Abstract
Cultural representations of UFO, as “uncertain fictional objects”, has become a spatial metaphor on screen to solve the perceptual puzzle in the developmentalist post-socialist China. By including critical ecocriticism as an axis in the analysis of novel and film, UFO in Her Eyes (Guo Xiaolu, 2011), this paper investigates a cognitive challenge that is gaining attention in contemporary Chinese science fiction by juxtaposing UFO as a metaphor for population monitoring, “eye in the sky”, with the overdevelopment of the countryside. Such a cognitively estranging referent, beyond the expressive power of realism, reflects the unprecedented changes in post-socialist China, while at the same time makes visible the practice of “remaindered life” that might exist in the face of global capitalism. As the village has become detached from the pre-industrial pastoral ideal, I contend that the collective metabolic rifts in UFO in Her Eyes are connected to the key issues of environmental injustice, technological advancement, and the global capitalist transformation, wherein the wasted lives going through ecological pain come together to form human and nonhuman futurist assemblages. Additionally, UFO in Her Eyes reimagines the value of abandoned waste and suggests ways to use garbage as an alternative to the contemporary capitalist ways of life.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | East Asian Ecocinema: Between Nation and Planet |
| Editors | Yuta Kaminishi, Jeff Kyong-McClain |
| Place of Publication | UK |
| Publisher | Edinburgh University Press |
| Chapter | 7 |
| Publication status | Accepted/In press - 30 Oct 2024 |