Deracinating ethnic minors: the affect of authoritarian certitude

ABSTRACTThe figure of the ethnic minor is a heavily inscribed representational subject in PRC cinema. Coming out of a socialist cinematic tradition as images of thoroughly assimilated, phlegmatic adults-in-waiting, the portrayal of ethnic children in PRC cinema today assumes more nuances as an art-house cinema verité aesthetics demands ethnic children enact their social presence in a complex network of social relations fraught with the tension between modernity and tradition, identity structures and their restructures. This paper examines two 2018 films about ethnic minors in Tibet and the Uyghur region of China—Wangdrak’s Rain Boots by Lhapal Gyal and A First Farewell by Wang Lina, respectively. Through the lenses of what Félix Guattari calls “partial subjectivity” and the “social machine,” the article demonstrates how the two films portray weather forecast and linguistic ability in Mandarin Chinese as socializing conduit of Chinese state power and produce for the ethnic children an affect of authoritarian certainty. The paper argues that those two films critique the PRC’s current ethnopolitical strategies in the said regions, which place a premium on a monoglot and monovocal articulation of a pan-Chinese identity at the cost of impoverishing a polyvocal ethno-social reality.KEYWORDS: TibetUyghursocial machinemicro-fascismFélix Guattarifigure of the child Special termsTableDisplay TableNotes1 A First Farewell won the Crystal Bear of the Generation Kplus section at Berlinale and the Asian Future Best Film award in Tokyo. Wangdrak's Rain Boots nominated for the Crystal Bear at Berlinale.2 The editor for A First Farewell, for example, is Frenchman Matthieu Laclau, who had previously edited several films by the award-winning Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke. Wangdrak’s Rain Boots was co-produced by Bai Yang, Yu Jianhong, two Chinese and Sonam Gyal, a Tibetan.3 Observed on the ninth day of the ninth month in the Chinese calendar, Chong Yang is a traditional Chinese holiday which involves paying respects to one’s elderly, deceased or alive.4 Guattari uses this term to describe apparatuses that have a homogenizing effect on a mass society, see Guattari, Chaosmosis, 30.5 Tibetan culture speaks of unrelated social relations in kinship terms as a way of showing respect, here the suffix aku (ཨ་ཁུ་) is a Tibetan kinship term meaning paternal uncle.6 This is a universal slogan that graces every primary school across China in adherence to article 19 of the Chinese Constitution and more specifically the Law of the People’s Republic of China on the Standard Spoken and Written Chinese Language promulgated in January 2001.Additional informationNotes on contributorsPeng HaiPeng Hai is an assistant professor of modern China and Inner Asia in the Department of History at the University of Pittsburgh.