Representations of Zhang Qian in Silk Road Audiovisual Media:
A Historical Poetics Approach
Zhang Yong
Abstract:The ongoing proliferation and transformation of Zhang Qian's image in contemporaryscreen media poses an urgent poetic and political problem in need of interpretation. Drawing on themethodology of historical poetics and extending it to the horizon of a historical poetics of screenmedia, this article aims to elucidate the mechanisms through which Zhang Qian's image is translatedfrom text to moving image. The study finds, firstly, that Zhang Qian is represented in a plural andcoexisting constellation that disrupts the singular criterion of truth presupposed by historicalpositivism. Secondly, by foregrounding minor figures encountered along the westward journey, thesescreen narratives deploy a strategy of plural, lowercase histories, thereby supplementing and enteringinto dialogue with a singular, capitalized History. Thirdly, the production and circulation of ZhangQian's image consistently involve negotiations between ideology and social energy: the interpretiveframe is shiftingfrom Western-centered paradigms toward a Chinese conception of tianxia("all-under-heaven"). Ultimately, within the horizon of "a community with a shared future formankind", Zhang Qian is relived as a cultural emblem of people-to-people connectivity.
Keywords:Image of Zhang Qian; Silk Road Image; Plural Lowercase History; Plural Coexistence;Ideology
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