The Voice of the Sinophone

Abstract

Since its initial articulation in Shu-mei Shih’s 2007 book, the concept of the Sinophone has gained rapid momentum in setting itself as a dominant discursive paradigm in modern Chinese literary and cultural studies.¹ ot only does it now boast a critical reader (Shih, Tsai and Bernards, 2013) and a book series (by Cambria Press), this volume on Sinophone cinema bespeaks a desire of scholars of Chinese cinemas to participate in an emerging field christened as Sinophone Studies.² What, then, is the critical valency of bringing together the concept of the Sinophone and the medium of film? What productive questions might be generated from a mutual interrogation of the properties of each?