this week’s reading we are examining the cultural formation of gender as it was constructed in, through and beside the writing of fiction in Modern China, focusing particular on two broad time frames: May 4th and Post Mao. The majority of the works here are feminist in stance, but the variety of approaches, and conclusions is astounding, especially when we consider how these texts would affect our reading/interpretation of A Woman Like Me…are we seeing an internal world that can be categorized as engaging in the creation of a feminine subjectivity…are there traces of “feminine detail” or is the difficulty associated for our protagonist with finding a partner a product of the shadow of death across her when confronting the male of the post Mao era? These texts Lu Tonglin’s baldly titled Misogyny, Cultural Nihilism and Oppositional Politics, Sang Tzelan’s The Emerging Lesbian (which always makes me think of some kind of horror movie…the creature from the black lagoon maybe?} Zhong Xueping’s Maculinity Beseiged and Rey Chow’s Woman and Chinese Modernity. (the title of which I think sums up a lot of my problems with the work, I am reminded of the suffragist quote: “we speak of women and women’s suffrage. We do not speak of Woman with a capital W. That we leave to our enemies.”) in my opinion must all be considered to approach the way in which both (2? More?) genders and sexuality are being understood both through the text and in the wider social context of the time, as exemplified in characterization and importantly criticism. I found Lu Tonglin’s discussions of Can Xue particularly interesting. Lu writes uses a French feminist understanding of linguistic formation as imbued with the phallic, as a jumping off point for re addressing incoherence, logical dissonance and conflict in Can Xue’s work as a challenge to the phallic or phallogocentric order, and a subversive use of the master tool of language violence used with such deliberateness during and if we consider the implementation of bai hua as part of it, before the Maoist Era. I think this is indeed fair, however that is not to say that I believe that can Xue is creating a Chinese version of ecriture feminine in the process…this is also a conclusion which Lu herself seems wary of. Although I find the arguments of Irigaray for the creation of a “feminine order” one concerned with the chora,, the material and the fluid, (to me, nothing less than a great bowing to the construction of the feminine and females within the phallic order and providing no out for those not aligning themselves with either of these two polar choices) generally unconvincing as a means of subversion and reductive analytically, Lu Tonglin’s exploration of the subject matter, language and crucially, I think reception of Can Xue’s work allows her to gently probe the limitations of this theoretical oeuvre in the contemporary Chinese context and point out where Can Xue differs and is similar to her male counterparts contemporary and past. In this regard we may perhaps think of her images of frozen fire and recall the analysis of the dead fire motif of Lu Xun that Lu so successfully unpacks. In this respect, Lu’s writing on this subject suggests that in fact Can Xue’s work does have a precedent, and a lineage, despite her statements that it does not follow a school overtly in the sense that many contemporary male writers do, Can Xue, like everyone else, inherits the discursive history she grew up in, and her outsider status, whether constructed or perceived has benefits as well as problems attached to it…one may ask whether the same critics who accuse her of insanity, of schizophrenia or history would attach the same accusations to the works of say Andre Breton, or Charles Henri Ford? In the end we may think about question of the “hysterical” and the “pathological” in the representation of female identity…to what extent does Can Xue re-incribe and re-inhabit these, bringing out their pitfalls and their subversive potential?
Sang Tzelan’s book, Tthe Emerging Lesbian alongside books by Evans, and Barlow provides us with a loose chart to changes in representations of the self as a sexual and gendered being and the environment that fostered these. Importantly, this and other texts examining gender in modern China take on the issue of language and neologism, the approximation and ambiguities in translation…the variety of meaning of different categories of woman (funu, nuren, nuxing) and the changing meaning of xing, as markers of political and social change. Sang takes an approach inspired by the writings of Foucault and later interpretations by others in the field of Queer Theory to explore the usefulness of a term like “lesbian” (itself decidedly western and basically imbued with synecdoche) in not only a different historical context but a different cultural context to the one in which it is commonly used today. Using the literary she seeks to discover the parameters of same sex relationships in the 20’s, how they operated, how they were understood both by those in them and by the wider society and how they were represented. The revolutionary potential, the political power, and sense of community Sang finds manifested in certain interpretations of this community in writing of the May 4th period, in the context of the brief flowering of the “free love” movement, prior to what we may understand as the codifying of modern morality (the basis of modern literature, according to Chow) is something we may also consider when examining masculinity in this context, as is done by Zhong Xueping.
It seems to me that if Zhong took a little bit more Freud, or perhaps Lacan into her analysis and Chow lost a bit, both books would be more balanced. That Zhong is perpetually bewildered by the mixture of sexuality and death in Half of Man is Woman and Winter’s Gate mystifies me. She traces the trajectory by which the hyper masculine image used frequently as a cultural symbol in the Maoist era (and particularly in the cultural revolution) is in fact de-humanized through his lack of sexuality, but simultaneously portrayed as something of an ubermensch ( I would argue that this image and the ascetic aspect of it may have some traditional links in the idea of dissipation of qi and the Buddhist ascetic), and further shows that there is a strong death impulse associated with the sex imagery of particularly heterosexual intercourse in contemporary literature. Apart from the more obvious Freudian interpretation that would have us view intercourse as castration and the woman as grave, giving free rein to one’s libidinal impulses, in the historical context that arises from the prior disavowal of these same impulses for the creation of the healthy nation (both in cultural, literary and scientific formations of modern china) must be seen to be supremely human, and thus utterly imbued with the concept of mortality. The “masculine” that these male writers and protagonist strive for does not exist. The man’s man, the real man, does not exist in the same place as the human and in order to bring him about one’s humanity, the “he” of Half of Man is Woman, and the genital must be destroyed even as in a complex way potency must be manifested through them.
In other works that we have read in previous weeks it has been suggested that as a consequence of the iconoclastic bent of the May 4th movement, the Law of the Father was, if not entirely absent, much diminished in the cultural milieu of contemporary China. It seems to me that rather, the phallus continues to cast a long shadow. ☺
Monday, March 21, 2005
CAST YOUR VOTE
I am just reminding anybody who happens to look at the blog today or tomorrow to cast your vote of confidence on Summers. Regardless of the direction of your convictions I really feel this is a significant moment, and I am providing the information that was in the email sent out by the GSC and the link to the anonymous voting site on my blog, so that if you have misplaced the email sent out you can find that info there.
For that purpose, please feel free to go to: http://sirensmirror.blogspot.com
see you all wednesday!
Danielle
For that purpose, please feel free to go to: http://sirensmirror.blogspot.com
see you all wednesday!
Danielle
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