Stateless Subjects : : Chinese Martial Arts Literature and Postcolonial History / / Petrus Liu.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Cornell University Press Archive Pre-2000
• VerfasserIn: Liu, Petrus,
• Place / Publishing House: Ithaca, NY : : Cornell University Press, , [2012]; ©2012
• Year of Publication: 2012
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (300 p.)

Known in the West primarily through poorly subtitled films, Chinese martial arts fiction is one of the most iconic and yet the most understudied form of modern sinophone creativity. Current scholarship on the subject is characterized by three central assumptions against which this book argues: first, that martial arts fiction is the representation of a bodily spectacle that historically originated in Hong Kong cinema; second, that the genre came into being as an escapist fantasy that provided psychological comfort to people during the height of imperialism; and third, that martial arts fiction reflects a patriotic attitude that celebrates the greatness of Chinese culture, which in turn is variously described as the China-complex, colonial modernity, essentialized identity, diasporic consciousness, anxieties about globalization, or other psychological and ideological difficulties experienced by the Chinese people.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- Introduction Stateless Subjects -- Chapter 1 The Vicissitudes of Anticolonial Nationalism -- Chapter 2 Women and Martial Arts Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’s Marital, Martial, and Marxian Problems -- Chapter 3 The Permanent Arms Economy Jin Yong’s Historical Fiction and the C old War in Asia -- Chapter 4 Jin Yong’s Islam in the Chinese Cultural Revolution -- Chapter 5 A Tale of Two Chinas Gu Long and Anomalous Colonies -- Bibliography -- Index