This chapter conducts a case study of Li Ziqi 李子柒 (1990-) to examine the role of a fective labour... more This chapter conducts a case study of Li Ziqi 李子柒 (1990-) to examine the role of a fective labour and the construction of authenticity in the context of China's in uencer culture. It argues that Li enacts cooking as a form of a fective labour that resonates with her followers' own affective needs, social values, and aspirations. The chapter also analyses the Chinese state's interactions with grassroots content producers such as Li Ziqi. It shows how the perceived authenticity of her persona and content is redirected by state media to address domestic issues (such as revitalising rural areas and promoting values of economic neoliberalism) and to present an attractive image of China to international audiences.
After the martial law period (1949-1987) ended, Taiwan embarked on democratization, which became ... more After the martial law period (1949-1987) ended, Taiwan embarked on democratization, which became interwoven with Taiwanization. Mainlander migrants, who came to Taiwan in the late 1940s with the Chinese Nationalist Party, and their offspring born in Taiwan, have come to be recognized or position themselves as the ethnic group of Mainlanders. Essential to this ongoing identity (trans)formation in Taiwanese society is how to remember the martial-law era. This article examines heritage tourism of two preserved sites built in early postwar Taiwan: the Shihlin Official Residence 士林官邸 of Chiang Kai-shek and the Forty-four South Village 四四南村, one of the earliest military dependents' villages. More specifically, it investigates how tourist culinary programs and on-site exhibits de-militarize and de-sinicize the heritage sites to create a nostalgic prosthetic memory couched in a discourse of home-building and domesticity, which parallels the mainlanders' changing foodways with their Taiwanization.
Internationale Zeitschrift für Kulturkomparatistik, Band 10: Contemporary Poetry and Politics. Hrsg. Anna Fees, Henrieke Stahl, Claus Telge. 153-163., 2023
This article examines "China" in contemporary American poetry using the example of Timothy Yu's p... more This article examines "China" in contemporary American poetry using the example of Timothy Yu's poems, titled "Chinese Silence," which rewrite and / or parody texts from the American literary canon as well as public communication. It proposes a hallof-mirrors reading of these poems in order to show how Yu's poems refer to, reflect on, and relocate other authors' writing of "China." It argues that Yu's poems, instead of making claims for an authentic "China," attempt to bring Chinese Americans' lived experience into the American literary tradition.
Tang Lusun (1908-1985) and Wang Zengqi (1920-1997) produced their food writing in the form of fam... more Tang Lusun (1908-1985) and Wang Zengqi (1920-1997) produced their food writing in the form of familiar essays, respectively, in the late martial law period of Taiwan (the 1970s and 1980s) and the early reform era of China (the 1980s and 1990s). This article examines their essays, especially those on Republican Beijing (Beiping) and wartime Kunming, to explore how narratives of autobiographical, individual culinary experience can develop into sharable or comparable social experience addressing the historical rupture of 1949. Shifting the focus of the theoretical notion of authenticity from the self to the individual's phenomenal perception and the contested arena of social communication concerning historical memory, this article shows that literary practices such as the generic feature of the I-narrator in the familiar essay, the textual construction of chronotopes of food, and (re)publications across the Taiwan Strait have shaped and reshaped "authentic culinary experience" in their texts in response to changing power structures, social interests, and affective needs of the reader.
This essay traces various cultural translations of Liao Yiwu's poetry into English and German. It... more This essay traces various cultural translations of Liao Yiwu's poetry into English and German. It foregrounds a tight entanglement of literature and politics that starts with the suppression of the 1989 Protest Movement in China and extends to a dynamic engendered by publishers, prize-giving bodies, and prestigious cultural figures abroad. It reveals the complexities of communicating trauma between East and West and the gripping textual traces that are left in the process.
