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Serena De MarchiPostdoktor

Forskningsprojekt

Publikationer

I urval från Stockholms universitets publikationsdatabas

  • Eat to remember. Gastronomical reconfigurations of hunger and imprisonment in contemporary Chinese literature

    2021. Serena De Marchi. Food issues 食事, 127-142

    Kapitel

    During the famine that befell China following the disaster of the Great LeapForward, hunger was a major affliction for the people undergoing reform in the laborcamps. Food—in terms of procurement, consumption, or just discursive recollection—wasa central issue in the prisoners’ lives and, as a consequence, descriptions of meals andeating practices are a recurring presence in Chinese literary texts that revolve around thosecarceral experiences. This contribution investigates three literary works that reconstructpersonal experiences of imprisonment by way of eating: Wang Ruowang’s Hunger Trilogy(1980), Zhang Xianliang’s Mimosa (1984), and Yang Xianhui’s Chronicles of Jiabiangou(2003). In these texts, food becomes a privileged perspective through which to look athow personal and collective memories are re-appropriated and re-elaborated, as well asto analyze how narratives of the past are consumed and produced. 

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  • Repugnant Bodies. An Analysis of the Disgust Aesthetics in Yang Xianhui’s Chronicles of Jiabiangou

    2021. Serena De Marchi. Humanities Bulletin 4 (1), 215-229

    Artikel

    Yang Xianhui’s Chronicles of Jiabiangou (2003) is a collection of stories detailing life and death during the Anti-Rightist Movement (1957-59) in the homonymous laogai camp located in the middle of the Gobi Desert, in the Chinese north-western province of Gansu. Based on the author’s extensive research, fieldwork and interviews with Jiabiangou survivors, in many instances the text dwells on particularly foul descriptions, mostly related to the harsh living conditions of prisoners undergoing reform, further exacerbated by the hostile geographical setting and by a famine that had struck the whole country. Physically and morally offensive descriptions of bodily expulsions and incorporations are portrayed with straightforward yet evocative accuracy, revealing very appalling aspects of the laogai experience.

    Building on psychological analyses and phenomenological interpretations of disgust, this paper interrogates some key passages in the textwhere the literary iconography is built through the use of this aesthetic technique, with a special attention to the representation of carceral bodies -often construed as the true repugnant objects. Through the analysis of this symbolic bodily iconography, this paper addresses the text’s contribution to the construction of alternative narratives of incarceration and political persecution that have the potential to challenge Chinese orthodox historiography. 

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  • Prisonscape

    2020. Serena De Marchi.

    Avhandling (Dok)

    This study focuses on the prison writings from and about modern China (from the Mao era to the present day). It builds on previous research on Chinese prison camp literature as well as on sociological and historical studies of the evolution of punishments, both within the Chinese context and from a more global perspective. Theoretically and methodologically, the subject is approached through the conceptual model of the prisonscape. Informed by Arjun Appadurai’s theories on global interactions and by Edward Soja’s notion of “thirdspace,” this model is employed to explore the ways in which prison, through literature, is re-mapped as an “imagined world."

    The aim of this work is twofold: on the one hand, it seeks to characterize prison writings as a global literary genre and to position Chinese prison literature within a national literary system and in relation to a “world literary space” (Casanova). On the other hand, the literary analysis aims at illuminating key aspects of the imagined world of the Chinese prison. The textual analysis is organized around two main thematic explorations that focus, in turn, on a spatial and a corporeal dimension. Through the literary investigation of carceral spaces and carceral bodies, this study ultimately aims to contribute to a deeper and broader understanding of the Chinese prisonscape.

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