WAITING for 2008 OLYMPICS: POLITICS BETWEEN PEOPLE, the WEST and the CHINESE STATE Tan Zhang, Doctor of Philosophy, 2010
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ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: WAITING FOR 2008 OLYMPICS: POLITICS BETWEEN PEOPLE, THE WEST AND THE CHINESE STATE Tan Zhang, Doctor of Philosophy, 2010 Dissertation directed by: Professor David L. Andrews Department of Kinesiology School of Public Health In this dissertation, I primarily examine the power complex formed by the People/the peoples, the Chinese state and the West, particularly its embodiment before the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. This dissertation will adopt Giorgio Agamben’s theorizing of People/peoples to map the dialectical power dynamics through which the state sovereign of China tended to reinforced itself through hosting the Beijing Games. In addition, by engaging critical theories of cultural studies, I hope to avoid structural formalism caused by relying on one particular theory. Thus, by bringing post-colonial theories, theories of intersectionality, theories of transnational feminism and theories of globalization together, I want to capture the role discursively played by the West that shape and reshapes the People/the peoples. The focus of my empirical study is the People/the people. Each chapter explores one group of individuals – the peoples confined by constructed identities. According to Agamben, the People/the peoples are nothing but pure construction by the power of the state. Although the People/the peoples are sometimes “fragmentary multiplicity of needy and excluded bodies” (Agamben, 1998), it is often the case that the People/the peoples resist the power, acquire new subjectivities, and even actively engage in power negotiation with the state and the West. In this sense, the People/the peoples are not what Agamben theorized “bare life” that can only unconditionally subject themselves to the power. Instead, they carry the potential to disrupt power construction by forming transcendental subjectivity. Following Andrews’ (2008) suggestion of embracing Physical Cultural Study, I employ a variety of qualitative methodologies to articulate the dynamic power complex. By doing so, I hope to make my limited contribution to breaking the confines that the power used to construct the People/the peoples, and possibly leading China to its proper place in this cosmopolitan world. WAITING FOR 2008 OLYMPICS: POLITICS BETWEEN PEOPLE/PEOPLES, THE WEST AND THE CHINESE STATE By Tan Zhang 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 2010 Advisory Committee: Professor David L. Andrews, Chair Professor Mike Friedman Professor Claire Moses Professor George Ritzer Professor Michael L. Silk © Copyright by Tan Zhang 2010 DEDICATION To people who ever had an Olympic dream. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my advisor Dr. Michael L. Silk for directing me through this dissertation project. In addition I thank Dr. David L. Andrews, the chair of my dissertation committee, for helping me to put the committee together and make the defense possible. I also like to thank my committee members – Dr. Michael Friedman, Dr. Claire Moses and Dr. George Ritzer – for their consistent support at different stages of my dissertation. I also want to thank Dr. James Gao and Dr. Catherine Ennis for her support for my dissertation proposal. I also want to show my appreciation to my Maryland cohort, particularly Bryan Bracey, Jessica Chin, Michael Friedman, Ray Gamache, Jennifer Sterling and Ryan White, for your warm friendship. It makes my Maryland years cherishable. I am especially thankful for Ryan and Ray’s review of my Agamben chapter. Among many of my friends in China, I want to thank these who helped me during my field research. They are Zhang Jie, Huang Xueyang, Ma Hongying and Li Bin. There are also many who keep giving me emotional support. The list is too long to list. Although most of you do not understand what I was doing, you still tried to make me to believe that I am doing something worthwhile. I also want to thank my parents, Dr. Zhang Zhenjia and Mrs. Yu Zhanqing. Thank you for guiding me to critically love China and my Chinese root. Also, it is my brother Zhang Xiao who shows me how creatively the younger generation in China connects Chineseness with cosmopolitanism. Finally, my thank goes to Dong and Wuche. You are my bare life. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER ONE: Introduction Desiring Desires – Weaving an Olympic Dream………………….………......1 Abhorring the Abhorrent – Making a New Cosmopolitanism ………...……...5 The Gazing West…………………….…………...……...……...……………10 The State and Its People …………….……………………..……….......…….18 The peoples ……………………………………………..……………………24 State, People(s), and West………….…..…..………….…..…………………29 Theory…………………………………..