Proceedings of the 2023 9th International Conference on Humanities and Social Science Research (ICHSSR 2023)

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“Friendship or Romantic Love?”: Critically Adopting Queer Theory to Explore Laotong Relationship in Snow Flower Secret Fan

Authors
Tong Guan1, *
1High School Affiliated to Renmin University of China, No. 37 Zhongguancun Street, Haidian District, Beijing, 100080, People’s Republic of China
*Corresponding author. Email: stella_guantong@163.com
Corresponding Author
Tong Guan
Available Online 9 September 2023.
DOI
10.2991/978-2-38476-092-3_6How to use a DOI?
Keywords
Laotong; Snow Flower and the Secret Fan; Queer theory; Ancient Chinese women; Gender inequality
Abstract

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is a popular novel by American author Lisa See. The description of the Laotong relationship - an ancient Chinese relationship that bounded two unrelated girls together to form a for eternity as kindred sisters - has been widely discussed by the public. There exist two prevalent attitudes towards Laotong relationship - friendship and romantic love. Using the literature research method, this paper adopts queer theory to analyze the Laotong relationship through narrative in the book. This paper corresponds to the Queer theory in terms of the social environment in which the laotong relationship is located and its fluidity and argues that the relationship between Laotong is a emotion that arises in a unique cultural soil and does not belong to the binary classification of friendship and romantic love. In addition, the paper reflects on the use of queer theory by tracing the concerns of its inventor, Teresa de Lauretis, about its generalized use and by proposing a potential risk of its assimilation into queerness in non-Western cultures.

Copyright
© 2023 The Author(s)
Open Access
Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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Volume Title
Proceedings of the 2023 9th International Conference on Humanities and Social Science Research (ICHSSR 2023)
Series
Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research
Publication Date
9 September 2023
ISBN
978-2-38476-092-3
ISSN
2352-5398
DOI
10.2991/978-2-38476-092-3_6How to use a DOI?
Copyright
© 2023 The Author(s)
Open Access
Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

Cite this article

risenwbib
TY  - CONF
AU  - Tong Guan
PY  - 2023
DA  - 2023/09/09
TI  - “Friendship or Romantic Love?”: Critically Adopting Queer Theory to Explore Laotong Relationship in Snow Flower Secret Fan
BT  - Proceedings of the 2023 9th International Conference on Humanities and Social Science Research (ICHSSR 2023)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 34
EP  - 42
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-092-3_6
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-092-3_6
ID  - Guan2023
ER  -