Rethinking Chineseness: Translational Sinophone Identities in th ...

The parallel between academic and political economies does not stop at the level of what works, be it in the form of cultural or financial capital. Both are marked, as well, by a recurrent symptom, the habitually adamant insistence on Chineseness as the distinguishing trait in what otherwise purport to be mobile, international practices. Just as socialism, modernization, or nationalism at the level of realpolitik have been regularly supplemented by the word Chinese frequently used to modify general, theoretical issues such as modernity, modernism, feminism, poetic tradition, novels, gay and lesbian issues, film theory, cultural studies, and so forth. One can almost be certain that, once a new type of discourse gains currency among academics at large, academics working on China-related topics will sooner or later produce a “Chinese” response to it that would both make use of the opportunity for attention made available by the generality of the theoretical issue at hand and deflect it by way of historical and cultural characteristics that are specific to China.⁴⁷

Chineseness produced as a response does not accurately describe and depict the genealogy of the term and the experience of the subject under its influence. Instead, it occupies the position of the Other, which is in opposition to the theory or ism that privileges the West as the embodiment of “original” forms and structures. A more productive approach to the construction of Chineseness is to reconceptualize Chineseness as an existing state that focuses on local realities and structures rather than thinking of it as a reaction in opposition to the structures and meanings of the west. Chow suggested in Writing Diaspora that the role of the diaspora carries the productive potential to shatter the fixity and essentialism harbored by the conventional notion of Chineseness. For Chow, diasporic subjects carry the potential “to unlearn that submission to one’s ethnicity such as ‘Chineseness’ as the ultimate signified.”⁴⁸ Instead of attempting to preserve one’s ethnicity, one begins by first unlearning the given assumptions of what “being Chinese” signifies and by next practicing negotiation of one’s ethnicity within the context of one’s environment and experience.