Description This dissertation examines China’s contemporary nostalgia towards the 1980s-2000s by aligning it with nostalgia for the disappearing shijing (市井) place in the cities. Shijing, in the 1980s and 1990s, was characterised by the increasing inflow of rural migrant workers searching for urban membership. They appropriate shijing places into their mediating ground to contest the right to the city, but in contemporary contexts, such places are often tagged as urban villages (城中村; Chengzhongcun) to be demolished in city renewal schemas.
The disappearance of shijing places led to the nostalgic construction of a duplicated shijing place in the catering complex Wenheyou (文和友) in Changsha, Hunan province. This essay evaluates this nostalgia by regarding it as a process of negotiating urban membership, rather than an event representing authentic/fake memory. This real-fake dualism is challenged by recognising Wenheyou as a Duplitecture that do not intend to be an exact copy of shijing. Furthermore, by adopting shijing as an evaluative concept, this dissertation scrutinises this process through the prism of dynamic interactions between the authors, readers, and spectators of nostalgia. Shijing in three memory frames – the “real” shijing (in memory), the “fake and material” shijing (in Wenheyou), and the “fake and virtual” shijing (on social media) – are analysed to reveal this dynamism. While the “real” shijing is inevitably irretrievable, the “fake and material” shijing still contests the right to narrate and to create heterogenous atmospheres. From a feminist perspective, this heterogeneity also enables female spectators to be in a state of uncertainty, unfettered by existing binds and bonds. However, in effect, this indeterminacy is overshadowed by the determinacy of spectatorship in an atmosphere where the political is rendered as cultural and cultural as anti-cultural.
Description This dissertation examines China’s contemporary nostalgia towards the 1980s-2000s by aligning it with nostalgia for the disappearing shijing (市井) place in the cities. Shijing, in the 1980s and 1990s, was characterised by the increasing inflow of rural migrant workers searching for urban membership. They appropriate shijing places into their mediating ground to contest the right to the city, but in contemporary contexts, such places are often tagged as urban villages (城中村; Chengzhongcun) to be demolished in city renewal schemas.
The disappearance of shijing places led to the nostalgic construction of a duplicated shijing place in the catering complex Wenheyou (文和友) in Changsha, Hunan province. This essay evaluates this nostalgia by regarding it as a process of negotiating urban membership, rather than an event representing authentic/fake memory. This real-fake dualism is challenged by recognising Wenheyou as a Duplitecture that do not intend to be an exact copy of shijing. Furthermore, by adopting shijing as an evaluative concept, this dissertation scrutinises this process through the prism of dynamic interactions between the authors, readers, and spectators of nostalgia. Shijing in three memory frames – the “real” shijing (in memory), the “fake and material” shijing (in Wenheyou), and the “fake and virtual” shijing (on social media) – are analysed to reveal this dynamism. While the “real” shijing is inevitably irretrievable, the “fake and material” shijing still contests the right to narrate and to create heterogenous atmospheres. From a feminist perspective, this heterogeneity also enables female spectators to be in a state of uncertainty, unfettered by existing binds and bonds. However, in effect, this indeterminacy is overshadowed by the determinacy of spectatorship in an atmosphere where the political is rendered as cultural and cultural as anti-cultural.
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