Foreigners' archive: contemporary China in the blogs of American expatriates

Abstract

Radhika Gajjala In this study I scrutinize blogs written by American expatriates in China of the 21 st century. Two primary objectives are involved. One is to explore how China is represented in such blogs. The other is to understand the discursive processes through which the American bloggers utilize the blogging technology to narrate their (mis)conceptions of the Chinese realities. Equally important to these two focuses is an emphasis on revealing a delicate interplay between the production of the digital discourses about contemporary China in blog sphere, the bloggers' assumptions of the Chinese government's encompassing control of the Internet, and the surging nationalism exhibited by the Chinese readers of the blogs. Drawing from the postcolonial and discursive perspectives of Edward Said, Mary Louise Pratt, David Spurr, and Nicolas Clifford, I see those blogs not merely as a platform for self expression, an open field of identity experiment, or a grassroots journalistic outlet. Rather, I argue that the blogs examined here consist of a distinct discursive space of cultural representation and contestation. They are also interpreted as a digital extension of conventional Euro-American travel writing as they share with the genre a set of rhetorical conventions and face the same set of problems of representing the cultural Other. These assumptions guided the multimodal discourse analyses of the blogs by three American individuals. The study revealed that the bloggers used three prominent metaphors to convey their perceptions of contemporary China, which echo the conventional Western knowledge of the county. During the process, the bloggers are concerned with the Chinese censorship of the Internet and give little attention to the challenge voiced by nationalistic Chinese readers. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS After nearly three years of researching and writing I finally put a period to this dissertation, but only temporarily. In the back of my mind, I know the completion of this manuscript marks a beginning, not an end. What I finished is laying down the very foundation upon which future and more in-depth academic interrogation will be built. As much excited as I am about and fully committed to the future undertakings, I'd like to pause momentarily to recognize the people whose advice, support, encouragement, friendship, and love kept me believing in myself and kept pushing me to give my very best throughout the research and writing process. Even though a dissertation is usually considered as a creation solely of its author's individual's time, toil, and tenacity, I seriously doubt I could go thus far without being surrounded and counseled by these wonderful people. My foremost appreciation goes to Dr. Radhika Gajjala. She is the kind of advisor that anyone could dream of. It was she who has tirelessly encouraged me to pursue a career in academia. She has introduced me to critical perspectives and has challenged me to embrace new theoretical advances. I have always been amazed by the genuine passion and curiosity that she ...

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