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Dying against Democracy: Suicide Protest and the 1905 Anti-American Boycott

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 June 2021

Keren He Open the ORCID record for Keren He [Opens in a new window]
Keren He*
Affiliation:
Keren He ([email protected]) is Assistant Professor of East Asian Studies at Dickinson College.
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Abstract

The joint rise of popular movements and mass media in early twentieth-century China gave birth to a democratic imagination, which culminated in the anti-American boycott of 1905. The transnational campaign nonetheless disintegrated as a result of partisan division—an ingrained predicament of democratic agonism that is best illustrated by the story of Feng Xiawei, a grassroots activist whose suicide in Shanghai constituted a key moment in the boycott. Juxtaposing a variety of accounts about Feng's death in journalism, political fiction, reformed opera, and advertisements, this article examines how, together, these texts construct democratic agonism and suicide protest as revealing two opposing political sensibilities as well as modes of action. Instead of expressing only nationalist passion, Feng's suicide reveals a deep anxiety of his time to locate a spiritual source of authority in the face of its glaring absence in social negotiation. This fraught dynamic between the democratic and the transcendent continues to characterize modern Chinese political culture to the present.

Keywords

anti-American boycottAsia-PacificChinademocratic agonismFeng Xiaweipopular culturepopular movementsuicide protest
Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 80 , Issue 4 , November 2021 , pp. 865 - 888
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Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc., 2021

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