Dependency as Situated Knowledge: A Reflexive Politics of Location on the Positionalities of Chinese Feminist Scholars

Abstract

While feminist knowledge has historical roots in China, the academic knowledge production about women’s and gender studies (WGS) as situated knowledge has always been a contestation between opposing forces. The Fourth United Nations World Conference on Women, held in Beijing in 1995, marked the critical discursive and organizational moment for grounding the feminist concept of gender as an analytical and action framework. Since then, WGS have flourished, but the label of feminism has been ambivalent. To examine the complicated state of academic dependency and the politics of location in this interdisciplinary academic field, I interrogate researchers’ positionalities in some recent publications on feminism and gender studies about China by pointing out the interplay of diasporic and domestic positionalities in English and Chinese publication outlets. This article argues that for an interdisciplinary program like WGS, with its inextricable connection to the political state of China and socialist state feminism, the theory of academic dependency cannot adequately capture the often contested, strategic, and situated standpoints of feminist scholars. While diasporic and domestic scholars are deeply aware of their own positionalities in the channel of publications that grant them voices, they are also caught in the current hegemonic political economy of knowledge. This article interrogates the contested positionalities of overseas and domestic feminist scholars in creating a feminist academic field about China.