Beijing Westerns and Indigenous Opacity in Ecoliterature of Southwest China

Indigenous knowledge of local ecosystems often challenges settler-colonial cosmologies that naturalize resource extraction and the relocation of nomadic, hunting, foraging, or fishing peoples. In this talk, Dr. Visser will present findings from her new book, Questioning Borders (Columbia UP, 2023), which analyzes relations among humans, animals, ecosystems, and the cosmos in ecoliterature by Han and non-Han Indigenous writers of China and Taiwan. She will compare “root-seeking” novels by Beijing writers, set in China’s “exotic” southwest, with literature by Wa, Nuosu Yi, and Gyalrong Tibetan Indigenes from Yunnan and Sichuan provinces to discuss the different implications of utilizing indigenous ecological perspectives in these works.
Robin Visser is professor in modern Chinese and Sinophone literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is the author of Questioning Borders: Ecoliteratures in China and Taiwan (Columbia UP, 2023) and Cities Surround the Countryside: Urban Aesthetics in Postsocialist China (Duke UP, 2010).