Learning Goal: I’m working on a asian studies question and need guidance to help me learn.
Read Part I: Theory of Dung Kai-Cheung’s, Atlas: The Archeology of an Imaginary City*Links to an external site.
Read Mark Aug’s, From Places to Non-Places Download From Places to Non-Places in Non-Places
Read Yi-Fu Tuan’s, Space and Place: Humanistic Perspective Download Space and Place: Humanistic Perspective
Read Eva Hung’s, Hong Kong Stories (Foreword and Father Download Foreword and Father only)
Read Mark Aug’s, Memory and Oblivion Download Memory and Oblivion
Read Eva Hung’s, Hong Kong Stories (“Tied Together by Fate and Plenty and Sorrow Download Tied Together by Fate and Plenty and Sorrow only)
Read Gao Xing Jian, Wild Man Download Wild Man— The Case for Literature Nobel Lecture 2000Links to an external site.
Read Ang’s “On Not Speaking Chinese Download On Not Speaking Chinese in On Not Speaking Chinese
Please thoughtfully answer the following questions in complete sentences and include relevant textual evidence to support your answers. Aim for quality over quantity in your responses.
1.Why does Dung deploy cartography (art of mapmaking) as a form of narrative? How is mapmaking a form of colonization?
2.Describe nonplaces in your own words. According to Dung Kai-Cheung and Marc Auge, what characteristics of places do nonplaces lack? How has Hong Kong been reduced to an abstraction rather than a place?
3.According to Gao Xingjian, what is the “aesthetic quality” of literature, and how can it never become outdated? How is this quality visible in Gao’s Wild Man?
4.(An extension of the above question) While this “aesthetic quality” remains constant, Chinese literature has diverged significantly from traditional Chinese writing conventions. According to Lo Wai Luen’s “Forward,” what does the title, “‘Old Themes, New Voices,'” refer to? How does the new generation of Chinese writers’ approaches differ from literature from the past?
5.Marc Auge articulates, “The space of non-place creates neither singular identity nor relations; only solitude, and similitude,” (Auge 103). How has supermodernity engendered nonplaces? Furthermore, what impact does similitude have on the expression of cultures?
6.What does it mean to say Hong Kong is an “imaginary city”? According to Yi-Fu Tuan, what role does language and the act of naming play in validating the existence and identity of places?
7.Describe Marc Auge’s three figures of oblivion in your own words. In light of Hong Kong’s history as a land without its own autonomy, how is Hong Kong written in the idea of the “suspense”?
8.Marc Auge makes the following comparison: “To praise oblivion is not to revile memory; even less is it to neglect remembrance, but rather the work of oblivion in the first one and to spot it in the second. Memory and oblivion in some way have the same relationship as life and death,” (Auge 14). What does Auge mean by this?
9.According to Ang’s “On Not Speaking Chinese,” how are some Chinese individuals perceived to be more “‘authentic'” than others? How does this impact the identity of those who are seen as inauthentic?
