This study provides a critical inquiry into the textual (self-)representations of Chinese females’ perception and experience of “women’s liberation” in 1949-1966 Chinese women’s autobiographical and fictional writings. Through historical and textual analyses, it looks into Chinese women’s multiple textual/discursive practices and their subjectivities constituted in the process. These narrative practices are treated as salient sites of women’s struggle for self-understanding, self-liberating as well as self-inventing in their own specific social and cultural conditions. The study aims to disclose the complexity of the discursive field centering on the topic of socialist women’s liberation and the dynamic interplay between different female authors and the socialist political/gender discourses within 1949-1966 socialist cultural public sphere. The thesis first examines the autobiographical, first-person female narratives appeared on three Fulian(Women’s Federation)–sponsored national and local women’s magazines: Women of China (中国妇女), Beijing Women (北京妇女), and Modern Women (现代妇女). It probes into how female narrators, from different social backgrounds, understand and restructure in their writings their past and present lives in terms of (public) labor, female freedom and new social identification. Secondly, the thesis investigates fictions and plays by female writers, which provide historically-specific gendered perspectives to the issue of “women’s liberation” as well as women’s position in and their relationship with socialism. It explores women’s perception of public and domestic labor, their formation of collective identities in the process of socialist construction, their gender struggle with and contestation to the persistent ideology of patriarchy in the new social order, all of which are revealed in their literary practices. This thesis argues that in these different sorts of writings, the representations of experience of “women’s liberation” are intimately related, but not identical, to the state-sanctioned conceptual and discursive framework. Socialist political and gender discourses actually exert unpredictable, diffuse, locally and individually contingent effects on Chinese women who actively engage in different forms of writing. The self-perception and self-fashioning represented in these women’s cultural practices are enabled by, but may also go beyond, the revolutionary language or state-inflected discourses, indicating more complicated and specific meanings of Chinese socialist ideologies and practices for individual women. Different writers choose or abandon, appropriate or dis-employ, embrace or interrogate, be close to or keep at a distance certain socialist political and gender discourses, in order to forge and interpret women’s experience from their own specific contexts. They may be empowered by the revolutionary discourses and rhetoric, yet they do not identify themselves as mere passive beneficiaries of the socialist regime, but as active agents in their self-liberation and self-transformation. It is in this process that their different subjectivities are constituted, their agency created and asserted. / published_or_final_version / Comparative Literature / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

 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. / published_or_final_version / Comparative Literature / Master / Master of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Chinese / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / abstract / Chinese / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

王艷杰. / "2004年9月". / 論文(哲學碩士)--香港中文大學, 2004. / 參考文獻 (leaves 166-196). / 附中英文摘要. / "2004 nian 9 yue". / Wang Yanjie. / Lun wen (zhe xue shuo shi)--Xianggang Zhong wen da xue, 2004. / Can kao wen xian (leaves 166-196). / Fu Zhong Ying wen zhai yao. / Chapter 第一章 --- 緒論 --- p.1 / Chapter 第一節 --- 硏究範圍 --- p.1 / Chapter 第二節 --- 前人硏究綜述 --- p.8 / Chapter 第三節 --- 硏究方法. --- p.13 / Chapter 第四節 --- 硏究目的和意義 --- p.17 / Chapter 第二章 --- 「個人化寫作」的命名 ´ؤ´ؤ潛藏于批評話語中的男性權威 --- p.21 / Chapter 第一節 --- 命名中的問題. --- p.21 / Chapter 第二節 --- 「個人化寫作」的幾類理解 --- p.25 / Chapter 1. --- 無名狀態下的「個人化寫作」 / Chapter 2. --- 現代性意義上的「個人化寫作」 / Chapter 3 . --- 后現代意義上的「個人化寫作」 / Chapter 第三節 --- 女性「個人化寫作」 --- p.36 / Chapter 1. --- 九十年代文學環境與女性寫作 / Chapter 2. --- 女性「私」人化寫作的指認 / Chapter 3. --- 批評中的性別立場和男性權威 / Chapter 第三章 --- 陳染、林白「個人化寫作」中的女性話語 ´ؤ´ؤ對失蹤性別的尋找與建構 --- p.51 / Chapter 第一節 --- 話語權力之思 --- p.51 / Chapter 第二節 --- 身份書寫 --- p.56 / Chapter 1. --- 對男權文化的警覺與放逐 / Chapter 2. --- 對女性身份的認知與自覺 / Chapter 第三節 --- 軀體寫作 --- p.67 / Chapter 1. --- 自戀情結：身體與存在焦慮的映射 / Chapter 2. --- 記憶空間：挖掘女性自身的深度模式 / Chapter 第四節 --- 自傳體寫作 --- p.87 / Chapter 1. --- 成長之路：孤獨的體驗、叛逆與反思 / Chapter 2. --- 女性私語：自我訴¨®Ơ與建立女性話語同盟的努力 / Chapter 第四章 --- 陳染、林白「個人化寫作」建構女性話語的困境 ´ؤ´ؤ處於傳統與現實的夾縫之中 --- p.105 / Chapter 第一節 --- 精神分裂的宿命 --- p.105 / Chapter 1. --- 決絶的思想與虛幻的行動 / Chapter 2. --- 姐妹情誼的想象與徒勞 / Chapter 3. --- 拒絶異化與再度異化 / Chapter 第二節 --- 詩性敍事的窘迫 --- p.119 / Chapter 1. --- 叛離男性敍事傳統 / Chapter 2. --- 進入女性原生姿態的詩性表達 / Chapter 3. --- 詩性敍事在建立女性話語上的權宜性 / Chapter 第三節 --- 解構男權話語的循環 --- p.138 / Chapter 1. --- 解構的歧途 / Chapter 2. --- 超性別意識中的悖論 / Chapter 3. --- 搖擺於文學與主義之間 / Chapter 第五章 --- 結論 --- p.154 / Chapter 第一節 --- 女性「個人化寫作」的迷失與俗化 --- p.154 / Chapter 1. --- 差異性：陳染、林白「個人化寫作」的分別 / Chapter 2. --- 迷失：陳染、林白「個人化寫作」的轉向 / Chapter 3. --- 俗化：衛慧、棉棉等人的欲望化寫作 / Chapter 第二節 --- 女性「個人化寫作」的經驗及貢獻 --- p.159 / Chapter 1. --- 寫作姿態：爲自己的性別和反抗而寫作 / Chapter 2. --- 敍事策略：以身體修辭與自傳寫作建構女性話語 / Chapter 3. --- 困境的警醒：傳統/現實夾縫中異化的危險 / Chapter 第三節 --- 硏究方法的反思 --- p.162 / Chapter 1. --- 性別關照中的問題 / Chapter 2. --- 槪念界定中的問題 / Chapter 3. --- 文學現象探討中的問題 / 參考書目 --- p.166 / Chapter 1. --- 陳染、林白等作家作品 --- p.167 / Chapter 2. --- 女性主義、敍事學等理論著作 --- p.173 / Chapter 3. --- 中國現、當代文學硏究著作. --- p.180 / Chapter 4. --- 其他著作 --- p.184 / Chapter 5. --- 期刊論文 --- p.184 / 後記 --- p.197