About Chinese Women

by Julia Kristeva

One of France’s leading philosophers combines a study of Chinese history, literature, religion, and politics with her own penetrating insights to analyze the startling evolution of the woman’s role in China.

Genres: China, Nonfiction, Feminism, Philosophy

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1977

About the author

Julia Kristeva is professor emerita of linguistics at the Université de Paris VII and author of many acclaimed works. Her Columbia University Press books include Hatred and Forgiveness (2012); The Severed Head: Capital Visions (2014); and, with Philippe Sollers, Marriage as a Fine Art (2016).

Reviews

[Jason · Rating 1 out of 5]

Admittedly loathed Kristeva right from the start and and every subsequent encounter with her writing in my academic career just intensified that dislike. She's probably one of the most self-indulgent and self-important thinkers out there, and About Chinese Women exemplifies just that; there's honestly no end to her masturbatory behavior here in this 200page monograph that lasted 200 pages too long.

[Alison Wong · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve read this book about 5 times, each with a different perspective and it continues to be enlightening.

[Chesna · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title of this book initially gave me pause, because I wondered how helpful the analysis would be, given the author's situation in soviet-era Western Europe. But I came across the book for $4 in a sidewalk sale and Kristeva's writing fascinates me, so I grabbed it. The first half is a feminist psychoanalysis of the difference between the sexes--and its cultural relativity. There is some discussion of ancient China's matrilinear (matriarchal?) marriage system and the destruction (or maybe sublimation?) of feminine jouissance in the philosophy of Confucius (the "eater of women," Part 2 chapter II). Did Taoism, and an ancient psychological-cultural heritage of duality, preserve some feminine power under the surface of dominant Confucian culture? In any case, the drastic and speedy change in women's position that came with the Cultural Revolution is rife with psychoanalytical interest. Kristeva insists that this is not an academic work, and that she is incapable of getting up close to the issues because of her foreignness. But her interviews with women, paired with her philosophical analysis, juxtaposes psychoanalytical and feminist theory with the experience of individual women on a universal level.

When he flees the paternal order (by fear of castration, Freud would say; but Jones would say fear of asphanisis), man can laugh. But, on the contrary, the daughter is handed the keys to the symbolic order when she identifies with the father: only there is she recognized not in herself but against her rival, the vaginal, jouissante mother. Thus, at the price of censuring herself as a woman, she will be able to bring to triumph her henceforth sublimated sadistic attacks on the mother whom she has repressed and with whom she will never cease to fight...[A] woman has nothing to laugh about when the paternal order falls. She can take pleasure in it if, by identifying with the mother, the vaginal body, she imagines herself to be the repressed and sublimated content of the culture rising through its cracks. If, on the other hand, she has failed to identify with the mother, and--as a victim or militant--found her one superficial, backward, and easily severed hold on life in the symbolic paternal order, its dissolution can be her death. p.30

[Estrella · Rating 4 out of 5]

Muy interesante la verdad, es cierto qué fue escrito hace décadas y no creo qué a día de hoy la mujer en China tenga esa posición de poder. No lo se, así qué me quedo con ganas de investigar más.
Nos habla de la posición tradicional de la mujer, desde un matriarcado hasta la inferioridad frente al hombre con el confucionismo. Lo interesante es como Mao para romper con el sistema de pensamiento feudal e instaurar un sistema radicalmente diferente actua desde una posición patriarcal. Las leyes de matrimonio son rompedoras ciertamente así como los porcentajes de mujeres estudiando y trabajando. Se necesitaba de manos para construir la China maoista y se luchó para qué la mujer trabajase al mismo nivel qué un hombre. Me parece muy rompedor el movimiento sufragista y de igualdad de la mujer en la década de los veinte y los treinta. Posteriormente se lanzó una campaña para liberalizar el divorcio, aborto libre, métodos anticonceptivos gratuitos.. así como todos los nombres de mujeres qué lideraron y alcanzaron posiciones de poder en el partido.

[Xinyi]

"a society where power is active, but not symbolized by anyone: no one can appropriate it for himself if no one — not even women — can be excluded from it."// to imagine the last time the world had casted such optimistic gaze upon China is like imagining living on another planet(

[Maksym Karpovets · Rating 3 out of 5]

У цілому - непогана річ. Звісно, що для критики тут можна віднайти дуже багато причин, хоча б надмірно егоцентричний, замкнений на собі стиль Крістєвої, яка пише так наче відкриває щосекунди істини вселенського масштабу. Однак проблема ще й у тім, що багато речей є хрестоматійними, що дещо применшує важливість і актуальність дослідження. Утім, мені найбільш зімпонував розділ про фігуру Матері у китайській сім'ї. Звісно, що у ньому теж є абсолютно непотрібні відхилення у бік психоаналізу (хоча й цілком логічні, судяючи із поставленої мети) та релігії, які можна спокійно оминути, але також присутні прекрасні й дуже цінні спостереження про генеологію матріархату й матріархального у китайській структурі сім'ї. Читати цікаво, але якби Крістєва не ускладнювала постструктуралістськими вкрапленнями, то це, можливо, був би цілком бестселер, а не лише книга для критиків культури й ґендерних теоретиків.