Politicizing female subjectivity: performativity and sublimation in leftist writers Yang Mo, Xiao Hong

Abstract



The thesis deals with the concept of feminine sublimation among Chinese feminist writings and theory. Previous feminist readings of literary works of Chinese female writers tended to confuse the Freudian concept of sublimation with “aestheticized politics” and utopian desire. These feminist readings have concentrated on articulating an authentic subject beyond power relations. I would however, redefine the concept of feminine sublimation as a theoretical trope to articulate the possible emergence of female subjectivity within specific power relations.

Although gender performativity has become a universally circulated concept to theorize the subversive depiction of female bodies in particular cultural contexts, I argue that any performative reiteration would not be adequately contextualized and historicized when its usage ignores issues of female subjectivity in terms of sublimation.

Chapter one of the thesis begins with various feminist approaches to the relationship of sublimation and performativity. Chapter two re-reads a novel Song of Youth in the socialist era. The conventional conception of sublimation is re-examined contextually in a way that the consideration of gender performativity alone would not be able to do.

Through reading a canonical work of the “nationalist feminist” writer Xiao Hong, chapter three delineates the relation between my redefined concept of feminine sublimation and the possibility of political coalition, and explains how this relation provides a totally different understanding of performative reiteration. I would finally redefines the fundamental relationship between feminist subjectivity and performative politics.