The Transcultural Writings By Chinese Women Writers Of Mainland Background In The Last Three Decades

In the era of globalization, transnational space-shifters emerge in large numbers. In contemporary literary criticism in China, labels such as "Overseas Students' Literature", "Overseas Chinese Literature", "Migrant Workers'Literature in Foreign Land", "Extraterritorial Literature", "Literature by Students Studying Abroad" and "Global Chinese Literature" have been given to literary works produced by "Space-Shifters" beyond the Chinese border. With varying emphasis, either on the author's identity, or the territorial characteristics or the language used in the works, these labels have one thing in common:the idea that since the works have been produced beyond Chinese territory, they belong to that particular category of literature distinctive from that of native China and that the writers are identified as Chinese residing in foreign land. Such labels highlight the geographical separation of the East and West, cutting the world apart into two opposing spheres, and defining the writers as Chinese guests in alien land performing the act of writing "away from home and motherland."To the author of this dissertation, these labels show an overlook of the more mobile social reality in the context of globalization:people travel between east and west, moving freely between their motherland and the country of residence, so that neither nationality nor territory has much restrictive or decisive influence on them. By putting forward the concept of "transcultural writing", the dissertation aims at breaking through the restriction of space on literature study and highlighting the mutual influence of Chinese and Western culture on the writers.This dissertation studies the trans-cultural writing by Chinese women writers, including Zha Jianyin, Yan Gelin, Liu Sola, Cheng Danyan, Tang Yin, Zhang Ling, Zhou Li, Wang Rui, Zhu Xiaolin, and Yu Xiu, etc. in the last three decades. Traveling between China and other countries, the sense of "national boundary" have no restrictive power on them. Different as they are in legal identities, they have the same background of Chinese blood and the same love for Chinese culture. Moreover, with long experience of living abroad, they have a personal understanding of Other society and culture; their writing is characterized with the sense of globalization and cultural comparison. Their writing distinctly differs from the writing in monocultural context in theme, point of view and style. Multiculturalism exerts complicate influence on their attitude toward life, value preferences, identity construction, and cultural and literary ideas.Choosing "Chinese" as the modifier of "Women Writers", the dissertation aims to stress the writers'blood origin and the effect of the cultural matrix on the identity of space-shifters. Their Chinese origin is what the writers have emphasized in their identity construction and they have expressed through their narratives a stronger identification with their Chinese blood origin than with their legal identity. Generally, the China-born characters in their works follow the same pattern.The contact and clash between different cultures will inevitably cause cultural imagination, as "the other" is an important frame of reference for a clear understanding of "the self." Therefore how China views the West and what it chooses to view actually indicate the way it looks upon itself. Chapter I of the dissertation studies the construction of image of the West as "the Other." Firstly, the dissertation summarizes the images of West as "the Other" in Chinese history, aiming to trace the origin that had formed the basis of Western image in the transcultural writing of the Chinese women writers in the last three decades. In Chinese history, the image of the West emerged in "stereotypes" as the historical product of the different times. The Western image in the Chinese view has changed in turn from being a blank to being weird, idealized, dichotomized and demonized. Yet around 1980s the West was portrayed as the Messiah by the women writers discussed in this dissertation. The author of this dissertation has come to this conclusion through close reading of voluminous texts.In the dissertation the author has also analyzed the causes of such images. The image of the West as "Messiah" had much to do with the cultural and spiritual state of "charisma anomie" in China around 1980s. It also was related in part to the realistic need of meaning construction and self-recognition with "the other" as a mirror as well as yearning for exoticism. The West as "Messiah" is the product of special historical period in China. It carries a fanciful and mythical color, and reflects the misreading and limitation in the process of interpreting Western culture. However, taking an "heteroplasmon" as Messiah cannot be the solution to the complicated and entangled problems in Chinese society.In the third section of Chapter I the dissertation analyzes how the women writers'works construct the image of the West in the eyes of the Chinese emigrants from the aspects of space, dialogue in trans-lingual and trans-cultural communication and narrative.To the space-shifters with Chinese origin, the Western Space is the carrier of sentimentality and unknown destiny, providing for them no cultural root or homestead assurance. Moreover, the image of the West becomes dominating and cold when the space-shifters enter the real West, and it causes them to cast away the previous illusion about the West. This chapter has selected some instances of trans-cultural dialogues for analysis, and points out the following characteristics of the dialogues in the works by women writers in the last three decades:violation of the cooperative principle, taking the strategy of avoidance, asymmetry, and anxiety. It is a low-efficiency communication as there is no communication in the real sense between the Easterner and the Westerner. The different attitudes, stand, emotion and tactics represent the relationship between China and the West. From the examples of trans-cultural dialogue we can find the oppression of the East by the West and the weakling mentality and aphasia of the East when it encounters the West. This section also studies Yan Gelin's works from the aspect of narrative and argues that in her narration there exist visual blind-spots and self-denial of discourse authority. The West is as invisible as unspeakable for the narrator. The author draws a conclusion from the narrative study of Yan's works that the West still exists in the form of an enigma and remains a blank image for the East. Furthermore, the suppression of the Easterner by the West with its dominance causes the easterners'self-doubt and distortion of the soul.The writings by the women writers show that globalization cannot eliminate or settle the differences and disputes between different nationalities, races and countries. On the contrary, the close contact, tearing off the gentle veil, reveals the fact of difference and dispute. In the portrayal of the blank and dominating image of the West the women writers gradually discard their romantic feeling of the West and penetrate into the complex and cold reality.Chapter II discusses the image of China in the trans-cultural writings of Chinese women writers in the last three decades. The construction of the image of China is completed in the dynamic comparison between the Self and the Other. Yet the image of China portrayed by the women writers in the last three decades vary across their works. This chapter respectively