Chiang After Eunuchs

Science, Medicine, and the Transformation of Sex in Modern China
1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-0-231-54633-1
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 100 Seiten

For much of Chinese history, the eunuch stood out as an exceptional figure at the margins of gender categories. Amid the disintegration of the Qing Empire, men and women in China began to understand their differences in the language of modern science. In After Eunuchs, Howard Chiang traces the genealogy of sexual knowledge from the demise of eunuchism to the emergence of transsexuality, showing the centrality of new epistemic structures to the formation of Chinese modernity.

From anticastration discourses in the late Qing era to sex-reassignment surgeries in Taiwan in the 1950s and queer movements in the 1980s and 1990s, After Eunuchs explores the ways the introduction of Western biomedical sciences transformed normative meanings of gender, sexuality, and the body in China. Chiang investigates how competing definitions of sex circulated in science, medicine, vernacular culture, and the periodical press, bringing to light a rich and vibrant discourse of sex change in the first half of the twentieth century. He focuses on the stories of gender and sexual minorities as well as a large supporting cast of doctors, scientists, philosophers, educators, reformers, journalists, and tabloid writers, as they debated the questions of political sovereignty, national belonging, cultural authenticity, scientific modernity, human difference, and the power and authority of truths about sex. Theoretically sophisticated and far-reaching, After Eunuchs is an innovative contribution to the history and philosophy of science and queer and Sinophone studies.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Chiang, Howard

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Asiatische Geschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Psychologie Psychologische Disziplinen Sexualpsychologie
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften Interdisziplinär Naturwissenschaften, Technik, Medizin
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Gender Studies, Geschlechtersoziologie
• Medizin | Veterinärmedizin Medizin | Public Health | Pharmazie | Zahnmedizin Medizin, Gesundheitswesen Geschichte der Medizin

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Toward a Genealogy of Sex
1. China Castrated
2. Vital Visions
3. Deciphering Desire
4. Mercurial Matter
5. Transsexual Taiwan
Conclusion: China Trans Formed
List of Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Chiang Howard :

Howard Chiang (P.h.D., Princeton University) is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Waterloo. His books include Perverse Taiwan (ed., Routledge, 2016), Psychiatry and Chinese History (ed., Routledge, 2014), and Transgender China (ed., Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). He has written articles for Cultural History, the Journal of Women's History, History of Science and others.Howard Chiang is assistant professor in the Department of History at the University of California, Davis. He is the editor of Perverse Taiwan (2016) and Sexuality in China: Histories of Power and Pleasure (2018).