Lightness of Being in China

This study investigates how ideological discourses in China, especially the national-culture and social-class discourses, dictate cinematic and theatrical figuration. It focuses on a few groups of figures, on screen or stage, to explore their changes (refigurations) as they are adapted from literary texts. It illustrates how social and cultural concerns, at various moments in recent Chinese history, wrestle with each other for an ideologically figurative genesis. Providing insightful contextual overviews supported by the richness of textual details, the study promotes an educated understanding of recent Chinese representation, especially that in cinema.

Autorentext

The Author: Harry H. Kuoshu, aka Haixin Xu, is Assistant Professor of Cinema Studies and Modern Languages at Northeastern University. He received his Ph.D. from Cornell University. In addition to articles on cinema and Chinese studies in professional journals, he co-translated Laughing Lost in the Mountains: Poems of Wang Wei and Cinema and Desire: Feminist Marxism and Cultural Politics in the Work of Dai Jinhua.