TY - JOUR
T1 - Hope against hopes
T2 - Diana Zhu and the Transnational Politics of Chinese Popular Music
AU - CHOW, Yiu Fai
N1 - Copyright:
Copyright 2012 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2011/11
Y1 - 2011/11
N2 - Born and bred in the Netherlands, Diana Zhu, at 15 years of age, won a Chinese singing contest in Amsterdam in 2006. Subsequently, she got a contract first from Warner Music Hong Kong, then from Warner Taiwan. Relocated to Shanghai, her parents' 'home' city, Diana was working on her hope for a future in the Chinese pop market. This essay is my inquiry on the problematic of hope engendered by and embedded in the intersubjectivity between Diana and me. Taking my cues from Lash and Lury's method of 'following the object', I followed one person. I followed Diana and started to see her entanglement - particularly over her language, music and body - not only with Warner Music, but more fundamentally with the wider dynamics that seeks to configure and maintain a sense of hopefulness in the same Chinese society where inequality, injustice and inhumanity are threatening the 'harmonious society' the political establishment has been campaigning for. Through this journey with Diana, I aim to do two things. First, I aim to show, if we are to understand the complex relationship between the diasporic, the popular and the political in contemporary China, one possibility is to recuperate two sets of narratives - migration and modernity - and read them side by side in connection with hope. Second, I take this metonymic account as part and parcel of a critical Cultural Studies project that has such inequality, injustice and inhumanity in the heart of its politics and practices. I am trying to underwrite this story about Diana's hope with my own hope, against other hopes, that are constructed, circulated and transformed to serve the interests of the state and the capital. Hope management, I will argue, is a key site of political struggle if we want to see a better China in the future.
AB - Born and bred in the Netherlands, Diana Zhu, at 15 years of age, won a Chinese singing contest in Amsterdam in 2006. Subsequently, she got a contract first from Warner Music Hong Kong, then from Warner Taiwan. Relocated to Shanghai, her parents' 'home' city, Diana was working on her hope for a future in the Chinese pop market. This essay is my inquiry on the problematic of hope engendered by and embedded in the intersubjectivity between Diana and me. Taking my cues from Lash and Lury's method of 'following the object', I followed one person. I followed Diana and started to see her entanglement - particularly over her language, music and body - not only with Warner Music, but more fundamentally with the wider dynamics that seeks to configure and maintain a sense of hopefulness in the same Chinese society where inequality, injustice and inhumanity are threatening the 'harmonious society' the political establishment has been campaigning for. Through this journey with Diana, I aim to do two things. First, I aim to show, if we are to understand the complex relationship between the diasporic, the popular and the political in contemporary China, one possibility is to recuperate two sets of narratives - migration and modernity - and read them side by side in connection with hope. Second, I take this metonymic account as part and parcel of a critical Cultural Studies project that has such inequality, injustice and inhumanity in the heart of its politics and practices. I am trying to underwrite this story about Diana's hope with my own hope, against other hopes, that are constructed, circulated and transformed to serve the interests of the state and the capital. Hope management, I will argue, is a key site of political struggle if we want to see a better China in the future.
KW - Chinese diaspora
KW - hope
KW - modernity
KW - popular music industry
KW - the Netherlands
KW - transnationalism
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84858858143&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/09502386.2011.576766
DO - 10.1080/09502386.2011.576766
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:84858858143
SN - 0950-2386
VL - 25
SP - 783
EP - 808
JO - Cultural Studies
JF - Cultural Studies
IS - 6
ER -