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Ecowomanist Literature and Criticism in the Chinese Diaspora by Xiumei

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Ecowomanist Literature and Criticism in the Chinese Diaspora by Xiumei IMAGINING THE DECOLONIAL SPIRIT: Ecowomanist Literature and Criticism in the Chinese Diaspora A DISSERATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Xiumei Pu IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Edén Torres, Adviser July 2013 ©Xiumei Pu 2013 Acknowledgements My sincere thanks go to my committee. Your insightful feedback and continuous support have made my project possible. Thank you to the Department of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies, a vibrant, cutting-edge, and interdisciplinary intellectual community from which my project has tremendously benefited. I owe much gratitude to the Office of International Program whose financial support has allowed me to complete my field research. Many thanks to those who have helped me in my field research. You know who you are. Thank you to the Center for Writing. From your Dissertation May Retreat I have learned invaluable writing tips. Special thanks to Pat Eliason, Heidi Jones, and Katie Levin. Our cross-cultural dialogues about the English language have brought laughter and light to the sometimes-enjoyable-and-other-times-dreary process of writing my dissertation. i Dedication To all those who have brought five flavors and meanings to my life. To the plant I was in my past life. ii Abstract My work explores the interrelated themes of gender, nature, and spirituality in contemporary women’s literature of the Chinese Diaspora. Drawing from three texts by diasporic Chinese women writers of “the wounded generation” and a piece of my own short fiction, my dissertation problematizes the alienating ideologies and practices in the process of China’s modernization and urbanization. More importantly, my work examines the ways in which the bond of nature-woman-spirituality functions as a resistance to androcentric and anthropocentric beliefs and practices in the Mao and post-Mao eras in China, and as a catalyst for alternative ways of knowing and knowledge production. I argue that this bond can be better understood within the frameworks of the decolonial imaginary and ecowomanism. It is important to re-member this bond and to refocus it in order to move toward a more just world. My short fiction adds new threads to the fabric these three writers have woven, bringing rural women and folk knowledge to the forefront. Using womanist literary criticism and production, my work sheds light on the possibilities opened up by forgotten and subjugated ways of knowing and knowledge production to imagine a global healing praxis that helps bridge the gap between the East and the West. Thus it broadens our understanding of the links between interdisciplinary and diverse feminist theories such as the decolonial imaginary and ecowomanism by revealing an Asian dimension to these largely Western discourses. iii Table of Contents Part One Chapter One~“Putting Fragments Together…in a New Way”: Weaving Theoretical Threads...........................................................................................1 Chapter Two~“I Spread Manure in the Paddy Fields and Composed Poems to Water Lilies”: Eco-memory in Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China …….62 Chapter Three~“The River Flows through Our Heart”: Nature, Eroticism, and New Spirituality in Daughter of the River ………………………………….112 Chapter Four~Swimming across Boundaries: Gender, Nature, and Shamanism in “Maverick”……………………………………………………………….153 Part Two Chapter Five~Let My Head Split like a Sunflower, My Tears Fall like Raindrops: Stories from Tianfu……………………………………………..194 Works Cited …………………………………………………………………….372 iv Part One Chapter One “Putting Fragments Together…in a New Way”: Weaving Theoretical Threads This is a true story. A massive number of toads was crossing the road. Hundreds were trampled by passers-by and thousands were smashed by cars and trucks. Villagers had a hunch a tian zai ,1 natural disaster, was coming. Their gossip started a panic within minutes. An investigation group made up of experts was immediately sent out by the local Municipal Forestry Bureau to the toad-infested site. After careful investigation, the Head of the Bureau offered his scientific explanation. It was the mating season of toads. This site, full of ditches, was a haven for toads to reproduce. Two days of rain and high temperature created an ideal environment for them to spawn and hatch. He concluded that the migration of toads on a massive scale at this time of the year was normal. This phenomenon had nothing to do with what villagers believed to be a potential tian zai . The coming of toads in such a great number would not affect villagers’ everyday lives; instead, toads could help 1 Tian zai literally means act of Sky. In ancient Chinese cosmology, natural disasters were considered to be acts of tian (Sky). Tian was an essential component of (da) zi ran (the universe, or nature). The other essential component of da zi ran was di (Earth). Therefore, the term tian di was used to refer to the universe. Interestingly, di was engendered as female and tian male. As China’s patriarchal social structure developed, sky worship and patriarchy mutually reinforced each other. Tian , once a component of the universe, was magnified to represent the whole universe. Tian zai came to mean (da) zi ran zai hai (natural disaster). The English equivalent of tian zai is act of God. 1 keep mosquitoes at bay. There was no need for villagers to worry about it. Some considered the phenomenon to be an indication that the ecosystem was getting better. 