Sinophone Utopias: Exploring Futures Beyond the China Dream

Riemenschnitter, Andrea; Imbach, Jessica; Jaguscik, Justyna (eds.) (2023). Sinophone Utopias: Exploring Futures Beyond the China Dream. Cambria Sinophone World Series. Amherst, New York: Cambria Press

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This study examines the vibrant space of Chinese and Sinophone cultural negotiations between state and grassroots utopianist discourses and teases out both the declining and emergent visions for the future as embedded in the analyzed literary narratives and visual representations. It probes the cultural reverberations of pertinent utopian discourses and debates, asking which kinds of "existential utopias" are arising from the crisis-ridden realities in China and the Sinosphere-and how they are configured differently. The book investigates the aesthetic legacies of past utopian projects, illuminating the minor, hybrid utopian fantasies as grassroots responses, or echoes to the current, large-scale ideological refashioning project under Xi Jinping's leadership, and arguing that while they, too, engage with local and Western utopian discourses, in particular Confucianism, Daoist nature philosophy, Marxism, Maoism, Enlightenment thought, economic developmentalism, and science-based rationalism, their tactics are to fuse, subvert and intersect them with alternative concepts and values, thus staging critical interventions comprising local, environmental, posthuman, queer, or feminist orientations. This book delves into Chinese utopian thought by focusing on its reappearance, in multiple shapes, in contemporary cultural representations (art, performance, literature, film, garden concepts, rural reconstruction projects etc.) rather than on the philosophical and historical (utopianist) roots of Chinese modernity. It demonstrates where, and how, bottom-up engagement for a better future is flourishing in Chinese and Sinophone contexts, and studies in which aesthetically articulated ways the expectations of intellectuals, creative workers, and social activists reach out beyond the currently circulating, state-issued futurologies.

Item Type:	Book (Edited Volume)
Division/Institute:	06 Faculty of Humanities > Department of Linguistics and Literary Studies > Institute of Linguistics
UniBE Contributor:	Jaguscik, Justyna Aleksandra
Subjects:	300 Social sciences, sociology & anthropology 700 Arts 800 Literature, rhetoric & criticism > 890 Other literatures
ISBN:	9781621966463
Series:	Cambria Sinophone World Series
Publisher:	Cambria Press
Language:	English
Submitter:	Justyna Aleksandra Jaguscik
Date Deposited:	12 Apr 2023 06:46
Last Modified:	12 Apr 2023 06:46
Uncontrolled Keywords:	China, Utopia, World Literature, Sinophone, Chinese Society
URI:	https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/181654