Identity, Gender, Nation: A Comparative Study of the Science Fiction Writings of Han Song and Xia Jia
Under the supervision of Prof. Livia Monnet
Contemporary Chinese science fiction has gained considerable attention from academics and the public in recent years. This thesis focuses on two representative Chinese science fiction writers, Han Song 韩松 (1965–) and Xia Jia 夏笳(1984–), and examines how their works critically reflect on modern (Chinese) society through three topics: identity, gender, and nation. The texts analyzed are: Han Song’s “The Passengers and The Creator 乘客与创造者” and “Beauty Hunting Guide 美女狩猎指南,” Xia Jia’s “Goodnight, Melancholy 晚安忧郁” and “A Hundred Ghosts Parade Tonight 百鬼夜行街.” Relying on theories about subjectivity and language as well as posthumanist critics, I argue in the first chapter that Han Song and Xia Jia’s writings refute the metaphysical view of self-possession and produce a critical vision of humanistic (anthropocentric) subjectivity. Based on the discussion of identity politics in Chapter One, the second chapter focuses on gender representations in “Goodnight, Melancholy” and “Beauty Hunting Guide.” I contend that these two texts reveal the social construction of gender through highly speculative storytelling. “Goodnight, Melancholy” subtly integrates the criticism of heteronormativity into the story, while “Beauty Hunting Guide” critiques the violence and inter-human consumption in modern (Chinese) society in a way similar to Lu Xun’s “A Madman’s Diary 狂人日記.” By discussing discourses about nation-state and Sinofuturism, I demonstrate in Chapter Three that Han Song and Xia Jia’s novels fully reveal the ambivalence of the concept of “Chineseness.” In a word, this thesis addresses the epistemological power of Han Song and Xia Jia’s works that allows us to reconceptualize what we understand as “reality.”
Full text: http://hdl.handle.net/1866/27037
