Uneven Modernity : Literature, Film, and Intellectual Discourse in Postsocialist China

Postsocialist China is marked by paradoxes: economic boom, political conservatism, cultural complexity. Haomin Gong’s dynamic study of these paradoxes, or “unevenness,” provides a unique and seminal approach to contemporary China. Reading unevenness as a problem and an opportunity simultaneously, Gong investigates how this dialectical social situation shapes cultural production. He begins his investigation of “uneven modernity” in China by constructing a critical framework of unevenness among different theoretical schools and expounding on how dialectical thinking points to a metaphysical paradox in capitalism and modernity: the inevitable tension between a constant pursuit of infinite fullness and a break of fullness (unevenness) as the means of this pursuit. In the Chinese context, this paradox is created in the “uneven developmentalism” that most manifestly characterizes the postsocialist period. Gong goes on to investigate manifestations of the dialectics of unevenness in specific cultural events. Four case studies address respectively but not exclusively literature (the prose of Yu Qiuyu), popular fiction (Chi Li’s neorealist fiction), commercial cinema (the movies of Feng Xiaogang), and art-house cinema (Wang Xiaoshuai’s filmmaking). Representing different aspects of cultural production in postsocialist China, these writers and directors deal with the same social condition of uneven development, and their works clearly exhibit the problematics of this age. __Uneven Modernity__ makes a significant contribution to the burgeoning field of China studies as well as the study of uneven development in general. It addresses some of the most popular, yet understudied, cultural phenomena in contemporary China. Specialists and students will find its insights admirable and its style accessible. "Postsocialist China is marked by paradoxes: economic boom, political conservatism, cultural complexity. Haomin Gong's dynamic study of these paradoxes, or "unevenness," provides a unique and seminal approach to contemporary China. Reading unevenness as a problem and an opportunity simultaneously, Gong investigates how this dialectical social situation shapes cultural production. He begins his investigation of "uneven modernity" in China by constructing a critical framework of unevenness among different theoretical schools and expounding on how dialectical thinking points to a metaphysical paradox in capitalism and modernity: the inevitable tension between a constant pursuit of infinite fullness and a break of fullness (unevenness) as the means of this pursuit. In the Chinese context, this paradox is created in the "uneven developmentalism" that most manifestly characterizes the postsocialist period. Gong goes on to investigate manifestations of the dialectics of unevenness in specific cultural events. Four case studies address respectively but not exclusively literature (the prose of Yu Qiuyu), popular fiction (Chi Li's neorealist fiction), commercial cinema (the movies of Feng Xiaogang), and art-house cinema (Wang Xiaoshuai's filmmaking). Representing different aspects of cultural production in postsocialist China, these writers and directors deal with the same social condition of uneven development, and their works clearly exhibit the problematics of this age. Uneven Modernity makes a significant contribution to the burgeoning field of China studies as well as the study of uneven development in general. It addresses some of the most popular, yet understudied, cultural phenomena in contemporary China. Specialists and students will find its insights admirable and its style accessible."--Project Muse

Succeeding waves of migration, from China to Thailand and from Thailand to the United States, have helped shape the identities of three generations of diasporic Chinese Thai. In this exciting new study, Jiemin Bao focuses on how cultural identities - as seen through the lens of marriage - play a central role in the formation of cultural citizenship. By challenging models of cultural identity that separate gender, sexuality, and class into discrete domains of analysis, Bao examines the competing roles of sex/gender, class, and race/ethnicity in shaping the ongoing construction of Chinese Thai identities in contemporary Bangkok and the San Francisco Bay area.

Marriage has long been treated as a mechanism of assimilation in the anthropological literature on diasporic Chinese: the Chinese "minority" is absorbed into the dominant "majority" through intermarriage. Bao approaches marriage differently, viewing it not only as an institution that fosters and reproduces fundamental ideas of masculinity and femininity, but also as a site where the various categories of ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality--the stuff of identity--intersect. Through a fine-grained analysis of the lives of men and women and the language that three generations use to talk about their experiences in different locales, Bao powerfully demonstrates how masculine and feminine identities are both classed and ethnicized in Thailand and the United States. Nuanced and provocative, Marital Acts shows how diasporic Chinese are both self making and being made, not once, but twice - first in the society in which they are born and second in the society to which they migrate.

Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: China, Uneven Development, and Global Modernity Chapter 1. Uneven Modernity in Postsocialist China: A Critical Inquiry Chapter 2. Popularization of Traditional Culture in Postsocialist China: A Study of the Yu Qiuyu Phenomenon Chapter 3. Constructing a Neorealist Reality: Petty Urbanites, Mundaneness, and Chi Li’s Fiction Chapter 4. Commerce and the Critical Edge: The Politics of Postsocialist Film and the Case of Feng Xiaogang Chapter 5. Geopolitics in Postsocialist Art Film and Beyond: Reading Wang Xiaoshuai’s Films Postscript: Is an “Even Modernity” Possible in China? Notes Bibliography Index