| This dissertation examines how transnational flows of contemporary theory implicate critics, institutions, and academic discourses as agents of national identity construction and critique. During the 1990s, discussions of Western theory in Chinese contexts seemed to many critics to be a way of expanding truly global debates on representation, cultural identity, and traveling theory. In my dissertation I point to the controversies over Tibet's geopolitical and cultural status as a necessary supplement to what I argue has been a decade of overdetermined "China and the West" discussions. Drawing on original research in China, India, the United States, and Europe, and reading texts ranging from poetry, novels, and theoretical studies to official government documents and news broadcasts, I suggest that key features of literary and cultural critique, such as attention to the contradictions of modernity and the limitations of national narratives, speak directly to the politico-cultural disputes involving Tibet as both a region of People's Republic of China and an "exile nation" with significant Western ties. I illustrate, in a series of specific studies, how debates over national identity are crucial to discussions of literary and cultural theory in China and how prevailing assumptions of Western postcolonial theory and politically engaged poststructuralism are challenged by these encounters. |
