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Building Power: Conspicuous Consumption, Projection of Identity, and Female Power in the Late Seventh and Early Eighth Centuries
Rebecca Doran
Front Liter Stud Chin. 2012, 6 (4): 472-489.
https://doi.org/10.3868/s010-001-012-0027-0
This article explores propaganda and self-portrayals among women rulers in seventh and eighth century Tang China, a unique era in which court politics were dominated by female leaders. I analyze the way in which these leaders themselves wished to be rhetorically constructed, the images and allusions with which they desired to be figured, and the way in which they were rhetorically reconstructed by later writers after their deaths. I focus on the theme of auspiciousness—in particular, the definition of the “natural” in relation to gender identity and power. Female imagery is deployed in late seventh- and early eighth-century works to create the image of a particular brand of far-reaching, generative power possessed and/or desired by the leaders of the time. Beyond revealing the images and allusions with which the female power-holders wished to hear themselves be described and exalted, and what occasions were deemed worthy of exalting, these works offer a fascinating counterpoint to materials which retroactively defame this image. The rhetorical strategies and images later used to delegitimize and denigrate the power of these women often represent opposite treatments of themes present in the court literature from the Zhou-Jinglong era. This paper argues that reconstructions of these women’s identities as female power-holders indicate the prerogative of later writers to reshape their images in accordance with their own judgments, conceptualizations, and fears of female power.
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Behind “Burning”: Women Writers’ Self-Censorship and Self-Promotion
Yanning Wang
Front Liter Stud Chin. 2012, 6 (4): 490-510.
https://doi.org/10.3868/s010-001-012-0028-7
This article examines the phenomenon of women writers burning their own manuscripts, which took place during the Ming-Qing period. By analyzing women’s poems and biographies of women, this study explores the reasons and implications behind “burning.” The self-censorship embodied by “burning” was geared towards protecting female virtue or enabling women writers to express their intense personal emotions while promoting an ideal public self-image. For example, due to their gender and class-consciousness, upper-class women tended to portray themselves as virtuous ladies, whereas, in contrast, courtesan writers were fascinated with the power of love. However, the act of burning manuscripts could both lead to partial loss of an author’s works and imbue her writing with the tantalizing aura of an unfulfilled promise, thereby immortalizing the manuscripts that had almost been turned to ashes and publicizing the work of the formerly obscure author. In this sense, the “burning” is transformed into a literary conceit which promotes women’s writings instead of destroying them. This article demonstrates the dual functions of manuscript burning by Ming-Qing women: self-censorship and self-promotion.
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Minor Movies: On the Deterritorialising Power of Wong Kar-wai’s Works
Sebastian Nestler
Front Liter Stud Chin. 2012, 6 (4): 582-597.
https://doi.org/10.3868/s010-001-012-0034-6
The article approaches Wong Kar-wai’s cinematic work using the notion of “minor literature” as coined by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Minor literature—or, in other words, minor language—signifies oppositional/resistant uses of a major/hegemonic language. It appropriates hegemonic language and deterritorialises it by re-signifying its original meanings. By transferring this concept from literature to cinema, we can describe Hong Kong cinema, which deterritorialises Hollywood cinema, as a minor cinema in relation to Hollywood. Following this interpretation, Wong Kar-wai’s movies appear as a “minor language of a minor cinema” because they are significantly different from Hong Kong’s mainstream action cinema. Consequently, Wong’s movies possess a high level of deterritorialising power, which opens up new spaces of meaning and gives voice to positions usually oppressed by mainstream cinema. Finally, a close reading of Wong’s movie Happy Together shows how “minor movies” challenge the mainstream’s unison and give space to a resistant and transforming polyphony.
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Making Revolution on the Mind: Fanxin and the Exercise of Thought-Power in the Land Reform Movement of Northern China (1946–48)
Fangchun Li
Front Liter Stud Chin. 2012, 6 (4): 598-620.
https://doi.org/10.3868/s010-001-012-0035-3
The practice of fanxin, literally, “turning hearts and minds,” was widespread in the Liberated Areas of Northern China during the Land Reform Movement of 1946–48. This article examines the forms of power relations emerged during the course of revolutionary education and transformation which were geared towards awakening the peasants’ “self-consciousness of mastership.” Taking ku/suffering as the focal point, the article investigates two main types of thought-power, “speaking bitterness” (suku) and “visiting the suffering people” (fangku), both of which were important to the practices of fanxin. Through the investigation of fanxin, this empirical study reveals an important feature of the Chinese revolution: that is, the significance of the mind/heart, thought, or “spiritual elements.”
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