Book Review: Chiang, Howard and Shu-mei Shih, editors. Sinophone Studies Across Disciplines: A Reader. Columbia University Press, 2024.

Since its conceptualization almost twenty years ago, Sinophone studies has developed into a meeting point for disciplinary perspectives unified by what Shu-mei Shih and Howard Chiang term in their introduction to this volume a commitment to the “conceptualization of power”(4). Sinophone Studies Across Disciplines builds on Shih’s influential theorization of hegemony in her 2013 Sinophone Studies: A Critical Reader, as this new set of interdisciplinary essays offer retrospective reflections on Shih’s contribution to the field over the past two decades. Given this, it is apt that the volume begins with an essay updating Shih’s consideration of the question “Is China an Empire?,” where she re-emphasizes that while the states of oppressor and oppressed can certainly overlap across time (24), a neo-imperialist turn to tianxia as a “Chinese theory of world order” and “world system” (44) by scholars such as Zhao Tingyang necessitates redoubled recognition of the modern history of Chinese imperialism from the 1880s onward. From this starting point, the volume divides into three parts: two that move consciously across disciplines (“Interdisciplinary Conjunctions”; “Places of Differentiation”) and a middle section committed to the issues of “Theories, Methodologies, Controversies” that have accompanied Sinophone studies since Shih outlined the theory in 2007.

While in places A Reader returns to old ground, it also makes significant strides toward the new. Geographically, this is achieved through attention to newer regions in Sinophone studies, such as Rebecca Ehrenwirth’s discussion of Thai Sinophone authors like Zeng Xin or Tho Ngoc Nguyen’s analysis of Vietnamese popular religion where Nguyen argues practices have developed “for the sake of building a transcultural adaptation in the local context” with gods serving as a “‘Chineseness’ marker” (361). In terms of theoretical innovation, meanwhile, most notable is the volume’s turn towards “another dimension of materiality” (2) initiated through a focus on “corporeal politics” (2), whether that be through sound or dance, the latter of which “pushes us to further consider what the Sinophone means in the absence of language” as Emily Wilcox discusses (74). While the relatively recent growth in literary, linguistic, and historical studies paying attention to Sinitic sounds seem at least partially indebted to Shih’s early thinking on dialect as language, here Nancy Yunhwa Rao’s chapter on Cantonese opera in North America solidifies the notion of a “Sino-soundscape” that contributes to an individual’s sense of self in isolation and in the collective. Showing how a corporeal approach might apply to film, Howard Chiang (64–65) reflects on inaudibility and silence in Wong Kar-wai’s 1997 film Happy Together to suggest that Wong’s characters “carry a certain ‘sonic’ leverage with which to move across borders.” Through this analysis, Chiang demonstrates his point that Sinophone studies can be read as “an unruly ‘queer’ (酷兒, ku’er) progeny of Chinese studies” (55) with “marginalization” shaping a convergence point for both disciplines (Sinophone studies and Queer studies) to meet and grow alongside one another. Chiang’s contribution here, and Alvin K. Wong’s evocation of “queer Hong Kong” to reach a “minor, affective history” (196), are some of the most exciting interdisciplinary interventions outlined in this volume. In most cases, the linguistic frameworks that formed the foundation of Sinophone studies aren’t abandoned, rather they are repurposed to show their relevance to other cultural power dynamics—Wilcox (77), for example, compares some dance companies to “putonghua,” others to “Sinitic languages.”

