Gender Representation and Modern Identity - Solving Narrative Texts of China in the Second Half of the 20th Century

Author: Wang Yu
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-03-01
Features: What is "modern identity"? Modern identity refers to the construction of the identity of modern subjects (including the subject of the nation-state and the individual subject), which is undoubtedly one of the most important cultural demands of 20th-century Chinese literature. "Gender expression" refers to the narration and interpretation of the gender symbolic meanings (gender codes) of men and women in cultural texts. That is to say, this book focuses on discourse about gender rather than gender itself. In this book, readers can explore how the cultural symbolic meanings of gender are incorporated into the framework of modern identity by discussing the expression of gender in narrative texts from mainland China in the second half of the 20th century; in other words, how the gender codes of "male" and "female" enter the field of meaning production of different periods' modern subjects, or how the former becomes the symbolic resource of the latter. The research conducted in this book is not feminist literary studies but a cultural study of feminism centered on gender (but not the only category). The research objects of this book are narrative texts from the second half of the 20th century that are quite representative and have generated significant social responses—both referring to female texts and male texts.