Body, subject & power in China / edited by Angela Zito and Tani E. Barlow.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

"Contributors investigate problems of bodiliness, engendered subjectivities, and discourses of power through a variety of sources that include written texts, paintings, buildings, interviews, and observations. Taken together, the essays show that bodies in China have been classified, represented, discussed, ritualized, gendered, and eroticized in ways as rich and multiple as those described in critical histories of the West. Silk robes, rocks, winds, gestures of bowing, yin yang hierarchies, and cross-dressing have helped create experiences of the body specific to Chinese historical life. By pointing to multiple examples of reimagining subjectivity and renegotiating power, the essays encourage scholars to avoid making broad generalizations about China and to rethink traditional notions of power, subject, and bodiliness in light of actual Chinese practices. Body, Subject, and Power in China is at once an example of the changing face of China studies and a work of importance to the entire discipline of cultural studies."

Imagination of winds and the development of the Chinese conception of the body / Shigehisa Kuriyama -- Body invisible in Chinese art? / John Hay -- Multiplicity, point of view, and responsibility in traditional Chinese healing / Judith Farquhar -- Silk and skin : significant boundaries / Angela Zito -- Politicized body / Ann Anagnost -- Female body and nationalist discourse : Manchuria in Xiao Hong's Field of life and death / Lydia H. Liu -- Sovereignty and subject : constituting relations of power in Qing guest ritual / James L. Hevia -- (Re)inventing Li : koutou and subjectification in rural Shandong / Andrew Kipnis -- Classic "beauty-scholar" romance and the superiority of the talented woman / Keith McMahon -- Theorizing woman : Funü, Guojia, Jiating / Tani E. Barlow.

Of body & brush : Grand sacrifice as text/performance in eighteenth-century China / Angela Zito.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 269-290) and index.

Prologue: Clothing, Carrying, and Codifying -- pt. 1. Ruling Boundaries. 1. Signifying Emperorship: Of Portraits and Princes. 2. Method, Monarchy, and Ritual -- pt. 2. Text: Editing the Ritual Corpus. 3. Classifying Li: Time and Agency. 4. Writing the Ritualist Metaphysics: Self and World -- pt. 3. Performance: The Ritualizing Body Inscribes. 5. Sacrificial Spaces: Contextualizing the City. 6. Cosmic Preparation: Orders of Knowledge. 7. Filial Ceremony: Centering. 8. The Politics of Boundary: Inscription and Incorporation.