Sinophone States of Exception

This chapter takes issue with the extant paradigm of Sinophone studies, which is largely based on the discourse of either resistance or governance, by proposing the dialectics of “exception.” Inspired by the critical thoughts of Eileen Chang and Giorgio Agamben, it argues that whereas the mainstream discourse of Chinese literature treats overseas literature as an “exceptional case,” one that is isolated so as to authenticate the orthodoxy of Chinese national literature, a Sinophone scholar turns the tables by taking exception to such a “state of exception” and treats Chinese national literature as an exception to world Sinophone literature. In practice, it seeks to bracket Chinese national literature only insofar as its prescribed absence facilitates one’s recognition of Sinoglossia at large.