Dai Sijie Research Articles

Diasporic Identity in Contemporary Sinophone Literature: The Role of Language and Cultural Elements.

Amidst the contemporary diasporic landscape in Sinophone literature, this research critically examines the nexus of language, culture, and identity. The study aims to analyze literary pieces composed in Sinophone languages across diverse diasporic communities and uncover the impact of language and cultural elements on the articulation and comprehension of diasporic identity. This paper used the following. comparative and typological research, an in-depth analysis of three Sinophonic texts, and contextual analysis. The subject of the study was three texts: The Joy Luck Club (Amy Tan), Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (Dai Sijie), and The Woman Warrior (Maxine Hong Kingston). The results showed that In The Joy Luck Club, language and cultural facets unveil the characters' dual identity struggles due to living abroad, exemplified through code-switching's psychological tension. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress utilizes language and cultural details to underscore the significance of preserving heritage within the diaspora, with literary allusions amplifying this endeavor. In The Woman Warrior, language and cultural elements reflect the heroine's inner conflict as she navigates her dual cultural allegiance. This scholarly revelation deepens comprehension of how these aspects influence identity formation in the diaspora. These findings broaden the understanding of Sinophone diasporic literature, spotlighting shared trends in identity portrayal through language and culture. The research has theoretical value for literary, cultural, and anthropological studies and practical significance, potentially informing educational initiatives on diasporic literature and cultural diversity. This study's outcomes hold relevance for students, researchers, and cultural scholars exploring the role of language and culture in diasporic identity expression.

Homeward Bound Translingualism: (Re)Translating Dai Sijie’s Autonarration

Os autores migrantes que escrevem em idiomas estrangeiros são um dos efeitos mais tangíveis da globalização da literatura chinesa contemporânea em curso hoje em dia. Dai Sijie, escritor e realizador migrante chinês, escolheu o Francês para expressar sua narração da China. Em breve elese tornou um exemplo de como a presença de várias culturas dentro de um indivíduo pode se tornar uma auto-hibridação. Seu primeiro romance Balzac et la Petite Tailleuse chinoise (2000) baseia-se na experiência de Dai Sijie de banimento e conta a história de dois jovens cuja reeducação foifortemente influenciada por Romances ocidentais proibidos na China. Mas o que acontece quando um texto literário nascido como um trabalho translingual e transcultural é traduzido de volta no seu idioma (e cultura) de origem? A mediação se realiza duas vezes ou é anulada? Como esse processo influencia a representação do autor? O presente artigo responderá a essas perguntas através de uma análise comparativa entre a história e suas versões em chinês (publicado no P.R.C. e Taiwan), concentrando-se nas (re) traduções linguísticas e culturais. A “febre da literatura mundial” enfatiza a força centrífuga que empurra a literatura da China para o Ocidente, mas a globalização é um movimento circular que às vezes implica a volta para casa de uma literaridade chinesa “à prova deoeste”.

Novel, Film and the Art of Translational Storytelling: Dai Sijie's Balzac et la petite tailleuse chinoise

Abstract This article examines the novel and film Balzac et la Petite Tailleuse chinoise, by the Franco-Chinese writer and filmmaker Dai Sijie, the story of which takes place against the background of the Cultural Revolution. The first part of my analysis will make clear how the film illuminates and dramatizes the special texture, aesthetic and structure of the novel, highlighting the cinematic sensibility of Dai’s literary aesthetic. I then move on to investigate the linguistic aspects of the various translations between the novel and the film in French, Mandarin Chinese and Sichuanese. The aesthetic effects of dubbing, in particular, will allow me to investigate new possibilities of reading exophone literature. Finally, this paper highlights the central role of oral storytelling in the Chinese tradition in/through various forms of translation: interlingual as well as intermedial. In so doing, this article aims to add nuance to and enrich current debates on issues such as intercultural misreading and exoticism in Dai’s works.

