Sarah Dauncey offers the first comprehensive exploration of disability and citizenship in Chinese... more Sarah Dauncey offers the first comprehensive exploration of disability and citizenship in Chinese society and culture from 1949 to the present. Through the analysis of a wide variety of Chinese sources, from film and documentary to literature and life writing, media and state documents, Sarah Dauncey sheds important new light on the ways in which disability and disabled identities have been represented and negotiated over this time. She exposes the standards against which disabled people have been held as the Chinese state has grappled with expectations of what makes the ‘ideal’ Chinese citizen. From this, she proposes an exciting new theoretical framework for understanding disabled citizenship in different societies – ‘para-citizenship’. A far more dynamic relationship of identity and belonging than previously imagined, her new reading synthesises the often troubling contradictions of citizenship for disabled people – the perils of bodily and mental difference and the potential for personal and group empowerment.
This article outlines the political, social, economic, and cultural factors affecting disability ... more This article outlines the political, social, economic, and cultural factors affecting disability representation in Chinese cinema from the founding of the PRC onwards, particularly after 1976. With reference to a wide variety of films that include main characters with visual, hearing, speech, physical, and learning impairments, it demonstrates how socialist realism, the equation of a “healthy” body with a healthy nation, and the great economic endeavor of the Mao era all contributed to the limitation of disabled people on the big screen, whilst the opening-up reforms, spiritual civilization campaigns, and commercial and critical demands of the post-Mao era effectively promoted their inclusion. At different times, the marginality of disabled people has resulted in them being overlooked as irrelevant, rejected as impaired, employed as a political tool, or identified as a marketable commodity. The representation or nonrepresentation of disability in Chinese film is closely linked to th...
A “pantheon of deformity” emerged in Chinese literature in the 1980s, when writers consciously be... more A “pantheon of deformity” emerged in Chinese literature in the 1980s, when writers consciously began exploiting the metaphorical potential of disability to produce subversive literary works. Shi Tiesheng, by contrast, continued to write about disability as an embodied experience that is both personal and humanistic. Sarah Dauncey examines and compares two of Shi’s early novellas to show the writer’s unique contribution to the transformation of disability from a narrative tool into an important literary subject.
This essay explores the concept of a “disabled crowd” in the Chinese cultural and social imaginat... more This essay explores the concept of a “disabled crowd” in the Chinese cultural and social imagination. It highlights key terms, analogies, and cultural locations of disability that are seen to relate to and inform group identity and collective behavior, and interrogates these through close readings of a range of contemporary personal narratives and other sources related to the sociopolitical context. It reveals that the appropriation of new and enhanced opportunities for self-representation and self-advocacy is enabling a wide range of disabled people, both on an individual and group level, to “speak out” about their experiences of disability and, just as importantly, “be heard”. What it also shows, however, is that while some disabled people identify with and appear to derive intense personal and social benefit from being associated with a “disabled crowd,” others have used these new opportunities to re-imagine or distance themselves from that same crowd by offering up alternative n...
This article advances new perspectives on disability culture in contemporary China. Using gender ... more This article advances new perspectives on disability culture in contemporary China. Using gender – specifically masculinity – as an “intersection,” it addresses key questions that both help to explain, but also further trouble, the way in which the “impaired” male body is both represented and lived in China today. Although recent research across the disciplines is revealing more and more about pre-modern and contemporary understandings of, and responses to, disability in China, little is known about the way in which gendered identities intersect and interact with disabled identities. From “gentlemen” and “heroes” to “real men” and “disabled men,” this article examines dominant historical and contemporary images of masculinity and disability, and illustrates how they have come to frame the way in which disabled men have been viewed and view themselves. And, through the close reading of the memoirs of one young man, Zhang Yuncheng, it reveals the possibilities and limitations through ...
The critical literature on Chinese life writing has expanded rapidly in the past two decades: whi... more The critical literature on Chinese life writing has expanded rapidly in the past two decades: while only a handful of studies were produced before the 1990s, the past two decades have seen the publication of specialised monographs and essay collections, several dozen scholarly articles and a growing body of translations. That has produced a collection of very rich and scholarly works that, in their individual insights, do much to advance our understanding of categories of life narratives as historical sources, life narratives as artefacts and life writing as social practice. The growth of that corpus of specialised studies challenges our understanding of the wider context of life writing practice and life writing texts, and has produced a divided literature in which more general studies that tend to emphasise the ‘rules of the game’ (and in China, as elsewhere, life writing is a rules-based practice1) exist in uneasy tension with more specialised works that highlight variations on, and departures from, those established patterns.2 Whereas, once, it was possible to understand Chinese auto/biography as overwhelmingly ‘Confucian’,3 didactic, state-centred and masculine, more recent work has highlighted frequent departures from that apparent norm.
