Questioning the Chinese Model : : Oppositional Political Novels in Early Twenty-First Century China / / Zhansui Yu.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter EBOOK PACKAGE COMPLETE 2023 English
• VerfasserIn: Yu, Zhansui ,
• Place / Publishing House: Toronto : : University of Toronto Press, , [2023]; ©2022
• Year of Publication: 2023
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (266 p.)

In the early twenty-first century, the Chinese literary world saw an emergence of fictional works – dubbed as "oppositional political novels" – that took political articulation as their major purpose and questioned the fundamental principles and intrinsic logic of the Chinese model. Based on close readings of five representative oppositional Chinese political novels, Questioning the Chinese Model examines the sociopolitical connotations and epistemological values of these novels in the broad context of modern Chinese intellectual history and contemporary Chinese politics and society. Zhansui Yu provides a sketch of the social, political, and intellectual landscape of present-day China. He investigates the dialectic relationship between the arts and politics in the Chinese context, the mechanisms and dynamics of censorship in the age of the Internet and commercialization, and the ideological limitations of oppositional Chinese political novels. In the process of textual and social analysis, Yu extensively cites Western political philosophers, such as Hannah Arendt, Antonio Gramsci, Michel Foucault, and references well-regarded studies on Chinese literature, politics, society, and the Chinese intelligentsia. Examining oppositional Chinese political novels from multiple perspectives, Questioning the Chinese Model applies a broad range of knowledge beyond merely the literary field.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Rise of Oppositional Chinese Political Novels -- 1 Destruction of Communist Myths -- 2 Wolf Totem: Paradoxical Eulogy to a Culture -- 3 Lenin's Kisses: Absurdity, Dehumanization, and Dilemma of the Chinese Utopia -- 4 Such Is This [e-mail]: Dictatorship as a Fatal Disease -- 5 The Fat Years: Social Injustice, Forced Amnesia, Distorted Mentality, and Fascism -- 6 The Seventh Day: Dystopian Wasteland versus Modern Peach Blossom Spring -- Epilogue: Limits of Transgression and Mechanisms of Counter-Censorship -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index