The Burden of Class Antagonism: On the Rise of Popular Feminism in Postsocialist China‏

• In Event: 175 - Section on Sex and Gender Paper Session. Gender Activism and the Global South

Abstract

This paper analyzes the rise of popular feminism in articulation with a wide range of societal forces at China’s present conjuncture. We consider it a
new cultural formation coming out of a specific hegemonic negotiation, whereby politics of sexuality and of class have come together and class
antagonism, something no longer allowed proper representations in public discourse yet ever more acute in postsocialist China, is channeled through
and thus intensifies inter-gender friction. To account for such a hegemonic formation, we provide a conjunctural analysis involving a historical
examination of gender, class, and their dynamics in the discursive terrains from the Mao era, and a detailed case study of contentions surrounding a
local feminist play, “The Vagina’s Way/Say,” between emerging feminist activism and the anti-feminist backlash, whose actions and tendencies are
conditioned by the trajectories of multiple historical forces.

Authors

• Yige Dong, Johns Hopkins University

• Angela Xiao Wu, Chinese University of Hong Kong