Kang-i Sun Chang and Her Scholarship on “Woman” and “China”

This thesis examined the positionality of Kang-i Sun Chang’s Chinese literature study through three aspects. Firstly, I examined Chang’s disagreement on Rey Chow’s postcolonial/feminist criticism. Instead of recognizing West/China and man/woman relationship as Orientalist or patriarchal, Chang thinks the ignorance of Chinese/women’s literature by Sinologists is due to the belatedness of canonization. Therefore, Chang sees her research as “com-plements” to the canonization. In order to rediscover formerly underestimated works, Chang tends to see writers’ suffering, not as oppression from above, but motivations from inside, which helped create canonical works. Secondly, by juxtaposing Chang with Yuan-shu Yan, Chia-ying Chao-Yeh, and Yu-kung Kao, it shows an epistemic opposition between Yan and Chao-Yeh, and an alternative position suggested by Kao and developed by Chang. Yan had tried to mod-ernize Chinese literature studies by revealing the universality within Chinese literature, while Chao-Yeh tried to conserve Chinese tradition by reclaiming its specificity. Never-theless, Kao and Chang see the specificity of Chinese literature as a resource to enrich the universality of world literature. Thirdly, I examined Chang’s appropriation of Michel Foucault. By appropriating Foucault, Chang emphasized the fluidity of power, while de-emphasized the surveil-lance and dominance. With her interpretation of Foucault, Chang pointed out that re-searchers should pay more attention to aesthetic issues in women’s writing, rather than criticizing the nonexistent male-dominance in Chinese literature. Through these examinations, a parallel between “woman” and “China” is shown. Chang tends to emphasize the “complementarity” side both in the West/China and man/woman relationship, rather than the “difference” side. Also, this parallel is corre-spondent with her own literary works and social/political commentary. The parallel and the correspondence can be mutually explanatory when reading Kang-i Sun Chang.