The Value Theory of Labor: Xi Xi, Teddy Bears, and World Literature
Published in Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal, 2022
Abstract
The renowned Hong Kong author Xi Xi wrote about handcraft for decades, and emerged as a “teddy bear artist” in a late phase of her career. In dialogue with Richard Sennett’s craft-based ethics and politics, we develop an approach to Xi Xi’s art and writing that connects both to theorizations of world literature. In reading Xi Xi as world literature, we depart from a consensus about Xi Xi and her work. Almost always understood as a writer “made in Hong Kong” she has often explored the lives of ordinary Hong Kongers. At the same time, local focus does not necessarily diverge from global concerns, because Hong Kong culture has long exhibited what Rey Chow describes as “impure origins” and cultural “in-betweenness” resulting from its postcolonial history and anomalous, partial sovereignty. The negotiation of these strains of influence has been among Xi Xi’s central themes in works like My City (1979, translated 1996) and Flying Carpet (1996, translated 2000). Yet while both of those books can be understood in their connection to the “glocal” histories of Hong Kong before and after the handover, they also present substantial representations of craft labour that put them in direct dialogue with patterns of global economic development.
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