The Literary Ecology of War: Moving Bodies, Technics, and Senses in Sinophone Literature
(Panel)Qi Hong (University of Toronto)
Chengxiang Lin (Cornell University)
This proposed panel session critically examines literary representations of modern warfare, focusing on the mobilization of human and non-human bodies, technologies, and knowledge in the Sinophone context. Upon reflecting on how war pushes human technology and culture into new stages, and on how literature stands against or collaborates with war violence, this panel is grounded in modern warfare’s central role in reconfiguring technological systems of production and circulation and in restructuring the human sensorium of perceiving and experiencing. To forward a thorough understanding of the literary ecology of modern warfare, this panel takes literature as a heuristic tool to explore four issues resulted from war: the accelerated speed of life, the massive displacement of bodies, the excessive experience of sensory overload, and the uncanny intimacy between the human and the non-human.
This panel also seeks to overcome the hegemonic and homogeneous narrative of war that casts the nation-state as its main actor. By locating our discussion in the marginal, intersectional, and disputed regions in East, Southeast, and Inner Asia, we hope to offer alternative perspectives on experiences and memories of war. On the one hand, we endeavor to reconceptualize territorial borders and the crossing of it in literary and media representations. On the other hand, looking into the contacts and contests of bodies, languages, and senses, we contribute to uncover queer intimacies between non-national subjects and the alternative processes of territorialization based on affective and sensorial experiences.
This panel brings together multiple disciplines such as modern Chinese literature, cultural history, STS, diasporic studies, and media studies. The interdisciplinarity of this panel strives to undo the violence of colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism by examining literary texts, historical archives, and media contents. Presented as a collective intervention to understand humans, non-humans and their involuntary movements in war, this panel ultimately proclaims that since the lasting effect of war has never expired especially in Asia, Sinophone literature offers a fertile ground where genuine reflections on the complexity of war and humanity can be generated.