| Popis: |
This dissertation focuses on how authors, editors, and critics of “Hui literature” (Huizu wenxue) have positioned themselves and their works within the People’s Republic of China and the Middle East. Hui literature is officially defined as works by Chinese-speaking Muslims who belong to the state-recognized Hui ethnic group. Scholars have noted that writers of Hui fiction often weave ethno-Islamic elements into their works. Building on this insight, I investigate how from the 1950s to the present producers of Hui literature have capitalized on their ethnic identity to brand literary journals, publishing houses, and research institutions. To map the evolving usages of “Hui literature,” I interviewed prominent members of the Hui literary community and collected sources from private archives. These sources inform my textual analysis of Hui works of fiction, revealing two co-existing yet divergent dynamics. In China, producers of Hui literature co-opt the Hui state-assigned ethnicity to gain a niche in the domestic market. In the Middle East, via Arabic translations, they switch to the framing “Chinese Muslims” to gain a niche within the global Islamic publishing market. I argue that this oscillation between “Hui” and “Chinese-Muslim” framings reveals how literary professionals involved in ethnic literature make strategic use of changing social, ideological, and economic resources to carve out an ethno-professional niche within increasingly interdependent regional, national, and transnational literary spheres. |