The global afterlife: Sino-French literature and the politics of translation

Following the critical acclaim of Sino-French literature in recent years, an increasing number of Chinese presses have solicited translations of prize-winning novels written in French by authors of Chinese descent. Yet as the work of authors like François Cheng, Shan Sa, Ya Ding and Dai Sijie travels from French into Chinese, it also undergoes a transformation via the politics of translation and publication in China. This essay exposes the inner workings of translation between French and Chinese, as well as the politics that colour its publication and reception between France and China. The act of translating these works back into their authors’ native tongue signals a return to the national paradigms the writers initially sought to evade by writing in French. Translation here functions as a form of aggression, a forced return home that ultimately breaks with the poetic ethos that animates the original creative works.

Reading for the Planet: Toward a GeomethodologyGatekeepers: The Emergence of World Literature and the 1960s

Reading for the Planet: Toward a GeomethodologyGatekeepers: The Emergence of World Literature and the 1960s

Discursive Heterogeneity in Chinese Literature

Abstract In this paper we explore the marks of discursive heterogeneity in literary works produced in situations of language and culture contact. We analyze novels written by contemporary Chinese authors who live outside the People’s Republic of China and produce their work in English and French: Qiu Xiaolong (裘小龙) and Dai Sijie (戴思杰), respectively. We address marks of heteroglossia and discursive heterogeneity and explore the construction of the narrator and the narratee in their novels. In order to validate our analysis, we compare these authors with a Chinese writer who lives and produces his work in China: Mo Yan’s on his French and Spanish translated novels. Taking into account the discursive strategies deployed and the polyphonic marks, we demonstrate that Qiu and Dai construct Chinese narrators and Western narratees, while Mo Yan constructs Chinese narrators and narratees. In our analysis we apply notions of polyphony from Bakhtin and Ducrot, rhetoric concepts from Olbrecht-Tyteca and Per elman, the notion of discursive heterogeneity by Authier, and the discursive ethos analysis proposed by Maingueneau.

Tres puertos literarios para volver a los vínculos entre literatura, formación y escuela

This text explores the connections between literature, education and school, taking into account three literary works: Mister Pip, by Lloyd Jones, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, by Dai Sijie, and The Reader, by Bernhard Schlink. It looks into the role of literature in difficult contexts, the subjects´ power of transformation, and their connections to processes such as ethical, aesthetical and cognitive development.

EDUCAÇÃO PELA LITERATURA: BALZAC, CHARTIER E A COSTUREIRINHA CHINESA

This article presents a refl ection on the formation of the literary reader, with a reading of the fi lm Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (Balzac et la petite tailleuse chinoise, 2002, France/China, 111 minutes, directed by Dai Sijie with screenplay by Dai Sijie and Nadine Perront), based on concepts developed in the work of Roger Chartier. Studying reading as a concrete act, through the prism of the Cultural History of Reading, Chartier considers the empirical readers and practices that organize access to and contact with the texts in a given group. The formation of the reader and his/her representations and practices of reading are linked to the rules, values and beliefs of the community of readers to which he/she belongs. In the context of the fi lm, three young Chinese people form a community of readers, avoiding the reading prohibitions imposed by the Maoist government. This work seeks to understand the formation of the seamstress, the protagonist of the fi lm, as a reader of literature, based on her experiences of reading in the “community of the three friends”

