Exploring Sinophone Liminality in Contemporary Chinese Fiction

Chao explores Sinophone literature as a complex field that navigates the intersections of Sinitic languages, global literary systems, and China-centered perspectives. He presents an alternative perspective that Sinophone literature, especially through ghost narratives, offers a platform for communities to critically examine modernity, transgress boundaries, and challenge epistemologies. By emphasizing locality, this book critiques the homogenization of knowledge production and highlights the importance of local experiences in shaping Sinophone identity. Questioning the linear, essentialist interpretations of Chineseness, a more fluid understanding influenced by cultural memory, globalization, and transnational dynamics emerges. This book advocates for an expanded scope of Sinophone theory that includes the Chinese mainland, moving beyond an against-diaspora stance. Building upon postcolonialism and historical contexts, it examines literary texts and ghost narratives originating from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and the Chinese mainland, delving into the diversity of Sinophone literature. An excellent read for students, researchers, and scholars interested in Chinese literature, cultural studies, and critical literary work with a focus on Asian studies.

Di-kai Chao is a postdoctoral researcher at East China Normal University, China. His research focuses on ghost narratives in contemporary Sinophone fiction and the discourse on the "lyrical tradition" in Chinese literature.

Introduction: Ghostly Sinophone Articulation within Multiple Power Networks 1. Worlding Taiwaneseness: Sinophone Taiwan Ghost Narratives and Their Post-colonial Agenda 2. Returning to Disappearance: Ghost Narratives in Sinophone Hong Kong 3. Negotiation in Post-Chineseness: On Ghost Narratives in Sinophone Malaysian Literature 4. Fabulating China's Stories: Dystopian Ghost Narratives and Peach Blossom Spring in Fiction from the Chinese Mainland Conclusion