Global and Local Phallic Creativity

Abstract

Feng Tang 馮唐‎ (born 1971) is a self-proclaimed ‘audacious’ author whose work has been described as highly ‘masculine’. This chapter considers Feng’s construction of masculinity in his writing and in his own behaviour as a public figure, focusing in particular on Feng’s repeated reference to other writers and texts, both Chinese and Western. It suggests that the significance of this transnational intertextuality lies in Feng’s attempt to construct and perform a cosmopolitan form of manhood that draws on local and non-local models, and which is literary, subversive, and virile. Despite his reputation for renegade innovation, however, Feng ultimately returns masculinity to the centre of a global literary space, placing women in a marginalized position.