Abstract
As one of the best and most complicated books by Brian Castro, Shanghai Dancing has received much critical attention from diverse perspectives. Bernadette Brennan has comprehensively discussed the language play in Shanghai Dancing, while Katherine Hallemeier and Maryline Brun focus their research on the contested notion of hybridity and its representations in this book. Scholars like Wang Guanglin have interviewed Brian Castro about Shanghai Dancing and produced several critical papers reflecting on the author’s original views of the text. Although these existing discussions have touched on many of the notable aspects of Shanghai Dancing, there is a gap to fill in the scholarship if we highlight the way this book represents memory, family history and their influence on the identity politics.
My argument is that Shanghai Dancing is not only a postmodernist fictional autobiography; it is also a template for studying how identity, memory and family history relate to each other. Castro's concern about the notion of cosmopolitan memory opens a new horizon of understanding identity in a globalised world.
Recommended Citation
chen, beibei
(2015)
"Contesting Identity and Forming ‘Cosmopolitan Memory’ in Brian Castro’s Shanghai Dancing,"
Antipodes: Vol. 29:
Iss.
2, Article 7.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/antipodes/vol29/iss2/7