Breaking Up From What?

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DC Field	Value
dc.identifier	ECF_article_1836
dc.title	Breaking Up From What?. The Corporeal Politics of Values in the Duanlie yundong (Rupture Movement)
dc.contributor.author	Pirazzoli Melinda
dc.publisher	Edizioni Ca’ Foscari - Digital Publishing
dc.type	Research Article
dc.language.iso	en
dc.identifier.uri	http://edizionicafoscari.it/en/edizioni4/riviste/annali-di-ca-foscari-serie-orientale/2019/1/breaking-up-from-what/
dc.description.abstract	This study, which provides close readings of short stories written by 朱文 (1967-), Han Dong 韩东 (1961-) and Dong Xi (1966-), major exponents of a Nanjing-based group of writers called Duanlie 断裂 (Rupture), suggests that for these writers the body is represented in terms of human capital (suzhi 素质) in a way that resonates well with what the political scientist Crawford Brough Macpherson has defined as «possessive individualism». In fact, their characters’ individual private body is for them the most important capital as well as the primary object of self-investment; they owe nothing to society; they regard personal relations as market relations breaking free from traditional kinship bonds and, finally, they regard themselves as «proprietor of themselves». What these middle-class intellectuals introduce in their writings is the newly-born middle-class consumer willing to celebrate, as Paterson says, «carnivalesque consuming bodies celebrating popular pleasures, not of the mind, but of the body» (2005, 105).
dc.relation.ispartof	Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie orientale
dc.relation.ispartof	Vol. 55 \| June 2019
dc.issued	2019-06-27
dc.dateAccepted	2019-06-11
dc.dateSubmitted	2019-04-05
dc.identifier.issn
dc.identifier.eissn	2385-3042
dc.rights	Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
dc.identifier.doi	10.30687/AnnOr/2385-3042/2019/01/012
dc.peer-review	yes
dc.subject	Body
dc.subject	Body
dc.subject	Chinese Middle-class Consumers
dc.subject	Chinese Middle-class Consumers
dc.subject	Chinese Values
dc.subject	Chinese Values
dc.subject	Possessive Individualism
dc.subject	Possessive Individualism
dc.subject	Rupture Movement
dc.subject	Rupture Movement

Research Article
open access peer reviewed

The Corporeal Politics of Values in the Duanlie yundong (Rupture Movement)

Melinda Pirazzoli Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna, Italia

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abstract

This study, which provides close readings of short stories written by 朱文 (1967-), Han Dong 韩东 (1961-) and Dong Xi (1966-), major exponents of a Nanjing-based group of writers called Duanlie 断裂 (Rupture), suggests that for these writers the body is represented in terms of human capital (suzhi 素质) in a way that resonates well with what the political scientist Crawford Brough Macpherson has defined as «possessive individualism». In fact, their characters’ individual private body is for them the most important capital as well as the primary object of self-investment; they owe nothing to society; they regard personal relations as market relations breaking free from traditional kinship bonds and, finally, they regard themselves as «proprietor of themselves». What these middle-class intellectuals introduce in their writings is the newly-born middle-class consumer willing to celebrate, as Paterson says, «carnivalesque consuming bodies celebrating popular pleasures, not of the mind, but of the body» (2005, 105).

Published

June 27, 2019

Accepted

June 11, 2019

Submitted

April 5, 2019

Language

Keywords: Rupture Movement • Possessive Individualism • Chinese Values • Chinese Middle-class Consumers • Body

permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/AnnOr/2385-3042/2019/01/012

Copyright: © 2019 Melinda Pirazzoli. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

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