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Book Chapter

Negotiating with the tradition: representations of fish in Alai’s fictional writing

  • Mario De Grandis
  • Filippo Costantini

Tibet has long been orientalized in fictional representations. Taking as a case study two texts by Alai, this paper investigates how a traditional Tibetan cultural trait–the fish taboo–is mobilized to complicate the representation of Tibetan culture. By describing the fish taboo Alai points at Tibet's cultural specificity, which in virtue of its exoticism can catch the attention of non-Tibetan readers. At the same time, however, Alai equips his characters with psychological depth, showing their contrasting inner emotions of attraction and repulsion toward fish. In this sense, Alai subtly points at the fallacies of flat representations of Tibet, thus dismantling them from within.

  • Keywords:
  • Chinese ethnic minority literature,
  • Alai,
  • disgust studies,
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Mario De Grandis

University College Dublin, Ireland - ORCID: 0000-0001-9709-4821

Filippo Costantini

University of Costa Rica, Costa Rica - ORCID: 0000-0002-5799-0004

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Chapter Information

Chapter Title

Negotiating with the tradition: representations of fish in Alai’s fictional writing

Authors

Mario De Grandis, Filippo Costantini

Language

English

DOI

10.36253/978-88-5518-506-6.11

Peer Reviewed

Publication Year

2021

Copyright Information

© 2021 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Bibliographic Information

Book Title

Food issues 食事

Book Subtitle

Interdisciplinary Studies on Food in Modern and Contemporary East Asia

Editors

Miriam Castorina, Diego Cucinelli

Peer Reviewed

Number of Pages

202

Publication Year

2021

Copyright Information

© 2021 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Publisher Name

Firenze University Press

DOI

10.36253/978-88-5518-506-6

ISBN Print

978-88-5518-505-9

eISBN (pdf)

978-88-5518-506-6

eISBN (epub)

978-88-5518-507-3

Series Title

Studi e saggi

Series ISSN

2704-6478

Series E-ISSN

2704-5919

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