The chapter offers a comprehensive examination of the way in which special and inclusive educatio... more The chapter offers a comprehensive examination of the way in which special and inclusive education has developed in China. An oft-ignored area in general studies on Chinese education, the chapter reveals why China's provision for children and young people with disabilities has developed in the way it has done in light of its particular historical, social, political and economic contexts. It also highlights why more attention needs to be paid to this area given the vast number of students involved, as well as the inevitable and striking intersections with important broader issues relating to economic inequality, social opportunity and human rights.
The representation of disabled people in all forms of cultural production has been shown in the W... more The representation of disabled people in all forms of cultural production has been shown in the Western context to have a history that closely reflects ideological changes in the perception of not just the body, but also of individuality and social relations.1 This chapter turns our attention to the production of life stories of and by disabled people in China to demonstrate how such ideological shifts, particularly with regard to the latter two notions of individuality and social relations, are revealed and experienced in a very different cultural context. I consider here the role and motives of the Chinese state in both compiling biographical narratives about disabled people and publicising certain autobiographies written by disabled people, and demonstrate the often more creative and authoritative ways in which disabled people have begun to tell the stories of their lives and experiences as they explore the possibilities of new genres and develop new ways of engaging with their audiences.
This article advances new perspectives on disability culture in contemporary China. Using gender-... more This article advances new perspectives on disability culture in contemporary China. Using gender-specifically masculinity-as an "intersection," it addresses key questions that both help to explain, but also further trouble, the way in which the "impaired" male body is both represented and lived in China today. Although recent research across the disciplines is revealing more and more about pre-modern and contemporary understandings of, and responses to, disability in China, little is known about the way in which gendered identities intersect and interact with disabled identities. From "gentlemen" and "heroes" to "real men" and "disabled men," this article examines dominant historical and contemporary images of masculinity and disability, and illustrates how they have come to frame the way in which disabled men have been viewed and view themselves. And, through the close reading of the 2 memoirs of one young man, Zhang Yuncheng, it reveals the possibilities and limitations through which gendered behaviors are formed and enacted on an individual level when set against Chinese discourses of disability, normalcy, and gender.
The chapter offers a comprehensive examination of the way in which special and inclusive educatio... more The chapter offers a comprehensive examination of the way in which special and inclusive education has developed in China. An oft-ignored area in general studies on Chinese education, the chapter reveals why China's provision for children and young people with disabilities has developed in the way it has done in light of its particular historical, social, political and economic contexts. It also highlights why more attention needs to be paid to this area given the vast number of students involved, as well as the inevitable and striking intersections with important broader issues relating to economic inequality, social opportunity and human rights.
Sarah Dauncey offers the first comprehensive exploration of disability and citizenship in Chinese... more Sarah Dauncey offers the first comprehensive exploration of disability and citizenship in Chinese society and culture from 1949 to the present. Through the analysis of a wide variety of Chinese sources, from film and documentary to literature and life writing, media and state documents, Sarah Dauncey sheds important new light on the ways in which disability and disabled identities have been represented and negotiated over this time. She exposes the standards against which disabled people have been held as the Chinese state has grappled with expectations of what makes the ‘ideal’ Chinese citizen. From this, she proposes an exciting new theoretical framework for understanding disabled citizenship in different societies – ‘para-citizenship’. A far more dynamic relationship of identity and belonging than previously imagined, her new reading synthesises the often troubling contradictions of citizenship for disabled people – the perils of bodily and mental difference and the potential for personal and group empowerment.
This article outlines the political, social, economic, and cultural factors affecting disability ... more This article outlines the political, social, economic, and cultural factors affecting disability representation in Chinese cinema from the founding of the PRC onwards, particularly after 1976. With reference to a wide variety of films that include main characters with visual, hearing, speech, physical, and learning impairments, it demonstrates how socialist realism, the equation of a “healthy” body with a healthy nation, and the great economic endeavor of the Mao era all contributed to the limitation of disabled people on the big screen, whilst the opening-up reforms, spiritual civilization campaigns, and commercial and critical demands of the post-Mao era effectively promoted their inclusion. At different times, the marginality of disabled people has resulted in them being overlooked as irrelevant, rejected as impaired, employed as a political tool, or identified as a marketable commodity. The representation or nonrepresentation of disability in Chinese film is closely linked to th...
