Premium
Chronicle of Women: A Hongkong Story
Author(s) -
Lilley Rozanna
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
the australian journal of anthropology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.245
H-Index - 25
eISSN - 1757-6547
pISSN - 1035-8811
DOI - 10.1111/j.1835-9310.1994.tb00326.x
Subject(s) - hegemony , patriarchy , performative utterance , normative , negotiation , resistance (ecology) , sociology , politics , sovereignty , gender studies , representation (politics) , china , aesthetics , history , law , political science , social science , art , ecology , biology
In this paper I offer a feminist analysis of a theatrical production recently staged in Hongkong. I suggest that through a performative strategy of negotiating between compliance and resistance to normative constructions of Chinese/Hongkong womanhood, the show under consideration succeeds in giving us a highly nuanced representation of gendered colonial subjects. Many of these subtleties were erased by audience interpretations of the performance as an allegorical account of Hongkong/China relations framed by the issue of sovereignty transferral in 1997. Instead of seeing this as a negative process, I argue that critiques of patriarchy and political hegemony can and must productively interrupt one another in contemporary Hongkong.