The Question of Women in Chinese Feminism

495 Pages·2004·1.951 MB·English

by  Tani E. Barlow

The Question of
Women in Chinese
Feminism
Next Wave: New Directions in Women’s Studies
A series edited by Inderpal Grewal, Caren Kaplan, and Robyn Wiegman
T H E Q U E S T I O N O F
W O M E N I N C H I N E S E
F E M I N I S M
Tani E. Barlow
duke university press Durham and London 2004
∫ 2004 Duke University Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper $
Typeset in Quadraat by Keystone Typesetting, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear
on the last printed page of this book.
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
1 History and Catachresis 15
2 Theorizing ‘‘Women’’ 37
3 Foundations of Progressive Chinese Feminism 64
4 Woman and Colonial Modernity in the
Early Thought of Ding Ling 127
5 Woman under Maoist Nationalism in the
Thought of Ding Ling 190
6 Socialist Modernization and the Market
Feminism of Li Xiaojiang 253
7 Dai Jinhua, Globalization, and 1990s
Poststructuralist Feminism 302
Conclusion 355
Appendix to Chapter 1: Historiography
and Catachresis 365
Notes 373
Works Cited 443
Index 471

Acknowledgments
T
his project became a book over the course of many years. Irene Eber,
Charlotte Furth, Howard Goldblatt, Gary Hamilton, Marilyn Young,
Wolfgang Kubin, and Don Price read some or all of the earliest por-
tions of the research. During the 1990s, I found interlocutors in two
long-lived, Bay Area reading groups. In Inderpal Grewal’s ‘‘Feminism and
Nationalism,’’ I voiced my characteristic themes of the historical cata-
chresis, the peripheralization of the sign, and the problematics of colonial
modernity. I have developed these positions in various other venues over
the 1990s. In Donald M. Lowe’s ‘‘Marxism and Postmodernity’’ reading
group, which ran concurrently, a sustained, critical, reading of Derrida
allowed me to begin reframing historical and historiographic concerns
that had preoccupied me in graduate school. Also during those years, Renli
Wang read Chen Hongmou with me. Angela Zito, Jing Wang, Judith Far-
quhar, Jim Hevia, Wolfgang Kubin, Li Tuo, Francine Winddance Twine, Yi-
tsi Mei Feuerwerker, and Dorsey Green all encouraged me to complete the
book. I appreciate their unwillingness to accept anything less.
After I drafted the manuscript, Hiroko Sakamoto, Meng Yue, Jacqueline
Berman, Dai Jinhua, David Palumbo-Liu, Uta Poiger, Li Xiaojiang, Deborah
Porter, and Yi-tsi Mei Feuerwerker each carefully examined chapters where
their expertise could best enrich my views and rectify errors. I acknowledge
with appreciation the library support of Wenbing Peng, Brian Hammer,
Scott Edward Harrison, Paul Walker, Sumei Yi, and Mengliang Zhang at the
University of Washington, and the manuscript editing skills of Brian Ham-
mer, Riki Thompson, and Tamiko Nimura during the process of revision.
Liu Bohong, Dora Dien, Helen May Schneider, Tu Shaojun, Raoul David
Findeisen, Lau Kin Chi, Liu Huiying, Yan Hairong, and Wang Zheng en-
sured that I found sources I needed. Christina Gilmartin, Chia-lin Tao
Hiroko Sakamoto, and Chen Liwei answered my questions of fact. Claudia
Pozzana and Alessandro Russo organized a 1999 seminar at the Project for
Critical Asian Studies that proved a good reminder of the pleasures of
collective reading. The Modern Girl Research cluster, at the University
of Washington, Priti Ramamurthy, Uta Poiger, Lynn Thomas, Madeleine
Dong, and Alys Weinbaum, provided companionship as did Jean Allman,
Susan Porter Benson, Dina Copelman and David Roedigger at the Univer-
sity of Missouri-Columbia History Department. I gratefully acknowledge
the support of Susan Je√ords, associate dean of social sciences at the
University of Washington, and Judith Howard, department chair, for ar-
ranging a research quarter that allowed me to complete the draft. I have
been improved as a scholar and a friend over the many years of intellectual
companionship that Yukiko Hanawa and Jing Wang have extended to me.
Reynolds Smith was everything I imagined in an editor, and his legend-
ary patience and kindness meant the readers he enlisted were superb. This
book is far stronger than it would otherwise have been on account of the
insight, persistence, and scholarly judgment of the Duke University Press
readers. I am grateful to Lisa Rofel who has allowed me to thank her by
name. I also acknowledge with appreciation the intentional and, some-
times, unintended contributions of others. Ding Ling warned me about the
veracity of historical archives. Dai Jinhua provided manuscripts and new
publications during the drafting of chapter 7. Zhang Jingyuan confirmed to
me how she had translated key texts of French feminism into Chinese
during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Joan Scott’s intellectual probity
and kindness have clarified my vision from the outset and contributed im-
measurably to this project. The unfolding work of Gayatri C. Spivak and
my engagement with it have brought welcome pleasure. At the Institute
for Gender Studies of the Ochanomizu Women’s University and at Hitot-
subashi University in 2000–2001, I presented several portions of this work
to colleagues. I am grateful for the responses of Tokyo scholars, par-
ticularly Hiroko Sakamoto, Akiyama Yoko, Masaki Miyao, and Ruri Ito. At
the Press, Justin Faerber improved the manuscript with his meticulous
reading.
Whatever in the long run I have succeeded in doing here, as elsewhere, I
feel gratitude most strongly of all to my beloved partner, Donald M. Lowe,
for his persistent belief in me and for his unstinting intellectual contribu-
tions to this book from beginning to end.
November 2003
viii Acknowledgments
The Question of
Women in Chinese
Feminism