Title

The Politics of Nakedness: Eileen Chang’s Political Aesthetics in The Rice-Sprout Song and Naked Earth

Author

Chau Ying Tung

Genre

Article

Pages

103-140

DOI

10.6503/THJCS.202403_54(1).0003

Download

PDF

Language

Chinese

Key words

Eileen Chang, The Rice-Sprout Song, Naked Earth, politics of aesthetics, bare life

Abstract

This paper explores the political writing of Eileen Chang (1920-1995) and elucidates her radical potential as a political-world writer. Despite being predominantly viewed as anti-Communist works, Chang’s novels The Rice Sprout Song (1954) and Naked Earth (1954) possess complicated political dimensions. This paper examines the “politics of aesthetics” of the novels by analyzing their incisive critiques of power structures, the syntax of political ideology, and the collective conditions of life. Additionally, it highlights the novels’ potential to engage in dialogue with contemporary political debates. This paper is divided into four parts. First, it analyzes how the novels depict the rule of law and police order in the “naked earth”; second, it shows the triplex power relations in the novels between ruling power, the people, and their lives; third, it reveals the origin and structure of “naked earth,” embodying the theological regime of political authority; fourth, it argues that Eileen Chang responds to the world through political writing, fully establishing the contemporary value embodied by both herself and her novels, transcending geographical and temporal constraints.