Marriage, Love, and Sex in the Sinophone World

Still think this is a highly dubious term: “Sinophone World.” If you are talking about a Chinese-speaking world that sees itself as an interconnected, relatively homogeneous community, well sorry, that just doesn’t exist. I guess the political supposition is that if you talk about it enough you will make it exist, or contribute to its eventual formation by propagating your own “sinophone discourse.” Yet, this seems like the epitome of disingenuous insofar as you’re basically trying to crowdfund a politics that is wishful thinking, promising sponsors that you will produce something valuable and worthwhile, but not asking anything too serious from them in return. Basically, “Sinophone” is not a description but prescription for some vaguely charted world that theorists (Shih Shu-mei et al) wish existed and have a career stake in promoting (to English-speaking academics who have no clue about the stakes or complexities of the problem). Thus, whereas I speak Mandarin and live in TW, therefore I am also in this quasi-fictional Sinophone world, what role do I play? How is this helpful if no one on this plane of existence recognizes (or has a clue about) what goes on in China (PRC)? By analogy, even if the US is in the Anglophone world, that doesn’t translate into the USAese having any idea about what’s happening in India (the largest English-speaking community in the world). As far as I can tell, the Sinophone world has even less meaning than talk of the Anglophone World because there is a bigger disconnect between these various groups of Chinese-speakers.