Spatial and Literary Fixes in Chen Qiufan’s Waste Tide
0
조회
0
다운로드
0
인용
0
참고문헌
키워드
초록
This essay reads waste management, surplus populations, and translated literature as a homology—entities that are not only analogous but derive from the same political economic dynamics of surplus expulsion and absorption. In Chen Qiufan’s Chinese science fiction (SF) novel Waste Tide, these entities converge in marginal positions: waste materials forgotten once they are sent to China, migrant waste processors excluded from social and political protection, and details that remain beyond representation. Reading together the Chinese originals and the English translation of Waste Tide reveals, through the vocabulary of globally-circulated SF, the contradictory fantasy of a virtuous cycle of consumption and surplus management sustaining endless capital accumulation. At the same time, the three versions, as instances of Chinese SF in world literature, exemplify how the global circulation of culture mirrors that of material and labor.
Abstract
This essay reads waste management, surplus populations, and translated literature as a homology—entities that are not only analogous but derive from the same political economic dynamics of surplus expulsion and absorption. In Chen Qiufan’s Chinese science fiction (SF) novel Waste Tide, these entities converge in marginal positions: waste materials forgotten once they are sent to China, migrant waste processors excluded from social and political protection, and details that remain beyond representation. Reading together the Chinese originals and the English translation of Waste Tide reveals, through the vocabulary of globally-circulated SF, the contradictory fantasy of a virtuous cycle of consumption and surplus management sustaining endless capital accumulation. At the same time, the three versions, as instances of Chinese SF in world literature, exemplify how the global circulation of culture mirrors that of material and labor.