Universität zu Köln

Zhang, Wen ORCID: 0000-0002-6823-7069 (2020). The Act of Seeing and the Narrative: On the Rise and Decline of Wulitou 无厘头’s Popularity in China. PhD thesis, Universität zu Köln.

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Abstract

Through the use of “anachronism” and “dislocation”, wulitou narrative, which once was popular in China in the last 20 years or so (from the end of the 1990s to the mid-2010s), departs from the temporal, spatial, and causal patterns in classical narratives. By integrating the human act of seeing into the study of wulitou’s popularity in China, this thesis argues that the rise of the internet in the end of the 1990s, is directly connected not only to the time that wulitou narrative became popular in China, but to the very features which are characteristic to wulitou narrative. What this thesis also emphasize is that, China as a culture with a long premodernism tradition which was built upon traditional agricultural society and pays emphasis on the total unified “field” and the inner relations inside the total unified “field”, Chinese culture, when it successively confronted the electric media and internet media in the second half of 20th century, showed its own cultural character and provided a special cultural context which mixed premodernism, modernism and postmodernism together. So to say, the popularity of wulitou was also inseparable from the special context in around the end of 1990s in China. As an effective way to deconstruct the relations between things, wulitou narrative is more than a style of narrative, for Chinese internet users in the last 20 years or so, it is also a necessary means to subvert the old schemata, to interpret the new experience they interact with the world.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD thesis)
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID ORCID Put Code Zhang, Wen 378729481@qq.com orcid.org/0000-0002-6823-7069 UNSPECIFIED
URN:	urn:nbn:de:hbz:38-113739
Date:	2 July 2020
Language:	English
Faculty:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities
Divisions:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Fächergruppe 4: Außereuropäische Sprachen, Kulturen und Gesellschaften > Ostasiatisches Seminar
Subjects:	News media, journalism, publishing Philosophy
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Keywords Language Narrative English Wulitou English act of seeing English China English
Date of oral exam:	18 June 2020
Referee:	Name Academic Title Kramer, Stefan Prof. Dr. Huang, Weiping Prof. Dr. Weingart, Brigitte Prof. Dr.
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	http://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/id/eprint/11373