The genesis of citizen intelligentsia in digital China : Ai Xiaoming's practices of identity and activism

Abstract

This research is a case study of the social activism experiences of Ai Xiaoming, a literature professor, feminist, rights activist, and independent documentary filmmaker. The research addresses the broad struggle for recognition and representation of feminists, activists, independent filmmakers, public intellectuals and scholars in digital China. The analysis of her case has led to the creation of the new concept of “citizen intelligentsia” referring to a group of activists and intellectuals who have been appropriating “citizenship” in opposition to the party-state through social activism practice in forms of speech, on-the-spot action and the courage to take action. The qualitative study includes interviews and observations of Ai Xiaoming’s life in her four homes/sites of activism in three cities - Wuhan, Guangzhou and Beijing; virtual observations of social media platforms - mainly Twitter, WeChat, Sina Weibo and Kaidi BBS; and content analysis of Ai Xiaoming’s textual creations – her autobiography and two sets of documentary films. This study examines: first, Ai Xiaoming’s gendered relational practice as daughter, sister, wife and mother in the negotiating of her social roles as an activist; second, her anti-stigmatization practice in childhood, work, and activist communities; third, her emotional practice of an online nude breasts photo protest against child sexual abuse; and her truth-telling practice in documentary activism through Jiabiangou Elegy: Life and Death of Rightists and the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake documentary series. The study elucidates the citizen intelligentsia’s experiences in the new digitalized cultural contestation, in the context of the patriarchal party-state, globalizing market power, highly developed technology force, and civil society struggles. Ai Xiaoming’s experience in the present-day China shows how a woman can perform citizen activism, an inventive individual intervention for social change in response to structural and institutional burdens. I argue that, first, Ai Xiaoming has creatively managed and recreated her identities through developing new home spaces, creating virtual spaces and counterpublics through textual creativity, and managed emotion in family practice, to re-define her gender roles while carrying out social activism. Second, Ai Xiaoming has had to deal with lifelong political stigma, due to her family background, her feminist theories and practices, the direct state suppression, and the self-claimed political radicals’ group alignments. She has developed strategies of information management, distance management, and intellectualizing and artistically analyzing personal experiences to cope with the intra-community stigmatization. Third, Ai Xiaoming has energized herself and her supporters through anger in a protest against child sexual abuse and negative governmental reactions to it, leading to her decision to use her body, specifically her nude breasts to protest. This protest engendered emotional charged interactivity and helped forge a collective identity among netizens. Finally, Ai Xiaoming has conceptualized her own and her documentary participants’ experiences by constructing what I call a new “citizen intelligentsia”. Her films, her use of her own body and her life have shown how it is possible for a woman to resist multiple forms of oppression through new practices of activism.