Abstract
In the People’s Republic of China, one of the front lines to embrace Western feminist theories was a group of scholars who were trained in foreign languages and literature, and interested in gender studies. These Chinese scholars’ translation of feminist thoughts into Mandarin Chinese and their analyses and revisions of Western feminist theories were important vehicles that helped to bring feminist thoughts from the West into China. This front line was a key factor in terms of how Western feminist theories were transferred into China. After Chinese women had the opportunity to hear and learn about feminist theories, the way in which Western feminism was received in China began to merit further investigation. In order to analyse the details of Chinese feminist literary research in an accurate way, I surveyed all the articles related to purely Western feminist literary theories in Wenyi Lilun (Literary and Artistic Theories) during the 1990s. According to my survey, this journal preferred French feminist theories in the decade immediately following the Tiananmen incident. I aim to examine how and why this phenomenon might be the result both of Communist China’s «open door policy» to welcome the West, and Chinese society’s fear of social movements.
Highlights
In the People’s Republic of China2, one of the front lines to embrace Western feminist theories3 was made up of a subset of the scholars, who were trained in foreign languages and literature and interested in gender studies4
After Chinese women had the opportunity to hear about and know feminist theories, the way Western feminism was received in China6 became worth fur
Among all the departments in Chinese academies, departments of foreign languages and literature contained the most qualified scholars to cope with theoretical texts written in Western languages
Summary
Among all the departments in Chinese academies, departments of foreign languages and literature contained the most qualified scholars to cope with theoretical texts written in Western languages Thanks to their proficiency in Western languages, upon which their Western literary studies were based, members of this department could access Western feminist theories -including Western literary feminist theories- more professionally than those in other fields. The initial feminist publications in China had almost no problems in being accepted by important presses, prestigious journals, or even mainstream mass media This was because most East Asian feminist ideology was a tool for the whole nations to modernize themselves. I chose this journal because of its academic prestige, which the fact that almost every prestigious American university’s Asian library has this journal could prove Another proof of its academic prestige was perhaps related to its early establishment and being an academic survival of the harsh Cultural Revolution. Authors of journal articles in Wenyi lilun were located almost all over the whole communist China in the 1990s9
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