Racial mimesis: Translation, literature, and self -fashioning in modern China.

Abstract

China's quest for modernity was marked by ambivalent desires to identify with the West. Objects of admiration and emulation included western science and technology, sociopolitical thinking, literary modes, and the physical body with distinctively white features. My thesis traces the role of the colonial discourse of race in the making of modern Chinese gender identities and modern desire. The first chapter develops the idea of racial mimesis as a central concept that frames my reading of various forms of cultural productions that emerged during the first half of the twentieth century. It highlights the transcultural and translingual dimension of Chinese racial discourse while countenancing possibilities of agency under domination. Through a comparative reading of Jin Yi's <italic>Nu jie zhong</italic> and Herbert Spencer's earlier work on women's rights, the second chapter examines the process whereby the male elite at the dawn of the twentieth century mobilized the trope of interracial difference to redeem Chinese masculinity for the purpose of survival in a changing world. The third chapter links the bourgeoning culture of hygiene in late nineteenth-century Shanghai, the obsessional display of elegant hands in popular magazines, and the representation of these phenomena in Lu Xun's Soap and Xiao Hong's Hands, arguing that racialized cultural ideals (the hand-fetish) collaborate with older markers of class (the foot-fetish) in further delineating the contour of modern femininity. The fourth chapter provides a close reading of Eileen Chang's earlier works in the <italic>Romances</italic> collection in order to explore the racialized nature of its modern structure of feelings. The modern world as represented by Chang is one which redistributes desire, desirability, masculinity, and femininity along the lines of culture, nation, and race. My reading suggests that many of the main characters in Chang's romances should be viewed as masters in the art of racial passing whose action always subverts essentialized identities. The final chapter gestures toward the continued operation of racial mimesis in contemporary China, in instances as varied as the outbursts of racism against African students on Post-Mao university campuses and the rising popularity of cosmetic surgery in China and elsewhere in Asia.