Sinophone Classicism: Chineseness as Temporal and Mnemonic Experience in the Digital Era

In recent decades, highly heterogeneous literary and artistic articulations harking back to China's classical past have gained increasing currency in the global Sinophone space and cyberspace. Instead of dismissing them as “fetishisms” or authenticating them as “Chinese traditions,” I propose “...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of Asian studies Vol. 81; no. 4; pp. 657 - 671
Main Author: Yang, Zhiyi
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: New York, USA Cambridge University Press 01.11.2022
Duke University Press, NC & IL
Subjects:
Appropriation
Asian literature
Asian studies
Associative processes
Chinese literature
Collective memory
Cultural heritage
Culture
Digital media
Fashion designers
Internet
Memories
Modernism
Modernity
Poetry
Subjectivity
Time
Traditions
China
canonicity
cultural memory
postmodernism
post-Eurocentrism
classicism
modernity
invented tradition
Sinophone
Chineseness
ISSN:0021-9118, 1752-0401
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:In recent decades, highly heterogeneous literary and artistic articulations harking back to China's classical past have gained increasing currency in the global Sinophone space and cyberspace. Instead of dismissing them as “fetishisms” or authenticating them as “Chinese traditions,” I propose “Sinophone classicism” as a new critical expression for conceptualizing this diverse array of articulations. It refers to the appropriation, redeployment, and reconfiguration of cultural memories evoking Chinese aesthetic and intellectual traditions for local, contemporary, and vernacular uses, by agents identified or self-identified as Chinese. This essay proposes a subjective, intimate, and reflexive way to experience an individual's culturally acquired “Chineseness” that is temporal, mnemonic, and often mediated by digital media. It joins recent scholarly efforts to dismantle the view of “Chinese modernity” as a monocentric and homogenous experience by refocusing on classicism as a kind of “antimodern modernism.” It also joins the post-Eurocentric turn in global academia by hinting at a future of “global classicisms.”
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ISSN:0021-9118
1752-0401
DOI:10.1017/S0021911822000596