Feminism, Women Authors, and the Mapping of China

ABSTRACT Title of dissertation: THE CULTURAL PRODUCTON OF CONTROVERSY: FEMINISM, WOMEN AUTHORS, AND THE MAPPING OF CHINA Aijun Zhu, Ph.D., 2005 Dissertation directed by: Professor Jianmei Liu, Department of Asian and East European Languag es and Cultures This project deconstructs the controversy of globally located Chinese women authors trapped in a dilemma between feminism, nationalism and neocolonialism, a dilemma complicated by the sometimes liberating yet voyeuristic, even pornographic, global popular culture. It attempts to negotiate a space for the female body in the age of economic and cultural globalization between feminism that celebrates it, nationalism that disciplines it and the flourishing global consumerism that profits from it. The project argues that the controversy of differently located Chinese women authors, especially the contradiction between women and the nation/community, is culturally produced , as much by their works as by literary and cultural criticism of limited theoretical paradigms. It also argues that this controversy almost always goes hand in hand with the cultural production of an often reductive and distorted version of feminism. The ambition of the project is to un-produce the controversy through an alter native feminist framework of criticism beyond current theoretical entrapments. Focusing on four controversial contemporary women authors at different Chinese locations, this project emphasizes a politics of literary criticism or reading. Reading is crucia l not because it understands an author’s intended meaning but because it actively and aggressively produces different and often times conflictary cultural and political meanings of the text and the author. The project challenges the notion of “representati onal inevitability,” a pervasive but seriously flawed reading practice that reduces creative texts to documents that essentialize the social, cultural or political conditions of their racial or national communities. Instead, it accentuates the more flexib le concept of “cultural production.” Instead of “representing” a preconceived essentialized totality of national realities, texts by Third World women authors produce part of national landscapes, which are constantly being produced, reproduced, revised or changed by different texts, authors and critics. The goal is not just to provide a different feminist production of the texts by women authors of different global Chinese communities, but it is also to participate in the cultural production of feminist dis courses, bringing attention to the often neglected negative representation of feminism in contemporary culture and to revise the feminist project in such a way as to detangle feminist critics from theoretically produced dilemmas. The controversy of Chinese women authors does not mean contradictions between women and the nation but tensions between feminist and nationalist discourses. It is necessary that feminism should be envisioned from outside, not of the nation but of (masculinist) nationalist discourse s, in order to maintain its critical edge. THE CULTURAL PRODUCTION OF CONTROVERSY: FEMINISM, WOMEN AUTHORS, AND THE MAPPING OF CHINA By Aijun Zhu. Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2005 Advisory Committee: Associate Professor Jianmei Liu, Chair Professor Merle Collins Professor Claire Moses Professor Deborah Rosenfel t Associate Professor James Gao © Copyright by [Aijun Zhu] [2005] Preface This project focuses on the controversy of contemporary women authors in different global Chinese locations. It investigates the cultural production of the tension between feminism and nationalism, complicated by the sometimes liberating but often voyeuristic global popular culture in an attempts to negotiate a space for the female body in the age of economic and cultural globalization between feminism that celebrates it, nationalism that disciplines it and the flourishing global consumerism that profits from it. It is my argument that the controversy of women authors, especially the contradiction between women and the nation/community, is discursively produced by literary and cultural criticism of limited theoretical framework. It is closely related to masculinist nationalist literary canon formation, and almost always goes hand in hand with the cultural production of a reductive notion of feminism. In a sense, the controversy of women authors of different geopolitical locations has much to do with the legitimacy of feminist discourses within that particular nation-space. This project is my participation, as a feminist critic, of the cultural production of Chinese women authors as well as feminist criticism. The ambition of my project is to construct an alternative feminist framework of criticism so as to un-produce the controversy, to examine the mechanism of literary canon, and to re -energize feminism in thes e different nation spaces. This project is also my contribution as an overseas Chinese to the mapping of transnational Chineseness, another contemporary controversy. “China” as an imagined community is marked by contradiction: its unstable national border s and its nationalist attempts to keep tight control of those borders. The mapping of Chineseness is thus a ii transnational discursive project that requires the vision of a “transnational critic,” resisting both Eurocentric and Sinocentric imagination of “Ch ina” and Chineseness. My inclusion of Taiwan and Hong Kong into the discussion certainly has to do with my Mainland-China background, but my goal here is not to construct a homogeneous Mainland-centered Chinese empire. On the contrary, it is to problemati ze and decenter with a comparative perspective on the development of nationalism in these three geopolitical locations. It is not only to present how Chineseness is being imagined and contested but also to illuminate intense negotiations, even oppositions, between the different locational nationalisms, particularly in relation to the traditionally and conservatively defined China, which is considered to have absolute right of sovereignty over Taiwan and Hong Kong. On many occasions I use the more specific term “Mainland” instead of the more ambiguous “China” that is still in contestation. I hope to keep that border open and flexible instead of drawing an absolute distinction between China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. I also take the mapping of transnational Chines eness beyond this popular China/Mainland-Taiwan -Hong Kong triangular relations, the so -called “three locations across the Taiwan Strait (liang’an sandi),” and include Chinese America into this project. Of course, I have no intention to question Chinese/Asi an American project to claim America, nor do I wish to invoke the Eurocentric interpellation of Chinese Americans (and other Asian Americans) as always already inassimilable aliens whose home is China or Asia. Rather, it is mostly inspired by the notion of Third World, defined by Chandra Mohanty, which refers to traditional Third World countries as well as people living in Third World conditions in the West. iii This mapping is in addition my personal negotiation of national belonging as a recently naturalized Chinese American, who recognizes and accepts emotional and political ties to the imagined China. Not only am I aware of how China may impact my life directly or indirectly, but I also intend to influence the imagining of China with my research. This insid er/outsider status grants me a unique perspective, and more importantly, privilege of freedom from authoritarian nationalist discourses in any locations, particularly in the thorny case of Mainland-Taiwan relations. On the other hand, I am fully aware of a possible power hierarchy (Chinese American/West vs. Chinese) as a result of this privilege. “Introduction” presents the theoretical framework of this project, which is what I call the politics of literary/cultural criticism, inspired by Stanley Fish’s rea der -response theories on interpretation as well as by Stuart Hall’s cultural studies theories on encoding and decoding. In other words, literary/cultural criticism is crucial, not just because it understands the author’s intended meanings. It is crucial because it actively and aggressively produces different and often times conflictary cultural and political significance of the text and the author. It is a politically powerful act and “a discourse of legitimation” in and beyond literary canon formation. What is at issue here is no longer some insignificant textual ambiguities but intense political struggles for the ultimate power to define cultural realities and traditions, a highly selective process involving inclusion or exclusion of certain cultural texts , reproduction or elimination of certain discourses, as well as maintenance or transformation of certain power structures. To unproduce the controversy, I investigate the literary/cultural criticism that produces it, namely, the discourse of “representat ional inevitability,” a pervasive but iv limited approach to Third World authors, an approach that holds that any Third World text inevitably represents the totality of Third World national or racial realities and Third World authors are spokespersons for their national or racial communities. While other critics consider the discourse of “representational inevitability” as a natural result of racist and colonial history, I think this is simply another

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