Rewriting modernity: body, lepers, and the exoticizing gaze in Ma Yuan’s fiction

Ma Yuan’s fabrication (1986), widely regarded as one of the most challenging works of contemporary Chinese fiction, has been extensively analyzed as a quintessential example of metafictional writing. Departing from previous critics’ use of the term “meta-narrative,” this paper examines Ma Yuan’s experimental narrative as an exoticizing gaze that represents the bodies of lepers. Drawing on postcolonial theory and affect studies, I argue that this gaze marginalizes lepers as a minority Other within a Han-majority cultural context. Simultaneously, Ma Yuan idealizes Tibetans as embodiments of purity and benevolence while portraying them as traditional and pre-modern from a mainstream cultural lens. This dual representation, I propose, reflects Ma Yuan’s ambivalent stance toward socialist national discourses and the modernization process in post-Mao China. While attempting to rebel against authoritative ideologies, his narrative inadvertently reinforces dominant cultural paradigm. This tension highlights the broader challenges faced by Chinese avant-garde writers in the 1980s, who sought to redefine personal identity amidst the legacy of historical trauma while navigating the demands of sharing indigenous narratives within a globalizing cultural market during the reform era.