Description
Book SynopsisQuestioning Borders explores recent ecoliterature by Han and non-Han Indigenous writers of China and Taiwan, analyzing relations among humans, animals, ecosystems, and the cosmos in search of alternative possibilities for creativity and consciousness.
Trade ReviewIn this groundbreaking book, Robin Visser explores the shifting incarnations of the border as a territorial gateway, a contact zone, a liminal terrain, and an imaginary portal. She delves into the intersection of ethnic, cultural, political—and especially ecological—dynamics that inform cartographies and cosmologies of Sinophone states. A fantastic work. -- David Der-wei Wang, author of
Why Fiction Matters in Contemporary ChinaA comprehensive and illuminating comparison of Chinese and Indigenous literatures on the border ecologies of China and Taiwan.
Questioning Borders sheds light on the power dynamics of China as a settler-colonialist regime in which Indigenous ecocriticism confronts the Chinese imperial geography of center and periphery, which underpins both China’s development strategies and even the most radical Chinese ecoliteratures. -- Uradyn E. Bulag, author of
Collaborative Nationalism: The Politics of Friendship on China’s Mongolian FrontierThis illuminating book offers deep insights into the tensions, interactions, and reciprocity among diverse ecologies, ethnicities, humans, and nonhumans. Robin Visser’s brilliant analysis of ecoliterature by Han and Indigenous authors makes this book a must-read for students of environmental humanities. -- Ban Wang, author of
At Home in Nature: Technology, Labor, and Critical Ecology in Modern ChinaVisser’s
Questioning Borders provides a timely critical intervention that destabilizes the historically established borders and center-periphery relationship within the cultural and political imaginaries of the Hanspace. It offers rich textual studies on Indigenous ecoliteratures in China and Taiwan. A must-read for those interested in Chinese, Sinophone, global, and transnational Indigenous ecocriticism. -- Chia-ju Chang, editor of
Chinese Environmental Humanities: Practices of Environing at the MarginsQuestioning Borders radically approaches contemporary literatures of the Chinese world via critical discourses of ecocriticism, global Indigenous studies, and decolonization theory. Incorporating diverse Han majority and ethnic minority writing, the volume charts the emergent Chinese cosmology of the present dynamic era and stimulates deep yet far-ranging conversations. An exciting book. -- Mark Bender, editor of
The Borderlands of Asia: Culture, Place, PoetryGroundbreaking . . . Visser’s breathtaking scope is both incredibly ambitious and highly effective. One of the most significant contributions of Questioning Borders is its systematic examination, for the first time in English-language scholarship, of authors writing about nature from less-studied ethnic groups in the field of modern Chinese literature. -- Cheng Li * ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment *
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Ecoliteratures Inhabiting Borders
1. Beijing Westerns and Hanspace Elixirs in Southwest China
2. Grassland Logic and Desert Carbon Imaginaries in Inner Mongolia
3. Sacred Routes and Dark Humor in Grounded Xinjiang
4. Cosmic Ecologies and Transcendent Tricksters on the Tibetan Plateau
5. Island Excursions and Indigenous Waterways in Activist Taiwan
Epilogue: Indigenous Entanglements in Techno Hypersubjectivity
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