A “pantheon of deformity” emerged in Chinese literature in the 1980s, when writers consciously be... more A “pantheon of deformity” emerged in Chinese literature in the 1980s, when writers consciously began exploiting the metaphorical potential of disability to produce subversive literary works. Shi Tiesheng, by contrast, continued to write about disability as an embodied experience that is both personal and humanistic. Sarah Dauncey examines and compares two of Shi’s early novellas to show the writer’s unique contribution to the transformation of disability from a narrative tool into an important literary subject.
This essay explores the concept of a “disabled crowd” in the Chinese cultural and social imaginat... more This essay explores the concept of a “disabled crowd” in the Chinese cultural and social imagination. It highlights key terms, analogies, and cultural locations of disability that are seen to relate to and inform group identity and collective behavior, and interrogates these through close readings of a range of contemporary personal narratives and other sources related to the sociopolitical context. It reveals that the appropriation of new and enhanced opportunities for self-representation and self-advocacy is enabling a wide range of disabled people, both on an individual and group level, to “speak out” about their experiences of disability and, just as importantly, “be heard”. What it also shows, however, is that while some disabled people identify with and appear to derive intense personal and social benefit from being associated with a “disabled crowd,” others have used these new opportunities to re-imagine or distance themselves from that same crowd by offering up alternative n...
This article advances new perspectives on disability culture in contemporary China. Using gender ... more This article advances new perspectives on disability culture in contemporary China. Using gender – specifically masculinity – as an “intersection,” it addresses key questions that both help to explain, but also further trouble, the way in which the “impaired” male body is both represented and lived in China today. Although recent research across the disciplines is revealing more and more about pre-modern and contemporary understandings of, and responses to, disability in China, little is known about the way in which gendered identities intersect and interact with disabled identities. From “gentlemen” and “heroes” to “real men” and “disabled men,” this article examines dominant historical and contemporary images of masculinity and disability, and illustrates how they have come to frame the way in which disabled men have been viewed and view themselves. And, through the close reading of the memoirs of one young man, Zhang Yuncheng, it reveals the possibilities and limitations through ...
The critical literature on Chinese life writing has expanded rapidly in the past two decades: whi... more The critical literature on Chinese life writing has expanded rapidly in the past two decades: while only a handful of studies were produced before the 1990s, the past two decades have seen the publication of specialised monographs and essay collections, several dozen scholarly articles and a growing body of translations. That has produced a collection of very rich and scholarly works that, in their individual insights, do much to advance our understanding of categories of life narratives as historical sources, life narratives as artefacts and life writing as social practice. The growth of that corpus of specialised studies challenges our understanding of the wider context of life writing practice and life writing texts, and has produced a divided literature in which more general studies that tend to emphasise the ‘rules of the game’ (and in China, as elsewhere, life writing is a rules-based practice1) exist in uneasy tension with more specialised works that highlight variations on, and departures from, those established patterns.2 Whereas, once, it was possible to understand Chinese auto/biography as overwhelmingly ‘Confucian’,3 didactic, state-centred and masculine, more recent work has highlighted frequent departures from that apparent norm.
The chapter offers a comprehensive examination of the way in which special and inclusive educatio... more The chapter offers a comprehensive examination of the way in which special and inclusive education has developed in China. An oft-ignored area in general studies on Chinese education, the chapter reveals why China's provision for children and young people with disabilities has developed in the way it has done in light of its particular historical, social, political and economic contexts. It also highlights why more attention needs to be paid to this area given the vast number of students involved, as well as the inevitable and striking intersections with important broader issues relating to economic inequality, social opportunity and human rights.
The representation of disabled people in all forms of cultural production has been shown in the W... more The representation of disabled people in all forms of cultural production has been shown in the Western context to have a history that closely reflects ideological changes in the perception of not just the body, but also of individuality and social relations.1 This chapter turns our attention to the production of life stories of and by disabled people in China to demonstrate how such ideological shifts, particularly with regard to the latter two notions of individuality and social relations, are revealed and experienced in a very different cultural context. I consider here the role and motives of the Chinese state in both compiling biographical narratives about disabled people and publicising certain autobiographies written by disabled people, and demonstrate the often more creative and authoritative ways in which disabled people have begun to tell the stories of their lives and experiences as they explore the possibilities of new genres and develop new ways of engaging with their audiences.
