Mother, Desire and Oppression

In this paper, I analyse the theme of mother-son incest in a contemporary Chinese science fiction story “Cutting Ties with Mothers (Tuomu)” by Han Song (b. 1965), one of the giants of contemporary Chinese science fiction. With a gendered perspective, I decode implications behind the mother-son incest in the story. I argue this theme serves as a gender metaphor to delineate the power contestation between a male self and a feminized Chinese state. It also sheds light on a male individual’s mental dilemma in contemporary Chinese modernization.