Thesis: 'Reading Li Xiaojiang: The Politics of Sexual Difference'

My PhD dissertation reconstructs and examines what I call the “politics of sexual difference” of Li Xiaojiang (李小江), one of the founding figures of women’s studies in the PRC. Specifically, I examine the critique of the egalitarian emancipatory project, the ontology of sexual difference, the establishment of female subjectivity, and the normative gender relation based on the ideal of “yin-yang” in her writing. I seek to situate her thinking within the intellectual community of post-socialist China, while offering a substantive interpretation of her feminist intervention at the same time.