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Performers of the Paternal Past: History, Female Impersonators, and Twentieth-Century Chinese Fiction

Performers of the Paternal Past: History, Female Impersonators, and Twentieth-Century Chinese... positions 15:3 Winter 2007 known Peking Opera).2 I focus on the interplay between history and female impersonators in the following novels: Ba Jin’s Torrent Trilogy (Jiliu sanbuqu, 1931, 1938, 1940);3 Wang Dulu’s Peking Chivalric Entertainer (Yanshi xialing, 1948);4 Qin Shouou’s Begonia (Qiuhaitang, 1942);5 Lilian Lee’s Farewell My Concubine (Bawang bie ji, 1985);6 and Ling Li’s Dreams Broken across China (Meng duan guanhe, 1999).7 Female impersonators in these works dramatize an aged and gendered history of China. As such, I name them “performers of the paternal past” where the word perform references both theatrical art and speech act theory.8 Often paired with paternal figures, they dramatize and visualize the past as if it were a theatrical play, but they also operate and sustain the past, as if it were a wristwatch that needed winding up. Furthermore, with their androgynous bodies, these ambiguously gendered characters represent trauma in China’s history. Drawing on Julia Kristeva’s explication of the abject in Powers of Horror, I argue that both female impersonators and the Chinese past exemplify abjection in these novels.9 The abject, like bodily excreta, is both filthy and indispensable for the subject. It lingers on the subject’s borders, at once repudiated and http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png positions asia critique Duke University Press

Performers of the Paternal Past: History, Female Impersonators, and Twentieth-Century Chinese Fiction

Chi, Ta-wei
positions asia critique , Volume 15 (3) – Dec 1, 2007
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Publisher
Duke University Press
Copyright
Copyright 2007 by Duke University Press
ISSN
1067-9847
eISSN
1527-8271
DOI
10.1215/10679847-2007-006
Publisher site
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Abstract

positions 15:3 Winter 2007 known Peking Opera).2 I focus on the interplay between history and female impersonators in the following novels: Ba Jin’s Torrent Trilogy (Jiliu sanbuqu, 1931, 1938, 1940);3 Wang Dulu’s Peking Chivalric Entertainer (Yanshi xialing, 1948);4 Qin Shouou’s Begonia (Qiuhaitang, 1942);5 Lilian Lee’s Farewell My Concubine (Bawang bie ji, 1985);6 and Ling Li’s Dreams Broken across China (Meng duan guanhe, 1999).7 Female impersonators in these works dramatize an aged and gendered history of China. As such, I name them “performers of the paternal past” where the word perform references both theatrical art and speech act theory.8 Often paired with paternal figures, they dramatize and visualize the past as if it were a theatrical play, but they also operate and sustain the past, as if it were a wristwatch that needed winding up. Furthermore, with their androgynous bodies, these ambiguously gendered characters represent trauma in China’s history. Drawing on Julia Kristeva’s explication of the abject in Powers of Horror, I argue that both female impersonators and the Chinese past exemplify abjection in these novels.9 The abject, like bodily excreta, is both filthy and indispensable for the subject. It lingers on the subject’s borders, at once repudiated and

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positions asia critique – Duke University Press

Published: Dec 1, 2007

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