Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Policing intercultural encounters: adventures in Beijing

2003; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 11; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/0963948032000155492

1469-9869

Alex Hughes,

China's Global Influence and Migration

This article reflects on the notion that China is viewed in the West as a site of absolute cultural Otherness, and contributes to debates around the manner in which Euro-Chinese intercultural interaction is imagined in European thought. Adopting a perspective inflected by Foucault's representation of disciplinary power, and by critical work pursued in the field of Contact-Studies, it scrutinises European cultural artefacts that map Beijingese space, and the adventures in that space of the European subject. These artefacts, which deal with different Beijings, are Victor Segalen's Rene´ Leys; Pierre-Jean Remy's Le Sac du Palais d'E´te´; and Christian Garcin's Le Vol du pigeon voyageur. The essay shows that the novels defy our expectation that variant ‘distillations’ of China—Imperial, Republican, post-Maoist—might invite different representations. And it concludes that the novels examined evince a European desire not to represent Beijing, and China, as a zone of transcultural contact.