Making Space for the Maid

Chinese television dramas over the past decades have seen the rise and decline of various narratives, but no other narratives speak to the emerging urban middle class's fear and anxiety more palpably than the stories of the maid. However, despite the growing popularity of the maid stories among urban viewers, most of these stories do not resonate with domestic workers themselves. How do we make sense of the growing popularity of the maid stories among urban viewers? And how do we account for the differentiated capacity to resonate and identify with the characters among viewers? These are important questions to consider if one is to understand the new cultural politics of power and social formations in post-Mao China. In this paper, I explore some of the crucial ways in which a controlling gaze is facilitated and naturalised by the visualisation of place and space in these dramas. Then, through both critical analyses and engaged ethnography, I demonstrate how two sets of controlling gaze—everyday and televisual—reinforce and justify each other. Finally, I advance the concept of “peripheral vision,” which, I show, denies the modernist “master” narrative of the city and, instead, empowers the subaltern figure with an epistemological position of “eye-witness” and anthropologist of the city.     

Politics beyond identity: reconsidering the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland

The Northern Irish civil rights movement, like other minority or subaltern struggles, has been interpreted in terms of the national minority’s struggle for state recognition. Such frameworks emphasise the importance of identity in political conflict and tend to assume the state as guarantor of the recognition of identity. The difficulty here is that political possibilities that exceed the terms of identity and the state are obscured. Moreover, the interpretation of the Northern Irish conflict in these terms forms part of the consociational approach to conflict resolution which operates as normative underpinning to the post-conflict state. This article provides an alternative interpretation of the political significance of the civil rights movement. Rather than assuming the analytical usefulness and political significance of identity, I seek to trace the tension between identity and disidentification within the movement, drawing attention to the ways in which activists were aware of, and sought to respond to, the dangers of identity politics.     

论张炜长篇小说《你在高原》的底层叙述

作者从底层视角切入长篇巨制小说《你在高原》,探讨了底层民众在革命时代、后革命时代的历史遭际以及社会现实层面的苦难与无告,以及作家在这种底层叙述中所凸现出来的知识分子的社会使命感、人文救赎情怀以及道德理想主义的"失落"。     

底层弱者的“武器”：个体表演、例外话语和身体暴力

相较印度及东南亚,中国底层政治有其在地化特色,即主要依赖个体表演、例外话语和身体暴力作为弱者的“武器”：采用个体表演的公开极化形式而非社群的集体抗争或者个体的隐藏文本;例外话语用来指认逍遥法外的他者而不非寻求对自我的法外开恩;身体暴力是弱者暴力和自我暴力而非强者暴力和他者暴力。     

寄往中国的信:《白虎》中庶民的倾诉欲望

以七封寄往中国的虚拟信函作载体,当代印度英语作家阿迪加的布克奖小说《白虎》刻画了一个有着强烈倾诉欲望却又得不到倾听的印度青年形象。从整体上看,倾诉对象的状态影响着主人公巴拉姆的言说表现:倾诉对象的缺失让他欲诉无门;虚假的听者让他的倾诉充满矛盾;虚构的听者则打开了他的心扉。他的经历充分表明,印度庶民并非不能言说,而是无人倾听他们的诉求。从倾诉与倾听角度来看,后殖民文学批评需要更加重视倾听的作用和价值。     

Ethnosemiotics: Some personal and theoretical reflections

The question of how individual memory fits, or more accurately, does not fit with history is at the heart of this paper on Maryse Condé’s novel Heremakhonon about Veronica Mercier, a character who was born in Guadeloupe, lived in Paris and travels to West Africa in search of an ancestry that was interrupted by slavery. Suggesting that readings that focus on Mercier as a character are limited in approach, it reads the novel as a staging of time and is attentive to the gaps between thought and speech, between memory and history, between Guadeloupe and Africa, and between women’s personal sexual pleasure and the impersonal reproductive body that interrupt the narrative. The central character’s personal quest for her African roots – for ‘niggers with ancestors’, for Africa as a singular lost object, which necessarily involves ignoring the subaltern – is nuanced by the novel’s deployment of heterogeneous time.     

从斯皮瓦克的后殖民主义解读《我母亲的自传》

作为后殖民主义理论的重要代表人物,斯皮瓦克指出了“属下”不能发声这一事实,同时将女性主义融入到自己的分析之中,揭示了殖民地女性所遭受的帝国与男性霸权的双重权利话语的压制。运用斯皮瓦克的后殖民理论,分析了《我母亲的自传》中,主人公雪拉和她的妹妹,作为属下所遭受的压迫,同时分析了主人公自身意识的觉醒,对两种压迫奋起反抗,寻求一种自我的独立。     

Therapeutic politics: critique and contestation in the post-political conjuncture

ABSTRACT

This article addresses forms of political engagement in the therapeutic field. Drawing on ethnographic research on popular psychology self-help, alternative and complementary health practices and new spiritualities, the paper takes issue with the dominant interpretation of the therapeutic as a depoliticizing force. Although this interpretation captures important facets of the phenomenon, the paper suggests that something more complex is afoot. It argues that therapeutic practices may also animate political contestation and critique, and challenge the prevailing grammar of political conflict. It substantiates this argument by identifying two modalities of politics in the therapeutic field: collective mobilization through a political party, and therapeutic practices as a form of lifestyle politics. It goes on to suggest that, together, these modalities constitute a subaltern counterpublic politicizing the political economy of health and the erosion of democratic governance. The paper concludes by suggesting that analysis of the therapeutic field may shed light on the shifting logics of political contestation at the contemporary political conjuncture.     

农业“去集体化”过程中的乡村治理与底层政治——对一段乡村历史的分层解读

本文采用底层史观的方法对中国农村去集体化进程进行了新的解读和分析。通过对江淮地区某村庄口述历史材料和文字档案材料的并置后发现,对这一事件的历史讲述存在不同层次的叙述文本。乡村共同体的隐藏文本揭示了集体化末期基层村庄的行动能力仍然是权宜而分散的,在很大程度上仍然仰仗外部局势的变化。然而在上层精英的叙述中,群众及其需要却被赋予附加的重要意义。进一步研究发现,主流历史的叙述方式与转型时期国家治理的合法性需要密切相关。     

当代中国底层社会“以身抗争”的效度和限度分析:一个“艾滋村民”抗争维权的启示

通过对鄂豫两省艾滋疫情高发区“艾滋村民”抗争的考察,笔者提出了当代中国底层社会抗争的两种社会学逻辑：求助于外的“合法抗争”和求助于内的“以身抗争”,一起形成了当代中国底层社会抗争的具有解释力、却又不同逻辑的社会学分析框架。本文考察了“以身抗争”模式的形成机理和运转规则,发现中国底层农民抗争的“非政治性”、“弱组织性”和“具体利益性”取向,“有组织”的政治抗争乃至革命性转化是不太可能的。