[School Seminar Series] Kowtow as Signifier, 7 Jan.

Last updated:2015-12-25

Topic: Kowtow as Signifier: Negotiating the Sovereign Self in the Early Sino-British Encounters
Speaker: Dr Wang Dongqing (Guangdong University of Foreign Studies)
Language: English

Time: 16:00-17:30, Thursday, January 7, 2016
Venue: Room 403, School of Foreign Languages Building, South Campus, Sun Yat-sen University
Organizer: School of Foreign Languages, Sun Yat-sen University

Abstract:
Tracing the debates over kowtow following the early British embassies to China, this paper investigates how the British idea of bodily performance shaped the making of the modern Chinese subject. During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the British critique of kowtow began with a defense of sovereign equality and developed itself into a discourse on Oriental despotism and barbarity, placing a hierarchy between the standing Victorian gentleman and the prostrating Chinese slave. Ironically, such imperial pedagogy lent the Chinese critics a language of articulating individual autonomy and social equality in the late Qing social reforms. Following this historical and discursive genealogy, the paper attempts to reassess the role of imperialism and Orientalism in shaping Chinese modernity.


School Seminar Series in 2015-2016 Academic Year:

Date	Speaker & Work Title	Language
2015.11.26	Tong Qingsheng Empson’s ‘Sacred Mountain’: Poetry, Criticism, and Love	English
2015.12.17	Guo Lina: French Le Play school and China	Chinese
2015.11.26	Ding Jianxin Interdisciplinary Significance of Text	Chinese
2016.01.07	Wang Dongqing (Guangdong University of Foreign Studies) Kowtow as Signifier: Negotiating the Sovereign Self in the Early Sino-British Encounters	English
2016.01.14	Qiu Yafen Hino Ashihei’s Writing Strategy	Chinese
2016.03 (TBA)	Chiu Kang-yen Sir Walter Scott’s China: His Writing, Collection and Reading	English
2016.03 (TBA)	Liu Yuyu The Russian Sailor as Subversion to Marlow’s Narrative in Heart of Darkness	English
2016.04 (TBA)	Lei Yanni Thoughts and Anxieties in the Long Poem Casa Guidi Windows by Elizabeth Barrette Browning	Chinese
2015.05 (TBA)	Zhu Yu Wordsworth as a Listener	Chinese
2016.06 (TBA)	Zhou Hui The Reception and Reconstruction of French Theories in America	Chinese