CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2017
| Author | Zhang, Qingfei |
|---|---|
| Title | The Rise of Queer Occidentalism as a Counter-Discourse in 21st Century China |
| Summary | My previous article has argued queer Occidentalism as as an official discourse employed by the government apparatus to defend sexual conservatism and to resist Western influences in Maoist and early post-Mao China. In the 21st century, China’s changed cultural and political milieu has not only set a new trend but also given new meaning to queer Occidentalism. Against this background, my MA thesis aims to reconceptualize queer Occidentalism in relation to the context of 21st century China, and to recount the rise of queer Occidentalism as a counter-discourse. It argues that Chinese Occidentalism has undergone a double ‘queer turn’ – on the one hand, the images of the (once superior) ‘West’ are queered/queried by domestic popular cultural products with the surge of Chinese new nationalism; and on the other, the ‘West’ is (re)appropriated by queer writers and activists as a liberating force. This double turn gives rise to queer Occidentalism as a counter-discourse against Western imperialism and domestic repressive forces, respectively. By situating the activist discourse of queer Occidentalism within the trans-Atlantic cultural flow and the politics of homonationalism, the thesis aims not only to conduct a critique on queer Occidentalism as activist discourse, but also to show how Occidentalism and Orientalism are mutually informed and disrupted. With the rise of nationalism and anti-imperialism, Occidentalism reveals itself to be a lasting and continual struggle between ‘Western’ discourses about the ‘West’ and the ‘East’ masqueraded as international or universal, and ‘Eastern’ (re)construction of the ‘West’. In doing so, the study not only problematizes the established definition of Occidentalism as ‘stylized images of the West’ (Carrier 2003, 1), but questions Occidentalism as a project that can ever be settled or accomplished as an ‘Oriental’ discourse in the 21st century. |
| Supervisor | Erzsébet Barát |
| Department | Gender Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2017/zhang_qingfei.pdf |
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