This article advances new perspectives on disability culture in contemporary China. Using gender-... more This article advances new perspectives on disability culture in contemporary China. Using gender-specifically masculinity-as an "intersection," it addresses key questions that both help to explain, but also further trouble, the way in which the "impaired" male body is both represented and lived in China today. Although recent research across the disciplines is revealing more and more about pre-modern and contemporary understandings of, and responses to, disability in China, little is known about the way in which gendered identities intersect and interact with disabled identities. From "gentlemen" and "heroes" to "real men" and "disabled men," this article examines dominant historical and contemporary images of masculinity and disability, and illustrates how they have come to frame the way in which disabled men have been viewed and view themselves. And, through the close reading of the 2 memoirs of one young man, Zhang Yuncheng, it reveals the possibilities and limitations through which gendered behaviors are formed and enacted on an individual level when set against Chinese discourses of disability, normalcy, and gender.
The chapter offers a comprehensive examination of the way in which special and inclusive educatio... more The chapter offers a comprehensive examination of the way in which special and inclusive education has developed in China. An oft-ignored area in general studies on Chinese education, the chapter reveals why China's provision for children and young people with disabilities has developed in the way it has done in light of its particular historical, social, political and economic contexts. It also highlights why more attention needs to be paid to this area given the vast number of students involved, as well as the inevitable and striking intersections with important broader issues relating to economic inequality, social opportunity and human rights.
This innovative collection explores life stories produced in China between the seventeenth and tw... more This innovative collection explores life stories produced in China between the seventeenth and twenty-first centuries. These essays draw on biographical and autobiographical narratives of men and women, paragons and pariahs, taken from official histories, personal diaries, plays, fiction and blogs, and use perspectives taken from life writing theory to illuminate that work. Whereas many earlier studies have emphasised the social rules of life writing in China, and suggested that lives and selves were often obscured by the weight of convention, the work in this volume shows that the rules were often actively evaded or creatively exploited by biographers and autobiographers, and suggest that a critical understanding of those evasions and exploitations can better reveal lives that were lived and written both within and against the rules of the auto/biographical game.
Introduction: Writing and Reading Chinese Lives; Marjorie Dryburgh
1. Chinese Life Writing: Themes and Variations; Marjorie Dryburgh and Sarah Dauncey
2. Self-representation in the Dramas of Ruan Dacheng (1587-1646); Alison Hardie
3. How to Write a Woman's Life Into and Out of History: Wang Zhaoyuan (1763-1851) and Biographical Study in Republican China; Harriet T. Zurndorfer
4. The Fugitive Self: Writing Zheng Xiaoxu, 1882-1938; Marjorie Dryburgh
5. Destabilising the Truths of Revolution: Strategies of Subversion in the Autobiographical Writing of Political Women in China; Nicola Spakowski
6. Zhang Xianliang: Recensions of the Self; Chloe Starr
7. Whose Life is it anyway? Disabled Life Stories in Post-reform China; Sarah Dauncey
8. A Look at the Margins: Autobiographical Writing in Tibetan in the People's Republic of China; Isabelle Henrion-Dourcy "
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Introduction: Writing and Reading Chinese Lives; Marjorie Dryburgh
1. Chinese Life Writing: Themes and Variations; Marjorie Dryburgh and Sarah Dauncey
2. Self-representation in the Dramas of Ruan Dacheng (1587-1646); Alison Hardie
3. How to Write a Woman's Life Into and Out of History: Wang Zhaoyuan (1763-1851) and Biographical Study in Republican China; Harriet T. Zurndorfer
4. The Fugitive Self: Writing Zheng Xiaoxu, 1882-1938; Marjorie Dryburgh
5. Destabilising the Truths of Revolution: Strategies of Subversion in the Autobiographical Writing of Political Women in China; Nicola Spakowski
6. Zhang Xianliang: Recensions of the Self; Chloe Starr
7. Whose Life is it anyway? Disabled Life Stories in Post-reform China; Sarah Dauncey
8. A Look at the Margins: Autobiographical Writing in Tibetan in the People's Republic of China; Isabelle Henrion-Dourcy "