…………..…..……………………37 Methods…………….……………………………………..………….………40 My Olympic Games………………........…………..………………………...43 CHAPTER TWO : From Colonial Birth to Neoliberal Death: The Geopolitics of Preserving the Old Beijing A Spectacle of Remembrance………………………………………....……...60 Neo-Conservative Liang Family and Its Intellectual Residue…………...…...64 In the Name of Chineseness………………………….…………..…………..69 Neoliberal Encroachment………………………………………...…………..82 Coda………………………………………………………...………………..85 CHAPTER THREE: New Beijing; New Toilets; Great Olympics: Tourist Gaze and Urban Reformation From an Urban Adventure to an Organized Commercial Tour……….…….92 Dislocation in China…………………………………...……………………..95 Creating the Historical Present………………………………...……………..97 Disappearing Labor Value in Western Non-Places………………………101 Producing Toilets as Non-place in Beijing………………………………106 Making a New Beijing……………………………………..……………….112 Selling the New Beijing………………………………….…………………118 CHAPTER FOUR: Beijing and Beijingers Ambivalent Beijingers…………...………………………………………….122 Salient Geographical Identities………..……………………………………124 In the Post-Mao Beijing…………………………..………………...………134 Reinventing Beijinger and Beijing Culture……...………………………….139 You Are Not a Beijinger………………………….……...………………….143 Coda………………………………………………..……………………….149 CHAPTER FIVE: From Turandot to Jasmine : the Historically Situated Political Aesthetics in National Representation Turandot : An Imperial Imagination of Chinese Nationality………….....155 Jasmine: The Expression of Colonial Melancholia………………………..161 Rebirth of Turandot and Jasmine in Diverse Artistic Genres……………...164 iv The Allegorical Nationalism……………………………………………....171 Coda…………………………………………………………………….....177 CHAPTER SIX: Let’s Transcend: An Agambenian Reading of the Paralympics Experiencing the Transcendence…………………………………………..180 Paralympics as a Transcendental Right…………………………………....181 A Brief Introduction of Agambenian Theories…………………………….183 The Most Uncanny Thing……………………………………………….....192 The State of Exception………………………………………………….…198 Coda…………………………………………………………………….…205 CHAPTER SEVEN: I am an Athlete; I am not Disabled! Reading Disabilities through an Intersectional Lense……………………210 A Chinese Singularity?.................................................................................213 Class…………………………………………………………………….....218 Sexuality…………………………………………………………………...221 Gender……………………………………………………………………..227 I am an Athlete, Not a Person with Disabilities!..........................................230 Conclusion………………………………………………………………....233 CHAPTER EIGHT: Janus-faced Cosmopolitanisms in/out Cyberspace: Boycott and Anti-Boycott of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games Olympic Movement in History: Sports beyond Politics…………………..239 Theorizing Contemporary Cosmopolitanism……………………………...243 Making the “China Threat” in the post-Cold War Era………………….....245 The Tibet Issue…………………………………………………………….248 The Darfur Issue…………………………………………………………...251 Protecting the Olympic Torch for China…………………………………..255 A Progressive Ethnical Cosmopolitanism?..................................................266 Coda……………………………………………………………………….270 Chapter NINE: Epilogue: Making China Cosmopolitan? Bibliography………………………………………………………………………...279 v Chapter One: Introduction DESIRING DESIRES – WEAVING AN OLYMPIC DREAM In May 2008, a documentary film called Dream Weaver 2008 was released in China. The director of the film, Gu Jun, dedicated seven years and collected a huge amount of materials on how Chinese people prepared for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Quoting the director’s words from one of her television interviews: The purpose of this film was to provide a small footnote for 1.3 billion Chinese people who were weaving their dreams in the past seven years by using the Beijing Olympic Games as one of the threads. As the only film produced in China for the Beijing Games, Dream Weaver 2008 was appraised by the Chinese official media as a contemporary epic for the nation. Unlike other documentaries that follow one narrative thread, the film juxtaposes six seemingly unrelated stories and addresses six different groups of people simultaneously. The first story was about the National Stadium, the so-called Bird’s Nest. It covered advertising for stadium designs, screening of submitted plans, finalizing the ultimate plan, and overcoming various technical and engineering obstacles during the construction. The design of the stadium went through many rounds of a strict selection process because the stadium was to be a symbol representing the Chinese culture in this global age. The architectural expression has to be culturally Chinese as well as cosmopolitan. The second story is about urban relocation. Residents of a suburban village, 1 Wa Li Xiang , moved to modern high-rise subsidized by a large amount of financial relocation