Abstract
With the blooming of the internet in the past three decades, Internet blogging has become a popular way for writers to promote and publish their thoughts and writings. As there is no absolute proof of one’s identity—nationality, sexuality, age, or profession—in the cyber world, Internet users can always abandon their existing “identities” and create a new one when they surf the Internet. In light of this, the gender boundary has become blurred, as gender can be seen as only one kind of “performativity” in cyberspace. Along this line of reasoning, Judith Butler’s post-structuralist feminist argument that “identities are fabrications manufactured and sustained through corporeal signs and other discursive means” (1999, p. 136) can be verified, as cyberspace indeed provides a new “space” for women to reconstruct their gender identities. I would argue that, from a post-feminist and a cyberfeminist point of view, the virtual world provides a great platform for women to fight against the patriarchal constraints that have been imposed on them in reality. This chapter demonstrates how Hong Ying, a prominent and controversial female writer in China, provides a new perspective on interpreting the exchange of feminist thoughts and the direct author-reader relationship on the Web.
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Notes
- 1.
It is possible to challenge this comment by stating that printed publications can serve this function too, as writers can use pseudonyms to publish their works and do not need to reveal their real identities. However, I would argue that printed materials always carry more restrictions, and writers’ identities are much easier to identify in print than on the Internet. In order to publish literary works in printed form, writers must have publishers, and it is impossible to hide one’s identity completely as certain personal information has to be revealed to the publisher for legal reasons. In contrast, writers can publish their writings online freely whenever and wherever a site for them to upload their writings exists, and they can easily hide their identities due to the relative dearth of personal contact.
- 2.
According to Galloway (2005), cyberfeminists emerged from Adelaide, Australia, in the early 1990s, when a group of artists and activists calling themselves VNS Matrix published the first Cyberfeminist Manifesto: “From this early rant, the cyberfeminist movement began to grow and shift. It began to coalesce around Europe. And on September 20, 1997 in Kassel, Germany, the First Cyberfeminist International met at Documenta X, an international exhibition of contemporary art”.
- 3.
In 2006, Xu Jinglei’s blog ranked first at sina.com, reaching 36 million readers, much higher than any men bloggers.
- 4.
According to the Beijing Times 京華時報, officials from the Ministry of Civil Affairs released statistics showing that in the last three quarters of 2011, 1,466,000 couples had registered for divorce throughout the country, and the number had increased by 11.9% compared with the same period in 2010. Up to 2011, the divorce rate had already been increasing progressively for eight years in succession, with Sichuan, Shandong, and Jiangsu the top three (Articles Base n.d.).
- 5.
This novel is discussed in more detail in the section “Blogging as a Tool of Promotion”.
- 6.
Hong Ying’s K: The Art of Love was finished in 1999 and published in 2001, but was banned in China in 2002 due to a libel case.
- 7.
The original Chinese version is as follows: 妈妈, 我最最爱的, 离开你一年, 只有你知道, 没有你的日子, 我是多么孤独! (See http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_46e98efa01000afw.html).
- 8.
The quotation in the original Chinese is as follows:
- 9.
See the appendix in Hong Ying’s K: The Art of Love.
- 10.
The Wang Lijun Incident: Wang Lijun used to be Bo Xilai’s subordinate, he was the police chief in Chongqing, however, on 6 February 2012, Wang Lijun fled to the United States Embassy to seek asylum: it is believed that he had found that Bo Xilai’s wife, Gu Kailai 谷開來, was involved in the homicide case of a British businessman, Neil Heywood, in Chengdu 成都.
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Kung, K.WS. (2020). Discussion of Web Literature: Feminist and Post-Feminist Ideas on Hong Ying’s Blog. In: Kung, K.WS. (eds) Reconceptualizing the Digital Humanities in Asia. Digital Culture and Humanities, vol 2. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4642-6_6
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