The rhetoric of “Comrade” in modern China : from Yu Dafu's "Boundless Night" to Wang Xiaobo's "Love in the Revolutionary Period" and "East Palace, West Palace" = 现代中国“同志”的修辞学 -- 从郁达夫的《茫茫夜》到王小波的《革命时期的爱情》和《东宫.西宫》

Abstract

This paper ascends to the incremental change on genealogy of semantic function of “comrade” in political contexts in modern China. It starts from the rhetoric of fraternity, pondering how did

“comrade” represent its penumbrae in mainland China, and analyzes how did the rhetoric of fraternity perform itself implicitly in gay stories of mainland China, thereby, taking a personal vision that how did masculinity in modern China and the rhetoric of fraternity become wrapped up in nationalistic ideology. This paper takes examples of Yu Dafu's Boundless Night of the 20's, Wang Xiaobo's Love in the Revolutionary Period of the 90's,20th century, and Eastern Palace,Western Palace, quotes from Derrida's "The Politics of Friendship", and the methodology of Liu Jenpeng and Ding Naifei's "Penumbrae Query Shadow,” to demonstrate how these texts resort to the “image” of “comrade”, and rhetorical shadow of “fraternity” as means to stow away “penumbral lust” between males.