discusses the images of "classic China" by Zhang Ling, "tragic China" by Hong Ying, "absurd China" by Liu Suola and "China in the shadow of self-Orientalism" by Chen Danyan. The author has selected these images for discussion primarily because of their distinctiveness from which we can understand the view and the way of Chinese reflection on cultural conflict. As the image of the West in the trans-cultural writings of the women writers can be summarized as blank, the portrayal of the image of China is characterized by division—the image of China in different works is widely divergent due to the writers'various views, attitudes and feelings. Through the division of China's image we can perceive the lasting influence of China's cultural division on the writers of Chinese origin since the middle of the eighteenth century, the different spiritual transformation of the writers of the same origin when they enter the world with alien culture as well as the complexity of Chinese society.The trans-cultural writings of women writers in the last three decades reveal from various angles and perspectives the history, politics and culture of China. Their construction of the image of China is a counter portrayal of image of China portrayed in the Western perspective, and is a means of recognition of cultural identity, giving meaning to self expression and occurrence the Third World countries in the process of globalization.Chapter III analyzes "identity "problem from two different perspectives, one is the marginal people,and the other one is memory. It is held in this dissertation that the marginalized in the works by the women writers in the last three decades can be classified into two groups:the early marginalized as passing travellers and the modern ones with self-reflective awareness. The early ones have neither ability nor desire to extricate themselves from the predicament of marginalization. What is more, they lack the ability to reflect on their circumstances which they can neither recognize nor represent. The modern ones, with sober recognition of their own plight, can profoundly reflect on their own status quo and its causes. There are numerous marginalized characters in the women writers'works—who even at the brink of the abyss, do not give up reflection, demonstrating complexity and rich dimensions of their thoughts. Insignificant as they are, they take upon themselves the heavy load of probing the theme of cultural conflict between the East and the West. The phenomenon indicates that multiplicity and mobility can bring people the perplexity of identity but also greater space for existence and imagination. The identification of the marginalized in the transcultural context is a painful process of questing in melancholy and perplexity, and a process of discovery as well.In their writings there is obviously a complex of memory which is used by the writers to combat loneliness in foreign land and question and resist the myth of globalization. Their focusing on memory can be regarded as an attempt to seek spiritual homeland. Since the Chinese women writers mix together personal and national memory in the process of identification, the transcultural writings by Chinese women writers in the last three decades are a mixture of both personal and national memory and there is a strong sense of the nation and of the state. Therefore, their writings are a combination of epic and lyric, which endows them with the aesthetic essences of the coexistence of misery and warmth, magnificence and delicacy. However, rather than giving them a sense of identity recognition, their memories betray the writers misgiving of history.Since the transcultural writings by Chinese women writers in the last three decades basically focus on women, the transcultural background offers women a broader platform to recognize themselves and search their subjectivity. The problem of women in transcultural context is discussed in ChapterⅣ. In the background of cultural communication between the East and West, the women writers keep pushing their boundary in exploring the identity and peculiarity of Chinese women, of which the re-recognition of the traditional spirit of Chinese women and the discovery of modern women's rationalism, in particular, should be given attention. Although the traditional spirit is superficially in contradiction to modern rationality, they share some fundamental similarities—both are based on women's independence and dignity and lay emphasis on women's subjectivity. Combining the traditional virtue of firmness, generousness and mercy with modern women's independence and rationality, the Chinese women writers'writings provide a possibility of constructing a new image of Chinese women:the women with traditional feminine tenderness, and independent thinking as well.As to the meaning of transcultural background for the writings of women writers, it broadens and deepens the writers'horizon and shows women's ability of participating in the grand narrative and the ability of treating such major subjects as country, history, politics and transculture. Meanwhile, their writings display the specialties of grand narrative in the female perspective:issues relating to gender, race, state, and national experiences.Chapter V explores the language used in transcultural writings. As the relationship between language and nation, country, and identity is being given increasing attention, language has become a very important cultural icon in the age of globalization. Through textual analysis, this dissertation reaches a conclusion that the relationship between China and the West is isomorphic to the relationship between Chinese and English in the works of Zha Jianying, Yan Gelin and Chen Danyan, where the position of Chinese is connected with the plight of the marginalized, the cultural ruptures and the identity fission and the lack of identification. Although the writers interpret the position of Chinese in different respects, they share one characteristic:poor English and the use of Chinese indicating the character's silence when confronting the West. The Chinese speakers'keeping silence is a strategy of dodging taken by the space-shifters of Chinese origin with no other choice, and it is also a metaphor of the marginal status of the subaltern in the Western context.In contrast with the silent status of Chinese in Western context, the women writers in the last three decades have a strong consciousness of writing in Chinese. Through an overall study and focused analysis of some parts, this dissertation finds that the writers'writings lay more emphasis on the inheritance of Chinese lingual tradition than on the experiment and breakthrough of the language. The Chinese feature in their writings manifests their identification with China on language, emotion and culture. Another feature in their writings is the use of vernacular, which, with the charm of consanguinity and reminiscence, continues the ancestors'speech and is filled with spiritual energy. The use of vernacular renders the personal national background specific and vivid.The transcultural writings of Chinese women writers in the last three decades are, in essence, a kind of writing through which the Chinese view China, West and the contact between them in the transcultural context. Represented at a transcultural angle, the images of China and the West take on extraordinary richness and complexity. The women writers'writings reveal the anti-essentialist "division" and "hybridity". Bent on the quest of meaning, their literary creation fully manifests their sense of crisis and sincerity.