Abstract: This paper explores the politics of the body in David Fincher’s film Fight Club (1999).... more Abstract: This paper explores the politics of the body in David Fincher’s film Fight Club (1999). The film criticizes the consumerist society and its culture by bringing to the viewers’ attention a series of displaced grotesque bodies which are visually offensive, politically transgressive, and economically unproductive. Yet both the development of the story in the diegesis of the film and the commercial use of the rough body image outside the diegesis reveal the infinite possibilities of the utopian impulse in the grotesque body being appropriated.
Keywords: the grotesque body, male identity, utopianism, consumerism, fascism
This paper combines Freud’s psychoanalytical theory of “the uncanny” with historical research met... more This paper combines Freud’s psychoanalytical theory of “the uncanny” with historical research methods to read film texts. Household objects such as the car, the telephone, the radio, and the coffee brewer were promoted in postwar America as necessary parts of a safe and self-sufficient home, an important notion underpinning the idea of the American Dream, whose patriarchal family values and optimism in technological progress served the economic goal of developing the country’s capitalistic economy and the political goals of shaping American national identity and fending off the communist ideology at the time. The use of household objects by postwar film noir as mise-en-scene plays with this notion of home and registers the violence and anxieties of postwar American society which are denied and repressed in the American Dream. By exploiting the slippage between the familiar, innocuous images of household objects in public imagination and their dangerous functions in the film texts, postwar film noir not only creates a psychological effect of “the uncanny” in film reception, but also reveals “the uncanny” in the blind confidence in technological progress and the repressive domesticity in the American Dream.
This chapter conducts a case study of Li Ziqi 李子柒 (1990-) to examine the role of a fective labour... more This chapter conducts a case study of Li Ziqi 李子柒 (1990-) to examine the role of a fective labour and the construction of authenticity in the context of China's in uencer culture. It argues that Li enacts cooking as a form of a fective labour that resonates with her followers' own affective needs, social values, and aspirations. The chapter also analyses the Chinese state's interactions with grassroots content producers such as Li Ziqi. It shows how the perceived authenticity of her persona and content is redirected by state media to address domestic issues (such as revitalising rural areas and promoting values of economic neoliberalism) and to present an attractive image of China to international audiences.
After the martial law period (1949-1987) ended, Taiwan embarked on democratization, which became ... more After the martial law period (1949-1987) ended, Taiwan embarked on democratization, which became interwoven with Taiwanization. Mainlander migrants, who came to Taiwan in the late 1940s with the Chinese Nationalist Party, and their offspring born in Taiwan, have come to be recognized or position themselves as the ethnic group of Mainlanders. Essential to this ongoing identity (trans)formation in Taiwanese society is how to remember the martial-law era. This article examines heritage tourism of two preserved sites built in early postwar Taiwan: the Shihlin Official Residence 士林官邸 of Chiang Kai-shek and the Forty-four South Village 四四南村, one of the earliest military dependents' villages. More specifically, it investigates how tourist culinary programs and on-site exhibits de-militarize and de-sinicize the heritage sites to create a nostalgic prosthetic memory couched in a discourse of home-building and domesticity, which parallels the mainlanders' changing foodways with their Taiwanization.
Internationale Zeitschrift für Kulturkomparatistik, Band 10: Contemporary Poetry and Politics. Hrsg. Anna Fees, Henrieke Stahl, Claus Telge. 153-163., 2023
This article examines "China" in contemporary American poetry using the example of Timothy Yu's p... more This article examines "China" in contemporary American poetry using the example of Timothy Yu's poems, titled "Chinese Silence," which rewrite and / or parody texts from the American literary canon as well as public communication. It proposes a hallof-mirrors reading of these poems in order to show how Yu's poems refer to, reflect on, and relocate other authors' writing of "China." It argues that Yu's poems, instead of making claims for an authentic "China," attempt to bring Chinese Americans' lived experience into the American literary tradition.
