Sinological-Orientalism: The Production of the West's Post -Mao China
To show this re-constitution of orientalism, I draw on Marxist and post-colonial theory in an inter-disciplinary analysis of several fields. These include Area Studies work on the Mao and 'reform' eras, from the Great Leap Forward famine to the 1989 Tiananmen event and beyond; the reception of new Chinese cinema (1984-); current work on modernity, civil society, and globalization where China serves as paradigmatic example; and U.S. media, fiction, and film, ranging from Jack London to Don DeLillo and Martin Scorsese, that offers an historicist interpretation of China. The emergence of this new orientalism---documented at length for the first time here---has multiple consequences for Cultural, American and Area Studies, and for post-colonial theory. Contra the consensus within China Studies, the Saidian problematic of orientalism is still with us, albeit in a new, more global and 'Americanized' form. But we must return to one of the primary contradictions of colonialism: that in some cases it is mandated that the 'Other' can and must become the same. And we need to engage the intertwined histories of the Cold War and post-colonialism. For this project demonstrates that Cold War discourse is a colonial discourse, and part of the new orientalism.
University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
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University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign