Becoming a Global Subject: Language and the Body in Xiaolu Guo's A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers

This article examines the relationship between language and the body in the construction of global subjectivity in Xiaolu Guo's novel, A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers (2007), a first-person narrative about a young Chinese woman, Z, who spends a year in London learning the English language. Struggling to articulate herself in English, Z's journey of language acquisition in the interest of global mobility and cultural capital parallels her sexual awakening, bringing to the fore critical questions about the corporeal effects of learning a language and the possibilities of intimacy and communication. The text plays with multiple meanings of corporeality in a contemporary world marked by (non)communication, disclosing the ironic and productive representational tension between the discursive construction of the body--the body as made by language--and the possibility of the body itself as an alternative to language

Being in the World: Literary Practice and Pedagogy in Global Times

In this article, I examine the implications for literature pedagogy based on recent developments in postcolonial theory and globalization studies. I argue for a critical cosmopolitan pedagogy that would nourish the creation of alternative imaginaries and teach young people through literature to be more fully in the world. Two instances of how this might be effected are provided. The first centers on how literary pedagogy in globalized times cannot avoid dealing with texts translated into English from other languages. Using the global, multicultural city of Singapore as a case in point, I show how teaching translated texts can be a strategic way of interrogating the hegemony of the Anglophone segment of the population, and historically, the English-educated class in Singapore, by providing minority perspectives erased by official history. A different past is thus used to question a normalized present. The second instance of a critical cosmopolitan pedagogy is discussed in relation to Mohsin Hamid’s novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, which deals with the pressing global issue of terrorism. It focuses on how the teacher can further help the text in its work to render the reader, rather than the object of narration, strange. Ultimately, a literature pedagogy that takes the question of perspective seriously can help us resist neoliberal capitalism’s emphasis on the management and care of the self in the service of markets in favor of a more politicized global subject fully committed to engaging the world

Writing Singapore: An Historical Anthology of Singapore Literature

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