Content area
Full Text
Modern Chinese Literary and Cultural Studies in the Age of Theory: Reimagining a Field. Edited by REY CHOW. Durham: Duke University Press, 2000. 328 pp. $59.95 (cloth); $19.95 (paper).
Except for two essays, this edited volume is a republication of a special issue in Boundary 2, 25:3 (1998). It opens with Rey Chow's introduction and ends with Paul Bove's after-word. Sandwiched in between are eleven essays, which address interdisciplinary topics using most of the critical methodologies in contemporary literary and cultural studies. After critically reviewing some central issues affecting the field of Chinese studies, Chow argues that the old model of China studies, which started as "an offshoot of the U.S. cold war political strategy that found its anchorage in higher education" and has its conceptual base on the essentialized notions of "China" and "Chineseness," is no longer able to "handle the diverse and multifaceted experiences that are articulated under the study of Chineseness" (p. 17). She calls for a reimagining of the field in terms of the postmodern move of splitting the monolithic Chineseness into multiple ethnicities. This sets the general theme for the volume. Her essay focuses on the relationship between Chineseness and the study of Chinese language and literature.
Charles Laughlin's essay remaps the relationship between narrative subjectivity and social space in Chinese reportage by analyzing Ding Ling's "Eventful Autumn." David Wang's essay explores the politics of hunger besetting women in a number of modern fictional works and suggests that these stories represent their...