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  Shu-mei Shih               

Visuality and identity: Sinophone articulations across the Pacific

Shu-mei Shih

abstract

Shu-mei Shih inaugurates the field of Sinophone studies in this vanguard excursion into sophisticated cultural criticism situated at the intersections of Chinese studies, Asian American studies, diaspora studies, and transnational studies. Arguing that the visual has become the primary means of mediating identities under global capitalism, Shih examines the production and circulation of images across what she terms the "Sinophone Pacific," which comprises Sinitic-language speaking communities such as the People's Republic of China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Chinese America. This groundbreaking work argues that the dispersal of the so-called Chinese peoples across the world needs to be reconceptualized in terms of vibrant or vanishing communities of Sinitic-language cultures rather than of ethnicity and nationality.

keywords

Chinese identity, Global Capitalism, ethnic

catalogue card

Title: Visuality and identity: Sinophone articulations across the Pacific
Author: Shumei Shih
Publication: Berkeley: University of California Press, cop. 2007
Subjects: Ethnicity-China, chinese people-ethnic identity
ISBN: 978-0-520-22451-3

index

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
About Romanization

Introduction
Visuality in Global Capitalism
Identity in Global Capitalism
Sinophone Articulations

1. Globalization and Minoritization
The Limits of a Coup d'État in Theory
Flexibility and Nodal Points
Flexibility and Translatability

2. A Feminist Transnationality
Identity Fragment 1: Feminist Antagonism against Chinese Patriarchy
Identity Fragment 2: Liberal Antagonism against the Maoist State
Identity Fragment 3: Antagonism of a Minority Subject
Identity Fragment 4: Antagonism against the Western Gaze

3. The Geopolitics of Desire
Beleaguered Communities
Sexualizing the 'Mainland Sister"
Feminizing the "Mainland Cousin"
Gender and Public Sphere

4. The Incredible Heaviness of Ambiguity
A Short History of the 'Mainland'
"Eternal China" in the 1990s
The "Intimate Enemy" in the Twenty-First Century
Struggles of the Sinophone

5. After National Allegory
The Allegorical Time and the City-cum-Nation
The Allegorical and the Mundane
Refashioning Hongkongness

6. Cosmopolitanism among Empires
The Age of Empires and, Especially, Their Sizes
Cosmopolitanism, Multiplicity, Danger
Untranslatable Ethics
Can Cosmopolitanism Be Ethical?

Conclusion: The Time and Place of the Sinophone

Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index