Desire and Fictional Narrative in Late Imperial China

Desire and Fictional Narrative in Late Imperial China PDF

Author: Martin W. Huang

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2020-03-23

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 1684173574

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"In this new study of desire in Late Imperial China, Martin Huang argues that the development of traditional Chinese fiction as a narrative genre was closely related to changes in conceptions of the fundamental nature of desire. He further suggests that the rise of vernacular fiction during the late Ming dynasty should be studied in the context of contemporary debates on desire, along with the new and complex views that emerged from those debates.Desire and Fictional Narrative in Late Imperial China shows that the obsession of authors with individual desire is an essential quality that defines traditional Chinese fiction as a narrative genre. Thus the maturation of the genre can best be appreciated in terms of its increasingly sophisticated exploration of the phenomenon of desire."

Empire of Liberty

Empire of Liberty PDF

Author: Anthony Bogues

Publisher: UPNE

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 169

ISBN-13: 1584659300

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An original and stimulating critique of American empire

Subjectivity and the Reproduction of Imperial Power

Subjectivity and the Reproduction of Imperial Power PDF

Author: Daniel F. Silva

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-09-19

Total Pages: 269

ISBN-13: 1317443381

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This book brings forth a new contribution to the study of imperialism and colonial discourse by theorizing the emergence and function of individual identity as product and producer of imperial power. While recent decades of theoretical reflections on imperialism have yielded important understandings of how the West has repeatedly reconsolidated its power, this book seeks to grasp the complex role of subjectivity in reformulating the terms of imperial domination from early modern European expansion to late capitalism. This entails approaching Empire as a constantly shifting system of differences and meanings as well as an ontological project, a mode of historical writing, and economy of desire that repeatedly envelops the subject into the realm of western power. The analysis of an array of literary texts and cultural artifacts is undertaken by means of a theoretically eclectic approach – drawing on psychoanalysis, post-structuralism, postcolonial theory, and Marxism – with the aim of forwarding current knowledge of Empire while also contributing to different branches of critical theory. In exploring the formation of imperial subjectivity in different historical moments, Silva raises new questions related to the signification of otherness in European expansion and colonial settlement, slavery and eugenics in post-independence Americas, and late capitalist circulation of bodies and commodities. The volume also covers a broad range of geo-cultural spaces in order to locate western power in time and space. This book’s diversity in terms of approach, historical scope, and cultural contexts makes it a useful tool for research and teaching among students and scholars of disciplines including Postcolonial Studies, Colonial History, Literature, and Globalization.

Dancing Fear and Desire

Dancing Fear and Desire PDF

Author: Stavros Stavrou Karayanni

Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press

Published: 2009-08-03

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 1554587190

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Throughout centuries of European colonial domination, the bodies of Middle Eastern dancers, male and female, move sumptuously and seductively across the pages of Western travel journals, evoking desire and derision, admiration and disdain, allure and revulsion. This profound ambivalence forms the axis of an investigation into Middle Eastern dance—an investigation that extends to contemporary belly dance. Stavros Stavrou Karayanni, through historical investigation, theoretical analysis, and personal reflection, explores how Middle Eastern dance actively engages race, sex, and national identity. Close readings of colonial travel narratives, an examination of Oscar Wilde’s Salome, and analyses of treatises about Greek dance, reveal the intricate ways in which this controversial dance has been shaped by Eurocentric models that define and control identity performance.

Transmutations of Desire

Transmutations of Desire PDF

Author: Qiancheng Li

Publisher: The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press

Published: 2020-11-15

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 9882371221

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In the West, love occupies center stage in the modern age, whether in art, intellectual life, or the economic life. We may observe a similar development in China, on its own impetus, which has resulted in this characteristic of modernity--this feature of modern life has been securely and unambiguously established, not the least facilitated by the thriving of literature about qing, whether in traditional or modern forms. Qiancheng Li concentrates on the nuances of a similar trend manifested in the Chinese context. The emphasis is on critical readings of the texts that have shaped this trend, including important Ming- and Qing-dynasty works of drama, Buddhist texts and other religious/philosophical works, in all their subtlety and evocative power. "The power of qing or strong emotion is a major theme in late imperial Chinese literature--some writers asserting that it can transcend even life itself. Qiancheng Li surveys a number of seventeenth-century philosophical, religious, and literary texts to elucidate the metaphysical aspects of emotional attachment and of sexual desire in particular. Through his broad and penetrating reading, Li demonstrates incontrovertibly how, to seventeenth-century writers, qing and religion were inextricably linked. To those writers, qing could bring enlightenment, and certainly Li’s study enlightens its readers to new levels of complexity in major literary works of that period. Transmutations of Desire sets a major new milestone in the study of traditional Chinese culture."--Robert E. Hegel, Washington University in St. Louis

Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power

Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power PDF

Author: Ann Laura Stoler

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13: 9780520231115

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Looking at the way cultural competencies and sensibilities entered into the construction of race in the colonial context, this text proposes that 'cultural racism' in fact predates its postmodern discovery.

Tropics of Desire

Tropics of Desire PDF

Author: Jose Quiroga

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2000-11

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 0814769535

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From its sweaty beats to the pulsating music on the streets, Latin/o America is perceived in the United States as the land of heat, the toy store for Western sex. It is the territory of magical fantasy and of revolutionary threat, where topography is the travel guide of desire, directing imperial voyeurs to the exhibition of the flesh. Jose Quiroga flips the stereotype upside down: he shows how Latin/o American lesbians and gay men have consistently eschewed notions of sexual identity for a politics of intervention. In Tropics of Desire, Quiroga reads hesitant Mexican poets as sex-positive voices, he questions how outing and identity politics can fall prey to the manipulations of the state, and explores how invisibility has been used as a tactical tool in opposition to the universal imperative to come out. Drawing on diverse cultural examples such as the performance of bolero and salsa, film, literature, and correspondence, and influenced by masters like Roland Barthes, Walter Benjamin and a rich tradition of Latin American stylists, Quiroga argues for a politics that denies biological determinism and cannibalizes cultural stereotypes for the sake of political action.

Imperial Physique

Imperial Physique PDF

Author: JH Phrydas

Publisher: punctum books

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 159

ISBN-13: 1950192539

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"Imperial Physique is a collection of stories about how bodies talk without words. They explore the way our bodies hover between animal and human, civil and wild.... Paired with these stories are essays on queer embodiment, figuration, and plasticity that emerged through conversations with somatic psychologists, art therapists, and poets...." -- back cover

Imperial Island

Imperial Island PDF

Author: Charlotte Lydia Riley

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2024

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 0674258495

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After the Second World War, Britain's overseas empire disintegrated. But over the next seventy years, empire came to define Britain and its people as never before. Drawing on a mass of new research, Riley tells a story of immigration and exclusion, social strife and cultural transformation. It is the story that best explains Britain today.