In the Heat of Sentiments: Nationalism, Postsocialism, and Popular Culture in China, 1988-2007
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Date
2010-06
Authors
Shen, Yipeng
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
My dissertation delves into the recent articulation of popular nationalism in
Mainland China, with particular emphasis on the changes that globalization and
transnationalism have brought about to the representation of the Chinese nation in
sentimental terms. Complementing the rich existing literature of Chinese nationalism that
focuses mainly on the pre-1949 period, my study explores the less-treaded contemporary
era characterized by the new historical condition of postsocialism, which features a
residual of the socialist past as well as its reinvention under new overwhelming trends of
globalization. Postsocialism and its consequences-the deepening of a neoliberalist economic refonn, the state-intellectual promotion of cultural economy, the emergence of
a dominant consumer culture, etc.-have produced new issues existing scholarship on Chinese nationalism has yet to address. One such issue is how the paradoxical entity of
the "nation" in time and space has been fragmented by the accretion of diversified voices
from a wide spectrum of Chinese society. In postsocialist China, the agents imagining the
nation include not only regulars like the state and intellectuals, but also new players like
mass-media elites and netizens (wangmin). I argue that these voices of different social
forces that break up the hegemony of the state in representing the nation-the result of
which being not that the state is excluded from this enterprise but that it now tells only
part of the story-become expressed as modes of national sentiments (minzu qinggan)
when the nation is imagined under the historical condition of postsocialism. My study
then explores in detail the fashioning and refashioning of contemporary Chinese
subjectivity, as it relates through the joining of national sentiments to the literal and
figurative body of the nation and the social power structure, by analyzing these specific
voices in a broad range of popular texts from TV, film, and the Internet. The detailed
examination includes four chapters dealing with specific modes of national sentiments
articulated by the intellectuals, the state, the mass-media elites, and the netizens,
respectively.
Description
xi, 284 p. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number.
Keywords
Nationalism in literature, Chinese literature -- History and criticism, Popular culture -- China, Culture and globalization -- China, Nationalism, Postsocialism, Popular culture, China, Sentiments, Multimedia, History, Asian studies, Multimedia communications