A Cultural Reading Of Snow Flower And The Secret Fan With The Theory Of Articulation

Set in Jiangyong—a remote county in Hunan Province—in nineteenth century China, written by Lisa See, a renowned Chinese American novelist, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan fascinates its western and Chinese readers with details of the process of foot-binding, the vicissitude of the laotong relationship between Lily and Snow Flower, and the elaboration of Nushu exchanged among female characters. Although See did extensive field research for this novel and has gained tremendous worldwide fame with the publication of several Chinese-themed novels, one question persists in the mind of her readers: has Lisa See fully articulated Chinese culture in Snow Flower and the Secret Fan?Drawing upon Stuart Hall’s theory of articulation, this thesis analyzes how the Chinese culture in this novel has been articulated, dis-articulated, and re-articulated and argues that See has successfully made a productive cultural connection that predicates on articulation, dis-articulation, and re-articulation. Accordingly, this thesis is divided into five parts. The introduction elaborates Hall’s theory of articulation as both utterance and connection, as a dynamic process of breaking and generating connections. Focusing on the stage of articulation, Chapter1 explains how See positions herself as the subject doing the articulation and such Chinese cultural elements as laotong, foot-binding and Nushu as objects being articulated. Moving on to the stage of dis-articulation, Chapter2discusses how these Chinese cultural elements are misrepresented by the dichotomizing, selective, and substitutive hybrid eyes of See. Although cultural links are broken at some places, Chapter3elaborates on how such dis-articulation enables the joint of two different cultures to generate new connections and more complex meanings in intercultural communication. Therefore, the Conclusion asks us to reconsider the culture not as a static entity, but as a dynamic process open for articulation, dis-articulation, and re-articulation and re-conceive intercultural communication as a generative process of articulating differences and creating new cultural connections and spaces.