Not made in China: Inventing local identities in contemporary Malaysian Chinese fiction.

摘要

Since the surge of interest in the Chinese diaspora, the idea that the Chinese overseas are united by a common identification has given way to an appreciation for the local versions of a "Chinese" identity that have evolved in multiethnic contexts. In the cultural history of the ethnic Chinese in Malaysia we encounter a differentiated form of Chineseness both evolving and being consciously developed. Malaysian Chinese-language authors have long negotiated between a Chinese identification---fostered by language and the literary tradition---and a sense of belonging to their local environment of Malaysia. In response, contemporary Malaysian Chinese authors turn toward their particular historical and cultural circumstances. They engage with the question of "Malaysian Chineseness" as they explore their relationship with the Chinese language and literary tradition, as they write of home and diaspora, and as they confront their collective history in Malaysia.; In chapter one, I review the historical context and introduce authors Li Yongping, Huang Jinshu (Ng Kim Chew), Li Tianbao and Li Zishu. In chapter two, I survey Malaysian Chinese (Mahua) writers' efforts to create a distinct literary language. In chapter three, I identify texts by Li Tianbao and Huang Jinshu that set up critical dialogues with the Chinese literary tradition. In chapter four, I examine nostalgia in Li Yongping's native soil fiction, in which self, memory and displacement become dynamic societal, temporal and geographical narratives. In chapter five, I scrutinize texts by Li Zishu, Huang Jinshu and Li Yongping that construct alternative views of Malaysia's communist insurrections and highlight the importance of popular memory in their collective history.; Thus I examine a body of Sinophone literature with a unique cultural topography that presents uncharted territory for scholars of modern Chinese literary and cultural studies. Malaysian Chinese identification grows from the refusal to accept prefabricated representations of identity. Examining their struggle to invent their own identities provides insight into how Chineseness is both constructed and contested transnationally, and how alternative and hybrid Chinese identifications emerge.