Poetry of the Chinese diaspora: a carnival sense of the world

Abstract

This essay examines poetry of the Chinese diaspora in the light of Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of literary carnival. At the heart of Bakhtin’s theory lies a vision of literature as comprising various forces in a process of constant shifts and movements that confront a canonical centre. Chinese diaspora poetry, long understood as a marginal literary production in North America, presents an interesting case for our examination of the epistemic preoccupations in the field of literary criticism. What we need in the study of Chinese diaspora poetry is a carnivalistic mode of thinking, or rather unthinking, which is not subject to aesthetic and ideological ‘assimilation from monologic positions.