Questions for Week 7★May 26

Lu, Sheldon. (2014). “Genealogies of Four Critical Paradigms in Chinese-Language Film Studies”. in Sinophone Cinemas. Edited by Audrey Yue and Olivia Khoo. UK: Palgrave McMillian. Pp.13-25

1)    Upon which points Lu has dis/agreed with Shih’s mapping of ‘Sinophone’ in relation to his survey of the critical paradigms? Or, what are his main critiques of Shih’s Sinophone? What does Lu proposes to define the Sinophone, then? Please carefully consider his arguments, and offer your own critique.

SIDE QUESTION: What do you think of his Peach Girl example?

2)    Try to re-articulate each of the four paradigms in one line. Each paradigm is necessarily situated within the time of its production and evolvement (think of SSM’s Sinophone). How has the representative scholars mentioned in these paradigms cope with the ‘diaspora’, the transnational and so forth?

CORE READING (I think all three are important but Shih’s is very fundamental; you need to spend more time on it)

Shih, Shu-mei. (2007) “Introduction”, Visuality and Identity: Sinophone articulations Across the Pacific. Berkley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. pp1-39

1)    How has SSM approached ‘the Sinophone’, through, in the first place, discussing the ‘heteroglossia’ of the Sinitic languages in tandem with ‘a monolithic China and Chinese culture’ (4-5)? What is her arguments regarding the Sinophone articulations (28-32)?

Side question: What do you think of her critique of CTHD and Ang Lee (as an Chinese American filmmaker) and Zhang Yimou (here recalling DAVID-JONES in talking about national history too) in relation to our discussions from last week?

2)    Navigate yourself through SSM’s review of visuality, pictorial turn etc. by referring to the visual theories in post-structuralism (Debord, Lyotard, Benjamin, Virilio—whose theory inspired Abbas’ ‘culture of disappearance’), and try to look into notions such as ‘spectacle’, ‘simulacra’ (per Baudrillard), stadium/punctum (per Barthes) etc. How does the debates of visuality relate to ‘global capitalist ideology’ then? Refer this set of questions to Q. No.4.

3)    What we shall learn from SSM’s emphasis on contextualization in her discussions of visuality in terms of the ‘unprecedented scattering of capitalism’ (12)?

Recalling what has been covered last week, think more of SSM’s point in taking up the issue of travelling visuality vis-à-vis the complicated formation of subjectivities (and in relation to Benedict Anderson’s ‘imagined communities’?)

How to grasp SSM’s interrogation of (multiculturalism), culturalism and authenticity?

What do you think of SSM’s debates of the value of visual media? How to grasp the ‘power differentials’ in her debates of the political economy of visuality? 

4)     How does Shih approach ‘identity’ (Martin Jay’s ‘scopic regime’ appears in Abbas’ essay too)? How to grasp the six main kinds of identities?

Minor questions:

How has she reviewed, and discussed ‘gaze’ in relation to identity (psychoanalysis; semiotics; feminism etc.), as well as spectatorship?

What do you think of her critique of identity politics, in relation to last week’s topics?

5)     How has Shih critiqued ‘Chinese diaspora’ (and differentiate from ‘overseas Chinese’/huaqiao)? Which sets of questions are raised or frameworks used? Any connecting points you could make between her critique and previous week’s readings (Ang’s hybridity)? How about ‘Chinese’ and ‘Chineseness’ then?

6)    How would the Sinophone articulations relate to visual/media, film (literary) and artistic productions of subjects?

Yue, Audrey. Khoo, Olivia. (2014). “Framing Sinophone Cinemas”. in Sinophone Cinemas. Edited by Audrey Yue and Olivia Khoo. UK: Palgrave McMillian. Pp.3-12

How would Yue and Khoo’s intro chapter help you to better position and interrogate the ‘Sinophone cinemas’, given the varied stances taken by scholars such as SSM and Lu? How to perceive the ‘paradigm shift’ in Chinese language cinema studies according to them?

Reference Readings

Shih, Shu-mei. (2013) “Introduction: What Is Sinophone Studies?”. In Sinophone Studies: a Critical Reader (Global Chinese Culture). Columbia University Press. pp1-16