EACS-2016. Book of Abstracts

Section 4 21st Biennial Conference of the European Association for Chinese Studies 51 conservative thinkers. They criticize his Philosophy of Life as being a variant of bourgeoisie philosophy from the imperialist age. Therefore, it is problematic to associate Bergson with Leftist thought in Western academic circles. This research will seek to correct this ideological bias, since Bergson’s philosophy was the common intellectual resource shared by some of the most prominent Chinese Leftist intellectuals in early Republican China. This paper will investigate Qu Qiubai and Taixu’s reception of Bergsonism. Qu’s appropriations of Bergonism, the Yogacara School and Anarchism exemplary in his early writings. I will try to delineate how the 3 major traditions of thoughts compositely engaged Qu in his approach of Bolshevik political practices and Dialectic Materialism. Taixu also made an important contribution to reinterpret Bergson’s Philosophy of Life by his efforts to connect the idea of Creative Evolution with anarchism, socialism and Buddhism. In consequence, Qu and Taixu radically rewrote and transformed the theoretical formation of both Western thought and traditional Chinese thought. Therefore, their reception of Bergson provides an important aspect to examine in the transcultural currents across Europe and Asia in the early twentieth century. Choy Howard Yuen Fung (Hong Kong Baptist University) Literature and Medicine: IllnessWritings in Modern China Key words: modern Chinese literature, medical writings, physical sickness accounts, mental illness discourse, narrative therapy With the therapeutic function of narrative and storytelling at the personal level being overshadowed by political concerns in mainland China, this paper examines literary writings related to both mental illness and physical sickness in contemporary China, including Hong Kong. It explores the ways in which “ill- ness” as both a medical condition of public health and a symptomatic strategy of linguistic interrogation problematizes literary metaphors, scientific language, social disorders, and cultural maladies. As health becomes more of a social as well as an individual issue in China today, writers have finally re-examined the private experience of psychological and physiological problems in their recent works. The importance of individual or private voices in the understanding of disease through literary writings will be stressed in this interdisciplinary study. Methodologically, within the three areas of medical narrative identified by European social psychologist Lars-Christer Hydén, psychotherapeutic stories reflecting “narrative as a clinical tool” and autobiographical “illness narratives” of sufferings are selected, in particular the latter kind that uses storytelling as a way to reconstitute one’s identity from the dominations of both the dreaded disease and the medical system or, in the words of Hydén, to “restore a sense of personal agency lost through the objectifying procedures of clinical care and treatment.” In light of the post-Freudian, Foucauldian deconstruction practices of narrative therapy, I argue that these texts have emerged as investigative reports beyond physical pain to “re-story” the fears of the sick person. When speaking of illness, the health problem immediately becomes a socio-literary issue. Codeluppi Martina (Ca' Foscari University of Venice/Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3) “Third-rate Scholars Do Overseas”: Mainland China and Research on Chinese Literature in Foreign Languages Key words: overseas Chinese-language literature, foreign-language literature, Sinophone studies, Ha Jin, Dai Sijie The concept of the Sinophone, elaborated by Shu-Mei Shih and DavidWang in the late 2000s, provided a new perspective from which to analyse contemporary Chinese literature, facing the challenge of glo- balisation with a transnational and cross-cultural strategy. Nevertheless, while this approach was created outside the borders of P.R.C., Chinese scholars were developing different frameworks, which reflected a more sinocentric approach, being symptomatic of a less welcoming attitude towards authors writing from