The Lure of the Modern: Writing Modernism in Semicolonial China, 1917-1937 / Edition 1

by Shu-mei Shih

Overview

Shu-mei Shih's study is the first book in English to offer a comprehensive account of Chinese literary modernism from Republican China. In The Lure of the Modern, Shih argues for the contextualization of Chinese modernism in the semicolonial cultural and political formation of the time. Engaging critically with theories of modernism, postcoloniality, and global and local cultural studies, Shih analyzes pivotal issues—such as psychoanalysis, decadence, Orientalism, Occidentalism, semicolonial subjectivity, cosmopolitanism, and urbanism—that were mediated by Japanese as well as Western modernisms.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520220645
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	04/20/2001
Series:	Berkeley Series in Interdisciplinary Studies of China , #1
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	440
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Shu-mei Shih is Associate Professor in East Asian Languages and Cultures, Comparative Literature, and Asian American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction
The Global and Local Terms of Chinese Modernism

PART ONE: Desiring the Modern: May Fourth Occidentalism and Japanism
1. Time, Modernism, and Cultural Power: Local Constructions
2. Evolutionism and Experimentalism: Lu Xun and Tao Jingsun
3. Psychoanalysis and Cosmopolitanism: The Work of Guo Moruo
4. The Libidinal and the National: The Morality of Decadence in Yu Dafu, Teng Gu, and Others
5. Loving the Other: May Fourth Occidentalism in the Global Context

PART TWO: Rethinking the Modern: The Beijing School
6. Modernity without Rupture: Proposals for a New Global Culture
7. Writing English with a Chinese Brush: The Work of Fei Ming
8. Gendered Negotiations with the Local: Lin Huiyin and Ling Shuhua

PART THREE: Flaunting the Modern: Shanghai New Sensationism
9. Modernism and Urban Shanghai
10. Gender, Race, and Semicolonialism: Liu Na’ou’s Urban Shanghai Landscape
11. Performing Semicolonial Subjectivity: The Work of Mu Shiying
12.Capitalism and Interiority: Shi Zhecun’s Tales of the Erotic-Grotesque

Conclusion
Semicolonialism and Culture
Appendix
Later Modernisms: The War Years and Beyond
Bibliography
Index