Knowing Male Subjects: Globally Mobile Chinese Professionals and the Aesthetics of the Confucian Sublime
Résumé
This article probes the sources, manifestations, and significances of the ambivalences and contradictions in London-based Chinese middle-class male professionals’ sense of their own gendered and cultural identities in the context of China’s twenty-first century postsocialist modernity. In doing so, it shows how Chinese middle-class men’s sense of themselves connects with wider national debates about China’s orientation in the world. To make sense of the desire of some respondents “to become a Chinese gentleman,” the article introduces the notion of the postsocialist Confucian sublime, a vision of a cultural order of increasing appeal to well-educated, middle-class Chinese men. The article argues that the Confucian sublime offers globally mobile professional Chinese men the opportunity to transcend their ambivalence towards Western modernity by providing a sense of wholeness and attainment both at a personal level and in relating to China’s place in contemporary globality.
Entrées d’index
Index by keyword :
Chinese, professionals, middle class, men, masculinities, ambivalence, postsocialist modernity, Confucian sublime.Pour citer cet article
Référence papier
Derek Hird, « Knowing Male Subjects: Globally Mobile Chinese Professionals and the Aesthetics of the Confucian Sublime », China Perspectives, 2020-3 | 2020, 19-27.
Référence électronique
Derek Hird, « Knowing Male Subjects: Globally Mobile Chinese Professionals and the Aesthetics of the Confucian Sublime », China Perspectives [En ligne], 2020-3 | 2020, mis en ligne le 01 septembre 2021, consulté le 25 janvier 2021. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/chinaperspectives/10323 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/chinaperspectives.10323
Haut de page