Library Catalog
Amazon cover image
Image from Amazon.com

Uneven Modernity : Literature, Film, and Intellectual Discourse in Postsocialist China / Haomin Gong.

By: Material type: TextTextSeries: Critical InterventionsPublisher: Honolulu : University of Hawaii Press, [2011]Copyright date: ©2012Description: 1 online resource (224 p.) : 4 b&w imagesContent type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9780824835316
  • 9780824860400
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 895.1/09005
LOC classification:
  • PL2273 .G66 2012
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources: Available additional physical forms:
  • Issued also in print.
Contents:
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: China, Uneven Development, and Global Modernity -- Chapter 1. Uneven Modernity in Postsocialist China: A Critical Inquiry -- Chapter 2. Popularization of Traditional Culture in Postsocialist China: A Study of the Yu Qiuyu Phenomenon -- Chapter 3. Constructing a Neorealist Reality: Petty Urbanites, Mundaneness, and Chi Li's Fiction -- Chapter 4. Commerce and the Critical Edge: The Politics of Postsocialist Film and the Case of Feng Xiaogang -- Chapter 5. Geopolitics in Postsocialist Art Film and Beyond: Reading Wang Xiaoshuai's Films -- Postscript: Is an "Even Modernity" Possible in China? -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index
Summary: Postsocialist China is marked by paradoxes: economic boom, political conservatism, cultural complexity. Haomin Gong's dynamic study of these paradoxes, or "unevenness," provides a unique and seminal approach to contemporary China. Reading unevenness as a problem and an opportunity simultaneously, Gong investigates how this dialectical social situation shapes cultural production. He begins his investigation of "uneven modernity" in China by constructing a critical framework of unevenness among different theoretical schools and expounding on how dialectical thinking points to a metaphysical paradox in capitalism and modernity: the inevitable tension between a constant pursuit of infinite fullness and a break of fullness (unevenness) as the means of this pursuit. In the Chinese context, this paradox is created in the "uneven developmentalism" that most manifestly characterizes the postsocialist period.Gong goes on to investigate manifestations of the dialectics of unevenness in specific cultural events. Four case studies address respectively but not exclusively literature (the prose of Yu Qiuyu), popular fiction (Chi Li's neorealist fiction), commercial cinema (the movies of Feng Xiaogang), and art-house cinema (Wang Xiaoshuai's filmmaking). Representing different aspects of cultural production in postsocialist China, these writers and directors deal with the same social condition of uneven development, and their works clearly exhibit the problematics of this age.Uneven Modernity makes a significant contribution to the burgeoning field of China studies as well as the study of uneven development in general. It addresses some of the most popular, yet understudied, cultural phenomena in contemporary China. Specialists and students will find its insights admirable and its style accessible.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9780824860400

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: China, Uneven Development, and Global Modernity -- Chapter 1. Uneven Modernity in Postsocialist China: A Critical Inquiry -- Chapter 2. Popularization of Traditional Culture in Postsocialist China: A Study of the Yu Qiuyu Phenomenon -- Chapter 3. Constructing a Neorealist Reality: Petty Urbanites, Mundaneness, and Chi Li's Fiction -- Chapter 4. Commerce and the Critical Edge: The Politics of Postsocialist Film and the Case of Feng Xiaogang -- Chapter 5. Geopolitics in Postsocialist Art Film and Beyond: Reading Wang Xiaoshuai's Films -- Postscript: Is an "Even Modernity" Possible in China? -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

restricted access online access with authorization star

http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

Postsocialist China is marked by paradoxes: economic boom, political conservatism, cultural complexity. Haomin Gong's dynamic study of these paradoxes, or "unevenness," provides a unique and seminal approach to contemporary China. Reading unevenness as a problem and an opportunity simultaneously, Gong investigates how this dialectical social situation shapes cultural production. He begins his investigation of "uneven modernity" in China by constructing a critical framework of unevenness among different theoretical schools and expounding on how dialectical thinking points to a metaphysical paradox in capitalism and modernity: the inevitable tension between a constant pursuit of infinite fullness and a break of fullness (unevenness) as the means of this pursuit. In the Chinese context, this paradox is created in the "uneven developmentalism" that most manifestly characterizes the postsocialist period.Gong goes on to investigate manifestations of the dialectics of unevenness in specific cultural events. Four case studies address respectively but not exclusively literature (the prose of Yu Qiuyu), popular fiction (Chi Li's neorealist fiction), commercial cinema (the movies of Feng Xiaogang), and art-house cinema (Wang Xiaoshuai's filmmaking). Representing different aspects of cultural production in postsocialist China, these writers and directors deal with the same social condition of uneven development, and their works clearly exhibit the problematics of this age.Uneven Modernity makes a significant contribution to the burgeoning field of China studies as well as the study of uneven development in general. It addresses some of the most popular, yet understudied, cultural phenomena in contemporary China. Specialists and students will find its insights admirable and its style accessible.

Issued also in print.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 02. Mrz 2022)