Images of China in twentieth century colonial discourse.

摘要

This study examines representations of the Other in opposition to the colonial Self through readings of texts produced in Britain, France, Germany, and America in the twentieth century. It draws upon recent ideas from colonial discourse concerning the representation of the exotic Other, but brings to these approaches a more historical framework and a closer attention to the rhetorical nature of language by which knowledge of the Other is constructed, and to the ideological process by which this knowledge is produced to aid the control and surveillance of the Other. It tries to show that the system of knowledge that constitutes the Other as an object has little to do with practices or values intrinsic to the Other, with the political, religious, and social codes by which the Other lives. Rather, even though it may have come into being originally as an instrument of perception, in colonial discourse it is an exercise in self-reference, a projection of one's own systemic codes so that they are inscribed on the screen of the Other--read as discursively vacant, uninscribed space--a set of values and meanings that can be recuperated by reference to one's own cultural heritage.; This work consists of five chapters, or rather, five essays, each standing independently while forming part of a coherent whole. The first essay, which deals with texts by William Somerset Maugham, is a close critical analysis of British narratives of travel and exploration in China to investigate the rhetorical nature of the historical construction of China as the Other. The second chapter, which deals with texts by Andre Malraux, examines the configuration of Self and Other as the way human societies relate to and think of each other and as the basis upon which racial hierarchies are constructed. The thrust of this essay is the designation in French colonial discourse of the 20s and 30s of China as an aspect of the ethnocentricity of the European bourgeois conception of history and the world. The third essay, based on texts by Bertolt Brecht, looks at the representation of Chinese in the context of German colonial discourse. I suggest that while German discourse of China may not stem from an actual colonial situation, it is still a form of cultural domination, for it reveals similarities with colonial discourse in that it establishes an intellectual authority over the Other with the power to define, interpret, and represent the Other for Europe. The fourth essay, based on texts by Pearl Buck and John Hersey, investigates the construction of Chinese peasantry in American imperialistic discourse. The fifth chapter, based on texts by Maxine Hong Kingston, explores the ways the Chinese diaspora reconstructs the self in the context of American postcolonial discourse.; My approach is theoretical, literary, political, and historical. My research is based on a close textual analysis of a number of texts that represent historical thresholds in the process of the emergence and development of colonial and postcolonial discourse.