Transcending Exoticism? Sound and Voice in Dai Sijie and François Cheng

Shuangyi Li

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingBook chapterResearchpeer-review

Abstract

Francophone Chinese writers Dai Sijie and François Cheng are both first-generation migrants in France, whose French-language literary works have received the highest French institutional recognitions (from the Prix Femina to the Grand Prix de la francophonie de l'Académie française). Existing scholarship on the impact of their native Chinese language on these writers' French texts focuses almost exclusively on the visual aspects. Different from such oculocentric approaches, this chapter conceptualizes Franco-Chinese literature as exophone ("exotic sounding") writing and scrutinizes the auditory aesthetic in the two writers' different literary engagements with sound and voice. With access to both the sound and the image of Chinese and French, Dai and Cheng are seen not only to play with Western fantasy, but also to rework and reconfigure, cross-culturally, the dynamic relationship between phone and graph in their literary works, especially in relation to exoticism. Indeed, it is ultimately through sound and voice that both writers attempt to think beyond Chinese-French binary tensions and reflect more synthetically on literary and human experiences of language that are universal and at the same highly individual.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationSounds Senses
EditorsYasser Elhariry
Place of PublicationLiverpool
PublisherLiverpool University Press
Chapter8
ISBN (Print)978-1-800-85688-2
Publication statusAccepted/In press - 2021

Publication series

NameFrancophone Postcolonial Studies
PublisherLiverpool University Press
Volume12

Subject classification (UKÄ)

  • Specific Literatures

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