2 This was a local news report circulated on the Internet on May 10, 2008 in Sichuan Province, China. Dismissed as a normal phenomenon, the ripple those toads made quickly disappeared. Two days later, an earthquake, known as Wenchuan Earthquake 3 (measured at 8.0 on the Richter scale) shook Wenchuan, a nearby county, to the ground. The earthquake claimed tens of thousands of lives. Shocked, people suddenly came to realize the evident abnormality and significance of the toad phenomenon which was diagnosed as normal. In retrospect, the instance was a warning to us of the risk of turning blind eyes and deaf ears to other ways of knowing. It was shocking how readily experts invalidated villagers’ intuitive speculation. Villagers’ speculation about a potential tian zai was not unfounded. The abnormal behavior of animals has been read as an omen of natural disasters such as floods and earthquakes since antiquity. The sign-readings have found their expressions in proverbs, jingles, and folk tales. These expressions have become a folk knowledge repertoire which ordinary folks 2 This source comes from Si Chuan Xin Wen Wang (Sichuan News ) [ 四川新闻网] whose website is http://scnews.newssc.org. The news was originally published in Chinese under the title of “Mian Zhu: Shu Shi Wan Zhi Chan Chu ‘Ban Jia” Guo Ma Lu” [ 绵竹:数十万只蟾蜍 ‘搬家’ 横穿马路], which means “Mianzhu: Tens of Thousands Toads ‘Moving’ across the Country Road.” This paragraph is my own translation and summary of the report. See <http://scnews.newssc.org/system/2008/05/10/010825410.shtml>. 3 The earthquake was also referred to as the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake or the Great Sichuan Earthquake in Wikipedia. See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wenchuan_earthquake>. 2 draw upon to make sense of their surroundings when similar situations happen. Nonetheless, the experts’ dismissal of the villagers’ speculation reveals an apparent power disparity when it comes to the question of who will be considered to be the legitimate knowing subject and which body of knowledge is accepted as the truth. Beneath the surface of a supposedly neutral and multi-angled representation of the event (coverage of both villagers and scientists in this case) lay a deep conflict between two ways of knowing—mi xin (superstition) and science. The very term tian zai (act of Sky) the villagers used is rooted in the tradition of animistic beliefs, which is often simplistically equated with mi xin (superstition) in China’s contemporary mainstream political rhetoric. The countryside is particularly considered to be the incubator, hothouse, and fortress for mi xin . “Ideological construction and progress,” the advocacy of science in opposition to mi xin , is especially targeted at the rural population. In this sense, the countryside is stigmatized as a “backward” location, and thus country folks’ voices are not taken seriously. Folk beliefs such as animism, ancestor veneration, and shamanism are indiscriminately swept into the category of mi xin in a similar way that indigenous spiritual belief systems were labeled “superstitious” and “backward” by early colonizers in the Americas and Africa. Rather than correcting the term mi xin in my work, I use its ambiguity to indicate its limiting and liberating potential. I propose a more nuanced approach to understanding the so-called mi xin . 3 The seemingly bipartite contest between mi xin and science as mentioned above, however, involved a third party—the toads who were hyper-visible in the news yet invisible in knowledge validation. In other words, there were three competing ways of knowing by three groups—that by the villagers, that by the scientists, and that by the toads. There was an identifiable pyramid of power among those three groups. The scientists obviously had the power over the construction of what the toads (and by extension, nature) meant. The power relation revealed in this piece of news has been socially constructed; it mirrors a hierarchical knowledge structure presiding outside the news. This hierarchy has a tendency to invalidate ways of knowing that are different from science and to silence the voices from the countryside and Earth Mother. This structure has been firmly established in the process of China’s modernization. On top of the knowledge pyramid is scientific knowledge, which holds the supreme authority and is accepted as the ultimate truth. Picture the possessor of the top level knowledge: male, modern, and atheist.
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