New Formations
1 primary work
Book 40
"Culture/China" is as elusive in its possible meanings as it is general. It is a political project which acknowledges - without engaging in - controversies of ownership and location. The issue takes part in diasporic negotiations with China, with Chineseness and with the politics of not being Chinese. What does it mean to be Chinese in terms of community, identity, politics and relationships wherever you live? These negotiations are understood through their cultural formations: language, the Internet, television, metaphor, food, painting, fashion and film. The book also questions the supposed multiculturalism of many societies, where, notwithstanding the rhetoric of inclusiveness, dominant cultures arrest the development of their constituent others. Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, the USA and the UK (and China itself) are some of the examples that emerge here.