Masculinities in German and Chinese literature

My initial research question is whether the analytical category of gender is valid and useful when scrutinising Orientalist and Occidentalist modes of discourse. In four sets of case studies I will analyse how Chinese men have been depicted in German literature and, vice versa, how German men have been depicted in Chinese literature since the 18th century. More specifically, I ask what the functions of these images might be in the global and the domestic realm of political power struggles and, ultimately, in the quest for cultural and political modernity. Through my comparative approach I will challenge biased binary self-other distinctions used traditionally in postcolonial theory and gender studies. I aim to articulate a new theory of gender and transculturalism that will be of use to scholars in all cultural studies. I will first look at the representations of sexless Chinese men prevalent in German literature of the 18th and 19th century (works by Goethe, Schiller and Fontane). The second part will take literary depictions of the legendary affair of the German Graf von Waldersee (1832-1904) and the Chinese courtesan Sai Jinhua (1874-1936) as a case study. The third part will investigate socialist strategies of depicting the brave Chinese male hero in 20th-century German literature (works by Anna Seghers and Friedrich Wolf). I will conclude by analysing the works by female Chinese writers in the late 20th century, in particular Wei Huis controversial novel Shanghai Baby (1999) about a German-Chinese love triangle. The four sections will shed light on key moments and issues in transcultural encounters in German and Chinese literary history and will contribute to my main research questions. A comparative study like this has never been undertaken before, either in German studies or Chinese studies, and the question of masculinities in particular has been neglected for far too long. My project will therefore be at the cutting edge of research in literary and cultural history and theory. It will fill several research gaps and will make original and timely contributions to the academic disciplines of German studies, Chinese studies, comparative literature and critical theory. I propose to complete the project during a 24-month stay at the University of California, Berkeley, one of the worlds leading universities, which, given its particular strengths in German and Chinese studies, will provide the best possible context for an interdisciplinary project like this, and a 12-month return phase at the Department of East Asian Studies (Sinology) at the University of Vienna, which offers the ideal context to make the experience and know-how gained available and useful for the further development of the humanities in Austria.

The starting point of this Erwin Schrödinger project was the observation that literary texts prominently use sexual metaphors in order to describe the cultural Other. This study was able to prove that the depiction of masculinities plays a particularly important role in this, which has received little academic attention so far. The close readings have revealed how gender-specific strategies of narration are able to construct but also destabilize power relations and hierarchies. Selected case studies analyzed the depiction of literary figures of Chinese men in German-language literature and the depiction of figures of German men in Chinese language literature in different historical contexts between the 18th and the 21st century, showing continuities as well as ruptures in the literary practices. In the 1930s and 1940s, mainly due to ideological reasons, socialist writers in the German-speaking countries clearly broke with Orientalist literary traditions of the 18th and 19th centuries. In contrast to the often exoticized and eroticized female figures, these writers, for the first time, developed strong masculine Chinese figures in their works. Chinese texts of the late 20th century, on the other hand, continued an established motif. The love triangle between a Chinese woman, an impotent Chinese lover, and a potent German lover became an efficient literary means to criticize the current political situation. With its double perspective, analyzing Chinese-language as well as German-language texts, the innovative research approach helped overcome the often one-sided and Eurocentric tendencies of motif studies. In contrast to another widely used practice of exclusively applying western theories on Asian contexts, Chinese theories of gender played an equally central part in this project. In the course of the project the analysis was also widened to other cultural media. The study of Chinese figures in the influential television series Tatort revealed how closely the depiction of gender and culture are entangled with another. It also opened a new perspective on the potential of this genre; by depicting figures of foreign men it is able to draw attention to the social construction and performativity of identities of gender and culture.