Imagining China In Modernization From A Comparative Perspective

The thesis studies the imaginations of China on its way to modernization in New Era from the perspective of narrations of Chinese peripheries. Referring to late constructivist theories of nation and their concepts from Benedict Anderson's"imagined communities"to Wang Ming-ke's"Chinese peripheries", and reconstructing them according to the context of contemporary China, it examines three cultural phenomena since 1980s, especially the representative texts in them, in order not only to reinterpret these texts and phenomena, but also to reveal the various dimensions of the imaginations of China in modernization, and how a hegemonic imagination is constructed with power relations from them.Chinese peripheries are the peripheries of the geography and identity of China, which are formed in history. Since China was forced into the world system of nation-states, the traditional Chinese peripheries have been so greatly changed that they can be classified into the follow three kinds. The first one consists of all Chinese minorities, the second is composed of Hong Kong, Taiwan and Chinese Diaspora, and the third is Northeast China. From the perspective of the three conditions of Chinese peripheries as the elements of the practice of signification, the thesis describes and analyzes the follow three cultural phenomena:"searching for roots"in minorities, the imagination of"Cultural China"(including traditional cultural fever and Shanghai nostalgia), and the representation of Northeast China in popular culture. The research is composed of five chapters. Chapter one deals with the issues of the writing of"searching for roots", which are concerning the context and historical premise, the possibility of exceeding the imagination of Chinese subject which takes as the precondition the hegemony of western modernization, and the paradox of the writing: to construct the subject being subject to the hegemonic cultural order, or to reject the order losing subjectivity. Chapter two focuses on the case of Zhang Chengzhi, showing the process in which he overcomes the above paradox through the continuing dialogue with orientalism and rewriting the"great wall frontier", and how the hegemonic discourse conceals the dimension of his writing. Chapter three compares two mappings respectively signifying the end of"searching for roots"and the beginning of the imagination of"Cultural China", by which the same"national tradition"represents two different social and cultural positions: local minorities or losers in history and Diasporic Chinese who succeed in contemporary capital world. Chapter four discusses localization of the imagination of"Cultural China"whose principle is"(oversea) periphery as the centre", and reveals the logic of distinction of"centre"and"periphery"in the context of"modernization"in mainland, taking Shanghai nostalgia as a typical example. As deeply exploring the above logic, Chapter five analyzes the representation of Northeast China in popular culture: covering the reality of"the old industrial base"by the image of"the strangers in cities", the construction of the subject of China being"modernized"successfully excludes the different modernization in 1950s to 1970s, and satures the fissures of itself. In conclusion, the imagination of China in homogeneous empty time is formed not around a natural centre, but in a complex practice of signification unevenly taking various Chinese peripheries as signifiers. Showing the process of being formed helps not only to recover the memories and imaginations being covered, but also to find the possibility of a new social practice.