Trois vies chinoises by Dai Sijie

bizarres, au cours desquelles Gabriel demeure muet, le transfert, “cet accélérateur de particules” (208) qui met au jour les haines les plus tenaces et les désirs les mieux enfouis, opère son œuvre libératrice. Même s’il n’est pas tout à fait guéri, il a retrouvé sa voix et Monte-Cristo lui a fait découvrir un père. Gabriel vit désormais avec ses compagnons Capa et le Géant. Mais sa souffrance intérieure persiste et sa passion pour Mathilde le mine. Il entame une autre analyse, cette fois avec une femme sensée et pondérée, pour surmonter ses obsessions et débloquer son inertie à reprendre ses études (troisième “carnet”). C’est alors qu’il rencontre le vieux Tragger, ancien légionnaire, empreint de violence sauvage, qui se complaît à jouer au militaire endurci pour refouler l’horreur de ses expériences de guerre et son chagrin de la mort d’êtres chers. Chasseur de gros gibier, il entraîne Gabriel dans une traque au cerf qui bien qu’avortée déclenche sa “confession ”. Devenu psychiatre, Gabriel a réussi à faire parler Tragger et ce faisant à le soulager. Il lui conseille une cure psychanalytique pour guérir son mal-être. Jean-François Rouzières, lui-même psychanalyste, révèle dans ce premier roman sa profonde connaissance de la psyché humaine. Il exprime avec justesse dans un style saccadé et percutant, les atrocités de la guerre et leurs séquelles psychiques, la complexité souvent douloureuse des relations humaines, mais aussi la force de l’amitié et la possibilité de l’amour véritable. Cependant, si le héros après plusieurs années d’analyse particulièrement onéreuses réussit sa “prise de conscience”, l’auteur n’en brosse pas moins un portrait moqueur des méthodes du “grand maître lacanien” (114) au patronyme évocateur. Fairfield University (CT) Marie-Agnès Sourieau SIJIE, DAI. Trois vies chinoises. Paris: Flammarion, 2011. ISBN 978-2-0812-4050-6. Pp. 141. 16 a. Avant d’immigrer en France, Dai Sijie, issu d’une famille chinoise éduquée, avait été forcé par la Révolution culturelle de Mao Zedong de passer plusieurs années de “rééducation” dans la région rurale de la province de Sichuan. Après le succès de Balzac et la petite tailleuse chinoise, son roman en grande partie autobiographique , il n’est pas étonnant qu’il soit retourné, sous forme de nouvelles cette fois, à une critique sévère de son pays d’origine. Dans Trois vies chinoises, ce n’est plus l’impardonnable régression du régime de Mao que Sijie condamne, mais la Chine actuelle où une population rurale est sacrifiée aux froides exigences des puissants et de la technologie moderne. Trois vies chinoises, trois nouvelles qui dépeignent, de façon poignante, la désolation de misérables vies sans issue. Les trois histoires se passent au début du vingt-et-unième siècle, dans le même endroit surnommé ironiquement l’île de la Noblesse. Autrefois couverte de cultures, l’île est devenue un dépotoir de déchets électroniques et ses habitants sont, pour la plupart, employés au recyclage. Dans chaque histoire, un personnage est atteint d’une terrible maladie provoquée par les contacts avec les résidus électroniques constamment manipulés. La première nouvelle intitulée “Ho Chi Minh” oppose la cupidité cruelle d’un directeur d’une cantine de prison à l’innocente crédibilité d’un gamin de douze ans souffrant, comme plusieurs autres enfants sur l’île, de progéria, cette horrible condition qui fait d’un enfant un vieillard en quelques années. Acheté à sa tante, vieille muette pauvre et rapace, par le directeur de la cantine, le jeune Reviews 1209 garçon s’imagine être choisi pour devenir acteur de cirque. Baptisé Ho Chi Minh par son nouveau maître, il apprend religieusement le rôle qu’on lui fait répéter et qui le mènera tout simplement à prendre la place d’un vieux gangster riche condamné à mort, le jour de son...

Leggere i Classici in Oriente. Il mito della letteratura occidentale in Dai Sijie, Murakami Haruki, Azar Nafisi

This study focuses on three recent literary works (fiction and non-fiction novels) written by authors of Asiatic origins: the French-speaking Chinese writer, Dai Sijie, the Iranian professor, Azar Nafisi, and the Japanese writer, Murakami Haruki. In the titles of these international bestsellers (Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, Reading Lolita in Tehran, and Kafka on the Shore), we find an oxymoron: the name of a famous, canonical Western writer or character is used in an unusual context, linked to the geography of the near or far East. The consequent effect of estrangement can restore strength to literature, perhaps with greater determination than is possible in Western cultures. By using (and reversing) the coordinates of Edward Said’s idea of Orientalism and, as in Kafka on the Shore, certain concepts of the Lacanian theory, this study analyzes the transfer of the European literary myths towards Eastern cultures.

