Abstract
This paper critically examines post/feminist imperatives in relation to neoliberal ethos and class dynamics in The People’s Republic of Desire (2006) by transnational Chinese women writer, Annie Wang (b. 1972). While the novel positions itself as a transnational satire of the Western-styled consumptive furor in post-socialist China, its textual focus on a class-based commodity culture demands a critical consideration of its neoliberal investments. In probing Wang’s text, this paper adopts a feminist reading that attends to how neoliberal ideology and class politics operate together to corroborate a postfeminist stance. The awareness of feminist ethics notwithstanding, the text’s overall postfeminist disposition and the attendant class purview work to depoliticize its expressed intent. The tension between feminism and postfeminism eventually translates into that between the local and the global. That the discursive polarization of China and the West is implicitly inscribed in the denouement also registers the limits of the novel’s transnational engagement.
Recommended Citation
Tse, Kelly Yin Nga
(2017)
"Post/Feminist Impulses: Neoliberal Ideology and Class Politics in Annie Wang’s The People’s Republic of Desire (2006),"
Journal of International Women's Studies: Vol. 18:
Iss.
3, Article 6.
Available at:
https://vc.bridgew.edu/jiws/vol18/iss3/6