In its second section, A Reader delves into some of the knotty theoretical debates that have characterized the formation of Sinophone studies to this point. Many of these focus on the conceptualization of China, contested definitions of settler colonialism, and the concept of diaspora within Sinophone thinking. David Wang (161) develops his earlier, more inclusive take on Sinophone theory, proposing “postloyalism” as a paradigmatic alternative to “postcolonialism”. Drawing on long histories of dissent in Imperial China, Wang proposes using loyalism 遺民 and the connected notion of ‘postloyalism’ to deal with how “the Sinophone conjuration of ‘Chineseness’ is a matter of hauntology” (168)—a way of thinking “ranging from sentimental fabulation to political engagement.” There are certain points, such as Wang’s discussion of cross-references in Dung Kai-cheung’s writing to historic loyalist texts (171), that demonstrate this argument very effectively, though one could equally suggest that using loyalism/postloyalism as an analytical framework amounts to a recentering of China—in the sense that it requires a return to an understanding of dissent shaped by China’s political history. For E. K. Tan, on the other hand, dissent needs to be framed within the context of the academy. Borrowing from Josephine Ho’s discussion of cultural studies in Taiwan (182), Tan views Sinophone studies through a corporeal lens suggesting the discipline should be “parasitic”: a “nuisance” (185) to the “main body” of academic discourse.

These discussions, as well as Wai-Siam Hee’s response to Malaysian-Taiwanese author Ng Kim Chew’s critique of Shih and her conceptualization of diaspora, demonstrate how the definition of key terms and disciplinary boundaries remain live issues in Sinophone studies. This is true even in the publication mechanics of A Reader: the volume appears in a series titled “Global Chinese Culture,” which at best sits uncomfortably with sections of the book such as Carole McGranahan’s discussion of Chinese settler colonialism in Tibet, given her point that colonialism in that context is to “replace Tibetan worlds with Chinese ones” (266). So, while Wang (174) makes the argument that literary histories and theories shouldn’t be constructed around “formulaic dogma and geopolitical blindness,” when taken as a whole A Reader does make the case for remaining political in the pursuit of what Chien-heng Wu (223) terms the “maintenance of … [a] delicate tension” at the core of Sinophone thinking. The volume’s emphasis on interdisciplinary futures, and in particular thinking alongside other marginal disciplines, is one way that this balance might be maintained going forward.

Taiwan is the subject of two chapters in the volume—Hee’s discussion of Malaysian literature and the “lure of diaspora” in Taiwan (226) and Shu-mei Shih’s discussion of “conditions of theory in Taiwan” (243) in the context of its status as a protectorate of the United States. Mentions of Taiwan, however, are scattered across other chapters in the volume in a manner that emphasizes its centrality to Sinophone epistemologies. In an outline of the “geocritical Sinophone” (147) Yinde Zhang places French-Taiwanese graphic novelist Li-Chin Lin’s 2011 Formosa alongside a border-crossing list of geocritical works, including Liu Cixin’s 1999 short story “The Western Oceans,” which reimagines Northern Ireland as a Chinese colony, and the work of artist Huang Yong Ping. Elsewhere, Chien-heng Wu (214) highlights Taiwan’s importance in discussions of settler colonialism, as its history demonstrates how “settler colonialism is not a specific event but an overall structure” overcome only by a “radical transformation.” The consistent references to Taiwan throughout A Reader to an extent answer Shih’s question— “Is there Taiwan theory?”—by demonstrating how “relational comparison” (243) provides a meaningful way for Taiwan to both produce theory and aid its construction across multiple disciplines.

The major takeaway from this volume is that the strength of Sinophone studies as a discipline remains its ability to shapeshift and provide a space for “potentiality” over fixity, as Lily Wong (125) suggests in her comparison of African American poet Kyle Dargan and Hong Kong filmmaker Chan Tze Woon. In this Reader alone, Sinophone studies is a “soundscape,” a “parasite,” an “intervention,” a “multidimensional critical field.” There is an implicit open invitation here, moreover, for Sinophone studies to continue expanding. In particular, a corporeal turn opens up questions of Sinophone materialities, explored partially in this volume by Nathanel Amar’s discussion of commercial culture and the popularity of Hong Kong band Beyond in the PRC. What might studies of Sinophone urbanism look like, or how might one write a Sinophone history of touch? Alongside the diversity of this volume, the opportunities it points to for future research emphasize Chiang and Shih’s opening argument that Sinophone studies remains a compelling place to stand and look back at power.