An ambitious revisionist challenge to Edward Said's concept of
Orientalism. Chert (East Asian Language and Literature/Ohio State
Univ.) advances the notion that the influence and presence of
Western culture and ideas in China can't be dismissed simply as yet
another instance of Western hegemony and cultural imperialism. To
make her case, she meticulously scrutinizes several cross-cultural
intersections in contemporary China. One chapter is devoted to the
1988 Chinese TV series He Shang, which the author writes was
"widely noted..for its positive image of a scientific and modern
West." However, she notes that it would be a mistake to see this as
an instance of Western cultural imperialism, that the show's
writers reinvented for their own purposes Western ideological
constructs in the service of an essentially Chinese political
debate and that, in the end, the effect of the show was profoundly
liberating. In "The Occidental Theater," she explores how
Shakespeare, Ibsen, and Brecht have been performed and received by
audiences in China, making the point that, translated into Chinese
and performed in 20th-century China, they become new plays,
appropriated by Chinese culture as much as they are imposed upon
China by an allegedly alien Western culture. Whether discussing
theater or the relationship between menglong poetry in post-Mao
China and European modernism, Chen argues for a more fluid
understanding of how Eastern and Western cultures cross-pollinate,
making the point that it is often difficult to predict which
influences will be politically oppressive and which liberating.
There are, however, some lapses in consistency. In the final
chapter, she paints the West as a superimposing, patriarchal
"surrogate" father who stands guardedly behind the "domestic
father" of China against any possibility of gender liberation of
their Chinese daughters. This is an arguable point, but it's surely
inconsistent with the central thesis of the book and leads one to
wonder if Chert isn't engaging in a bit of Occidentalism herself.
Minor problems, and a thick theoretical vocabulary aside, Chen's
thesis is fundamentally sound, supportable, and intellectually
challenging. (Kirkus Reviews)
In the first comprehensive study of Occidentalism in post-Mao
China, Xiaomei Chen offers an insightful account of the
unremittingly favorable depiction of Western culture and its
negative characterization of Chinese culture in post-Mao China from
1978-1988. She examines the cultural and political interrelations
between the East and West from a vantage point more complex than
that accommodated by most current theories of Western imperialism
and colonialism. Going beyond Edward Said's construction in
Orientalism of cross-cultural appropriations as a defining facet of
Western imperialism, Chen argues that the appropriation of Western
discourse - what she calls "Occidentalism" - can actually have a
politically and ideologically liberating effect on contemporary
non-Western culture. She maintains that simplistic allegations of
Orientalism frequently found in current critical discourses
seriously underestimate the complexities of intercultural and
multicultural relationships. Occidentalism presents a new model of
comparative literary and cultural studies that reenvisions
cross-cultural appropriation. It will be indispensable to future
discussions of Orientalism, Occidentalism, and postcolonialism, as
well as subaltern studies, Asian studies, comparative literature,
cultural studies, and non-Western drama.
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