Dialectics of uneven modernity: Literature, film, and intellectual discourse in contemporary China.

摘要

This project is concerned with literature, film, and intellectual discourses in contemporary China. It investigates the cultural problematics of "unevenness" in China's pursuit of modernity in the postsocialist period. I examine "uneven modernity" and its effects on culture in a dialectical way: on the one hand, the uneven developments generate serious problems for writers and directors; but on the other hand, they also offer tremendous opportunities and dynamics for their cultural interventions.;The first chapter is a theoretical investigation of "uneven modernity." I try to build up a theoretical framework of "dialectics of unevenness," and make it clear that "uneven modernity" simultaneously provides vitality and creates problems in contemporary China.;The second chapter investigates the "Yu Qiuyu Phenomenon." By studying Yu's prose writing, I examine how contemporary intellectuals negotiate their way in this uneven condition, in which the cultural is under the assault of the economic, and how this negotiation reveals an internal paradox in contemporary Chinese culture.;The third chapter is on the woman writer, Chi Li. I explore how Neo-Realist writings address the social conflict between remnant intellectual idealism and the market. This literary transition in the postsocialist era represents a strategy of cooperative intervention while facing the double challenges of marginalization of elite culture in social stratification and its devaluation in the logic of economic capital.;In chapter four I study popular film director Feng Xiaogang. Feng's entertainment films exhibit an effective form of cultural intervention in the age of popular culture. Feng's intriguing manipulation of commercialized mechanism of cultural industry to express his anti-commercialization critique poses questions on possibilities of critical interventions.;Chapter five examines the "Sixth Generation" director Wang Xiaoshuai. I investigate how art film productions negotiate with commercial invasions and the Western gaze. Wang weaves the "geopolitical" and "sentimental" narratives together in his filmmaking: the former registers an uneven relationship between China and the West, and the later displays the power of market. Wang's filmmaking exhibits a strategic change of art film productions in the age of uneven developmentalism.