Dai Sijie: écrire en français pour évoquer dans la distance le pays quitté

En el ámbito de la crítica literaria francófona, cabe destacar una presencia creciente de autores de orígenes nofrancófonos que han elegido el francés como medio de expresión literaria, lo que les ha llevado a ser considerados como autores francófonos. La particularidad de sus imaginarios no-poscoloniales reclama nuestra atención. Mediante el análisis propuesto de la obra novelesca de Dai Sijie, escritor francófono de origen chino, queremos ilustrar y enriquecer la reflexión sobre las complejas experiencias surgidas del encuentro de lenguas y culturas en un mismo escritor que se desplaza al encuentro voluntario o impuesto del otro.

Mao's China in the Mirror: Reversing the Exotic in Dai Sijie's Balzac et la Petite Tailleuse chinoise

This article considers the representation of exoticism in Dai Sijie's 2000 novel Balzac et la Petite Tailleuse chinoise. While Western discourse has traditionally exoticized China, Dai examines this perspective in reverse, as his Chinese protagonists look towards France as a desirable Other. The article reflects on the functions of this reversal in enabling the characters to subvert the emotional, intellectual, and physical constraints imposed upon them by Mao's Cultural Revolution, and the author himself to condemn this painful episode in Chinese history through his engagement with canonical works of nineteenth-century French literature. The article further highlights the extent to which Dai's own status as a Chinese expatriate writing in French shapes his treatment of the exotic and the plea for intercultural understanding ultimately formulated by his text.

Commercialization and Cultural Misreading in Dai Sijie's Balzac et la Petite Tailleuse chinoise

This article engages with Dai Sijie's representation of Eastern and Western identities, their relationships, and misreading in light of the reception, best-sellerization, and film adaptation of Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress. These various modes of commercialization add layers of cultural consumption and exploitation to the ones Dai sets up in his comparative approach between French Realist literature and Chinese culture. The reception of the novel stresses both the attraction of an exotic world and the universal qualities of Dai's homage to European literature. While the book was packaged as a universal story about reading, love and personal development, Dai problematizes such universal lessons and warns against the limitations of partial readings. Hence, the reception and promotion of the book are ironically contrary to the novel's own message.

‘Place’ Construction: innovative reworking of fiction in recent Chinese films

How can film become a tool of ‘conservation of remembrance’ and be a part of rescuing and rebuilding of cultural and communal memories? Taking a cue from recent ecologically oriented debate on modernity, this paper will focus on memories through films on rural localities that intently counter the trauma of urban migration and dislocation in and around local ‘dwellings’. By looking at recent Chinese films like Dai Sijie's Little Chinese Seamstress and Huo Jianqi's Postmen in the Mountains, I discuss the directors' emotive re-imaging of local and folk architecture and landmarks so as to dispel feelings of displacement resulted from frenzied urban booming, and posit an emotive ‘embedding’ linking urban migrants to their nostalgic home dwellings. These visual narratives consciously negotiate over the emotive terrains between memoirs of local landscape and nagging issues of poverty and backwardness, between tourist exoticism and ‘emotion pictures’, between progress and preservation, and between the lure of global consumer culture and the beckoning of local and nascent ‘dwellings’.

French Literature and Film in the USSR and Mao's China: Intertexts in Makine's Au temps du fleuve Amour and Dai Sijie's Balzac et la Petite Tailleuse chinoise

This article considers the role of French literature and film in the depiction of adolescence in two novels by the bestselling translingual authors Andreï Makine and Dai Sijie. Exposure to French film and literature provides Makine's and Dai Sijie's young protagonists with alternatives to the harsh realities of the regimes in which they live. The article explores the crucial role played by French texts in the characters' sexual awakening, and considers how their selective reading of these texts helps the protagonists create their own identities. Makine and Dai Sijie also suggest that French culture has the power to penetrate and change societies more generally. The article evaluates the extent to which this flattering view of French culture and the incorporation of French intertexts may account for the success of the novels in France.

Contemporary Franco-Chinese Cinema: Translation, Citation and Imitation in Dai Sijie's Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress and Tsai Ming-Liang's What Time is it There?

Due to France's colonial history in Indochina, the relationship between France and Vietnam provides a more obvious French-Asian connection than that between France and East Asian countries such as ...