The radical itch: Rethinking radicalism in contemporary Chinese societies (Taiwan, Hong Kong)

Radicalism as resistance to exploitation and control is no longer what it used to be a decade to three decades ago in contemporary China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, because political and cultural conditions are going through profound changes. Power and complicity have acquired more sophistication and have become more resistant to representation, resistance and critique. Ironically, the achievements of feminist, postcolonial, civil rights and queer activism and scholarship have permeated contemporary Chinese communities to such an extent, that the rhetoric of radicalism is now largely available to all kinds of appropriations. Traditional forms of social resistance and radical criticism are not only challenged by new alternatives, but are also skillfully appropriated by conservative constituencies as well as state and capitalist rhetoric. The ethics of radicalism begs rethinking. Radicalism has become a symptomatic burning itch of the body politic: both as a persistent and exploitable wound, and a battling desire to heal. Thus, this dissertation is premised on a hermeneutics of suspicion: how can we tell whether radicalism is radical anymore?; The introduction layout the methodologies: the typological analysis of the colonialism-nationalism-sexism nexus of issues in relation to radicalism through a politicized and geo-historically contextualized use of Lacanian psychoanalysis informed by poststructuralist, feminist and postcolonial scholarship. Chapter one studies the relation of fetishism to nationalism, and the relation of radicalism to gender and ethic masochism and masquerade to show how nationalism as a discourse of resistance and radicalism was problematic since its inception. Through the transnational Protect Diaoyutai movements, chapter two shows how nationalism as a perverse symbolic order and cultural imaginary has become the obstacle to radicalism in contemporary Chinese communities. Chapter three shows how postcolonial and transgender identity politics do not automatically guarantee radicalism. Chapter four continues to expose some forms of postcolonial identity politics as gendered colonial melancholia and hysteria rather than radicalism. Chapter five analyzes how sexism and racism could compromise the radicalism of tongzhi/queer politics due to the imposition of a kind of cultural nationalist and anti-colonial appropriation of the local tongzhi discourse.