Engendering Chinese modernity

The sexual politics of dagongmei in a dormitory labour regime

Bibliographic Data

ID12349662
AuthorsN Pun (0000-0001-5725-6988, Schlumberger (Ireland), corresponding author), Pun Ngai (0000-0002-4140-8462)
Year2004
Volume28
Issue2
Pages151-165
Publication date2004-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAsian Studies Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1035-7823 • E-ISSN: 1467-8403
PublisherRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/1035782042000226693
OpenAlexW2092966362
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited27

In this paper I analyse this subject-making process. Dagongmei is a specific ethics of self construed at the particular moment when private and transnational capital engulfed contemporary China. As a new social identity it reveals the story of how a state socialist system is giving way to the capitalist global economy and how capitalist practices depend entirely on a complex web of regulations on class rural-urban differences and sexual relations. In this paper I will look in particular at the play of sexual politics apparent in the process of producing the subject dagongmei in the workplace and urban environment. Beginning with Foucaults understanding that subjects are themselves the effects of disciplinary actions fully embedded in and produced by matrices of power and discourse I then seek a feminist critique which questions sex and in postsocialist China at the conjuncture of its self-incorporation into global production and trace and reveal the political operations that produce and conceal who qualifies as a proper Chinese dagongmei. I will also look at how heterogeneous social subjects are constructed as a unified social body in the workplace and how the gender identity of dagongmei is construed in contrast to the Maoist term gongren which was an asexual subject. As a project of capital the process of sexualisation of dagongmei (and of their male equivalent: dagongzai or working sons) mirrors the earlier process of de-sexualisation of gongren which was a project of the Chinese state in the socialist period. The contestation of gender identity is further caught up with urban consumerist desires and a yearning to become a modern cultured self a vital part of the passage to becoming a modern Chinese dagongmei. In this contest I also explore how dagongmei struggle to be modern selves especially by participating in everyday life and politics in a workers dormitory in an urban industrialised space. (excerpt)

Aesthetics · China · Identity (music · Identity politics · Modernity · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Sociology · State (computer science · Subject (documents · China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance · Gender Studies · Japanese History and Culture · Law