Deracinating ethnic minors: the affect of authoritarian certitude

Abstract

ABSTRACT The figure of the ethnic minor is a heavily inscribed representational subject in PRC cinema. Coming out of a socialist cinematic tradition as images of thoroughly assimilated, phlegmatic adults-in-waiting, the portrayal of ethnic children in PRC cinema today assumes more nuances as an art-house cinema verité aesthetics demands ethnic children enact their social presence in a complex network of social relations fraught with the tension between modernity and tradition, identity structures and their restructures. This paper examines two 2018 films about ethnic minors in Tibet and the Uyghur region of China—Wangdrak’s Rain Boots by Lhapal Gyal and A First Farewell by Wang Lina, respectively. Through the lenses of what Félix Guattari calls “partial subjectivity” and the “social machine,” the article demonstrates how the two films portray weather forecast and linguistic ability in Mandarin Chinese as socializing conduit of Chinese state power and produce for the ethnic children an affect of authoritarian certainty. The paper argues that those two films critique the PRC’s current ethnopolitical strategies in the said regions, which place a premium on a monoglot and monovocal articulation of a pan-Chinese identity at the cost of impoverishing a polyvocal ethno-social reality.