Transformation Through Transculturation in Chen Xi’s Comics

Chen Xi (1981–), aka Long Santiao, is a UK based transnational cartoonist, writer and illustrator. With the exception of Under the sky of Rome (Luoma de tiankong xia), an illustrated novel published in 2009 by Shaanxi Normal University Press, her work consists mainly of comics and graphic novels, some of them collected in a book titled Dreams and Shadows: Tales from Planet Xi’s Teahouse, published in 2015 by the British independent publisher Line of Intent, and others self-published or simply uploaded on her blogs. Since her style – playfully called ‘Sinophone pop’ (Pedone 2018)– draws upon different cultural traditions to shape original, fluid meanings, her work can be described as transcultural (Dagnino 2012). This occurs through the massive use of scripts and images ascribable to a Chinese cultural context (traditional folklore, wuxia martial heroes, mythology and fantasy), combined with European ones (Italian writers Buzzati, Calvino, Eco, or atmospheres from Britain’s Victorian era or London’s Swinging Sixties). In a skilfully crafted paradox, Chen Xi employs commodification, fetishisation and self-Orientalisation to create a personal neonomadic, transcultural landscape. The most recurring theme in Chen Xi’s work being that of transformation, setting off from this category, the chapter aims at exploring how the aforementioned policultural aesthetic elements are transformed in Chen Xi’s work to produce a “post-loyalist” (Wang 2013) atmosphere that transcends cultural essentialisms while also distancing itself from mere displacement, or even “in- betweenness” (Bhabha 1994). Interrogating the hybridity of the graphic novel/illustrated fiction as a genre to challenge the univocity of identity, the chapter also demonstrates that Chen Xi’s work is an act of creative agency to articulate a specific Sinophone chronotope (Shih 2011), in a continued questioning of the centre/periphery matrix that reflects the author’s transformation through active (trans)culturation empowerment.