Zhou Lei Theory Criticism

The1990s was a important turning point in modern literary studies in English-speaking world, while Rey Chow is a Chinese critics of theory in this period whose works have a global impact.With a tough and clear writing style and a solid theoretical foundation, she always maintains a high degree of critical consciousness. As a consequence, Chow’s work covers many disciplines. She has written extensively on literature, feminism, visualism and the modernism-postmodernism problematic etc. Being an edged role of the western culture and eastern culture, she is always concerned about the asymmetrical power relationship between First World and Third World and is adhering to the Chinese and Western dialectical dialogue. In her point of view, there is a certain amount of risk of cross-cultural studies. Therefore either to default a theoretical model, using the Oriental text to prove the rationality of Western theories, or to take the attitude of a resist Western theories immersed in the China’s grand narrative is admitted. How to effectively combine the Western theories and Eastern text during the cross-cultural research is the core of the criticism by Rey Chow, who challenges the hegemony of Western discourse while criticizing Eastern traditions.In Rey Chow’s post-colonial studies, literary criticism and cultural criticism has always been closely linked with each other, she subverts the traditional mode of criticism, and creates her own unique style of criticism, but using Western theories to retaliate the way of Western research is highly controversial. Some people even think she is still not able to get rid of the shackles of cultural imperialism. Lacking of historical and social exploration of china society leads to the limitations of her research on Chinese literature. The core of this article lies in the extraction from the basic paradigm of the criticism of her literary by interpretating her three representative works. Criticism from Rey Chow theory formes the background, together with Rey Chow’s criticizing paradigm and its effect, the thesis illustrates how she achieves her purpose of criticizing through culture criticizing and literature criticizing.