Tang Lusun (1908-1985) and Wang Zengqi (1920-1997) produced their food writing in the form of fam... more Tang Lusun (1908-1985) and Wang Zengqi (1920-1997) produced their food writing in the form of familiar essays, respectively, in the late martial law period of Taiwan (the 1970s and 1980s) and the early reform era of China (the 1980s and 1990s). This article examines their essays, especially those on Republican Beijing (Beiping) and wartime Kunming, to explore how narratives of autobiographical, individual culinary experience can develop into sharable or comparable social experience addressing the historical rupture of 1949. Shifting the focus of the theoretical notion of authenticity from the self to the individual's phenomenal perception and the contested arena of social communication concerning historical memory, this article shows that literary practices such as the generic feature of the I-narrator in the familiar essay, the textual construction of chronotopes of food, and (re)publications across the Taiwan Strait have shaped and reshaped "authentic culinary experience" in their texts in response to changing power structures, social interests, and affective needs of the reader.
This essay traces various cultural translations of Liao Yiwu's poetry into English and German. It... more This essay traces various cultural translations of Liao Yiwu's poetry into English and German. It foregrounds a tight entanglement of literature and politics that starts with the suppression of the 1989 Protest Movement in China and extends to a dynamic engendered by publishers, prize-giving bodies, and prestigious cultural figures abroad. It reveals the complexities of communicating trauma between East and West and the gripping textual traces that are left in the process.
Abstract: This paper explores the politics of the body in David Fincher’s film Fight Club (1999).... more Abstract: This paper explores the politics of the body in David Fincher’s film Fight Club (1999). The film criticizes the consumerist society and its culture by bringing to the viewers’ attention a series of displaced grotesque bodies which are visually offensive, politically transgressive, and economically unproductive. Yet both the development of the story in the diegesis of the film and the commercial use of the rough body image outside the diegesis reveal the infinite possibilities of the utopian impulse in the grotesque body being appropriated.
Keywords: the grotesque body, male identity, utopianism, consumerism, fascism
This paper combines Freud’s psychoanalytical theory of “the uncanny” with historical research met... more This paper combines Freud’s psychoanalytical theory of “the uncanny” with historical research methods to read film texts. Household objects such as the car, the telephone, the radio, and the coffee brewer were promoted in postwar America as necessary parts of a safe and self-sufficient home, an important notion underpinning the idea of the American Dream, whose patriarchal family values and optimism in technological progress served the economic goal of developing the country’s capitalistic economy and the political goals of shaping American national identity and fending off the communist ideology at the time. The use of household objects by postwar film noir as mise-en-scene plays with this notion of home and registers the violence and anxieties of postwar American society which are denied and repressed in the American Dream. By exploiting the slippage between the familiar, innocuous images of household objects in public imagination and their dangerous functions in the film texts, postwar film noir not only creates a psychological effect of “the uncanny” in film reception, but also reveals “the uncanny” in the blind confidence in technological progress and the repressive domesticity in the American Dream.
Knowledge Production in Mao-Era China traces and analyzes the changing public discourse of scienc... more Knowledge Production in Mao-Era China traces and analyzes the changing public discourse of science and technology in Mao-era China. Drawing upon extensive primary sources, such as science dissemination materials, technical handbooks, and mass media products published in the first three decades of the People’s Republic of China, this book delineates the emergence of a pragmatic approach to knowledge in state policies and society, which sought to achieve the goal of fast national modernization with limited financial, human, and material resources. The case studies show that the party-state strived to accommodate Western and local, "modern" and "traditional" knowledges in the fields of agricultural mechanization, steel production, and Chinese veterinary medicine. They also demonstrate that knowledge production in the Mao-era involved various social groups and was tightly entangled with political and cultural issues. This book brings to light the continuity of scientific thinking across the historical divides of 1949 and 1978, which has hitherto been underestimated.
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Papers by Rui Kunze/Wang
Keywords: the grotesque body, male identity, utopianism, consumerism, fascism
Keywords: the grotesque body, male identity, utopianism, consumerism, fascism