Wendy Larson

Misogyny, Cultural Nihilism, & Oppositional Politics: Contemporary Chinese Experimental Fiction

Introduction 1. Revolution: hope without future or future without hope? 2. Red Sorghum: limits of transgression 3. Can Xue: what is so paranoid in her writings? 4. Quest in time and space as a new history of ancient and modern Tibet 5. Femininity and masculinity in Su Tongs trilogy 6. Violence and cultural nihilism Conclusion.

Zhang Yimou's Hero: dismantling the myth of cultural power

Abstract Zhang Yimous 2002 film Hero has been acclaimed by audiences and attacked by film and cultural critics, who often interpret it as an example of fascist aesthetics that supports totalitarianism in general and the Chinese authoritarian state in particular. I analyse Hero as an investigation into the viability of culturalism, or a meditation on aesthetics and its relationship to political power under the conditions of the nation state and the ‘community of nations’ to which modern countries belong. Culturalism refers to the implicit nation state mandate that each nation must have a set of distinct cultural practices, ideas and forms that inspire love and delight in the homeland, are readily represented and performed, and are powerful enough to lure and capture the gaze of the outsider while simultaneously appearing authentic in the eyes of the insider. Hero shows the false underpinnings of culturalism, in the process dismantling a powerful twentieth-century myth.

On Zhang Yimou's Hero: Counter-response

Abstract Zhang Yimous film Hero is an investigation into culturalism, or the demand, embedded in the nation-state form, that all nations represent themselves through a unique and readily recognizable culture. Hero implies that this demand is a trap, and that the only way to global recognition among the ‘family of nations’ is through more direct cultivation of political, economic, and military power.

Book Review: Charles LAUGHLIN, ed., Contested Modernities in Chinese Literature. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. x + 246 pp. ISBN: 1-4039-6782-2 (hc). Price: US

519 in the introductory chapter with phrases such as “rising and declining great powers” (p. 4) and whether Japan has “strengthened its ties with other great powers to balance China” (p. 9). The third point leads to the fourth, which is to ascertain whether the two countries’ relationship is one of cooperation or conflict, only to arrive at the answer that it is both—a finding that has not set the book apart from previous publications which established similar conclusions. It is common knowledge that trade and investment are fast enmeshing the two nations’ economies while historical and political conflicts hover at the top with some effects trickling down to the masses as the recent Chinese riots would suggest. Fifth, instead of calling for Russia to create a narrow Northeast Asian community (pp. 227–30), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) could be expanded to include South Korea and Japan to form the basis for economic regionalism or the inclusion of Russia into the East Asia Summit for which Russia has shown great interest. Apart from the contributing chapters, a chapter or two on India’s perspective (a developing economic giant in its own right) and regional production network processes detailing trade networking between Japan and China would have added more vigor to the overall discussion. BENNY TEH CHENG GUAN, International Relations, Kanazawa University, Kanazawa, Japan