China Studies Centre, the University of Sydney
Thursday, 30 May 2019 from 1:30 pm to 3:30 pm (AEST)
Eastern Avenue Seminar Room 405, Eastern Avenue Complex, The University of Sydney
Register: http://bit.ly/CoreyByrnes
This talk looks closely at the material and representational practices that shape contested territory within the so-called “nine-dash line,” which demarcates China’s claimed sovereignty in the South China Sea. It is within this imaginary line that China has embarked on the creation of a series of man-made islands (often built atop coral reefs), complete with airfields, ports, and military installations. The geopolitical implications of these activities have received significant attention. Relatively little, however, has been written either about how newly constructed islands are used to visualize and materialize territorial claims or about how these islands are made visible to distant viewing publics through varied representational modes, including propaganda imagery, satellite reconnaissance, maps, journalistic and literary depictions, among others. This talk explores both the topographic aesthetics of island building as well as the visual forms through which viewers inside and outside of China have come to know these islands. By juxtaposing the aesthetic forms that make newly constructed islands visible above the waterline with the slowly accretive “colonial” work of the invertebrates that construct coral reefs beneath the surface, this talk ultimately seeks to highlight the often violent encounter between non-human life and forms of nation building that impose a fixed cartographic imaginary on living ecosystems.
Speaker
Dr Corey Byrnes is an assistant professor of Modern Chinese culture at Northwestern University, where he teaches courses in Chinese literature, visual culture, and the environmental humanities. He received a PhD in Chinese Literature from the University of California at Berkeley in 2013. His book, Fixing Landscape: A Techno-Poetic History of China’s Three Gorges approaches the 2500-year-long representational tradition inspired by the Three Gorges region of southwestern China from the perspective of the recently completed Three Gorges Dam, which displaced well over one million people and radically transformed the ecology and culture of the upper Yangzi River.