The Fragile Scholar: Power and Masculinity in Chinese CultureThe Fragile Scholar examines the pre-modern construction of Chinese masculinity from the popular image of the fragile scholar (caizi) in late imperial Chinese fiction and drama. The book is an original contribution to the study of the construction of masculinity in the Chinese context from a comparative perspective (Euro-American). Its central thesis is that the concept of "masculinity" in pre-modern China was conceived in the network of hierarchical social and political power in a homosocial context rather than in opposition to "woman." In other words, gender discourse was more power-based than sex-based in pre-modern China, and Chinese masculinity was androgynous in nature. The author explains how the caizi discourse embodied the mediation between elite culture and popular culture by giving voice to the desire, fantasy, wants and tastes of urbanites. |
Contents
| 19 | |
Textuality Rituals and the Docile Bodies | 69 |
Irony Subversion and | 87 |
Heroism Misogyny | 157 |
Notes | 193 |
Selected Bibliography | 219 |
Index | 233 |
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Common terms and phrases
Analects of Confucius Baoyu beauty caizi-jiaren novels caizi-jiaren romances Cao Cao Chapter characterized Chinese culture Chinese history Chinese literature Chinese masculinity classical Confucian discourse Confucian scholars construction of masculinity context discourse of caizi discussion dominant discourse Dong elite emperor examination female feminine fiction fragile scholar gender discourse girl Guan Yu Han dynasty hegemonic hero heterosexual homoerotic homosexuality homosocial Hong Niang Ibid ideal Idema ideology imperial jade jiaren junzi Li Kui literary Liu Bei mainly male body marriage moral official play poem political popular pre-modern China qing Qu Yuan relations representation role scholar-beauty social society Song dynasty Song Jiang Song Yu stereotyped story Student Zhang subversive symbolic talent texts textual Three Kingdoms traditional Chinese Wang Wang Shifu Water Margin Western Wing woman women Wu Song Yan Qing yin/yang Yingying Yuan drama Yuan zaju zaju Zheng Heng Zhou
Popular passages
Page 2 - There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; that identity is performatively constituted by the very "expressions" that are said to be its results.
Page 218 - It is the name that can be given to a historical construct: not a furtive reality that is difficult to grasp, but a great surface network in which the stimulation of bodies, the intensification of pleasures, the incitement to discourse, the formation of special knowledges, the strengthening of controls and resistances, are linked to one another, in accordance with a few major strategies of knowledge and power.
Page 49 - Heaven and earth existing, all (material) things then got their existence. All (material) things having existence, afterwards there came male and female. From the existence of male and female there came afterwards husband and wife. From husband and wife there came father and son. From father and son there came ruler and minister. From ruler and minister there came high and low. When (the distinction of) high and low had existence, afterwards came the arrangements of propriety and righteousness.
Page 65 - ... to be above the power of riches and honors to make dissipated, of poverty and mean condition to make swerve from principle, and of power and force to make bend — these characteristics constitute the great man.
Page 194 - What should historians do with masculinity? Reflections on nineteenth-century Britain', History Workshop Journal 38 (1994), pp.
Page 5 - em Hell." Exude an aura of manly daring and aggression. Go for it. Take risks. These rules contain the elements of the definition against which virtually all American men are measured.
Page 55 - Many a heavy sigh I heaved in my despair, Grieving that I was born in such an unlucky time. I plucked soft lotus petals to wipe my welling tears That fell down in rivers and wet my coat front.
Page 193 - sex" is an ideal construct which is forcibly materialized through time. It is not a simple fact or static condition of a body, but a process whereby regulatory norms materialize "sex" and achieve this materialization through a forcible reiteration of those norms.
Page 128 - ... (Leverenz, 1986, p. 451). This, then, is the great secret of American manhood: We are afraid of other men. Homophobia is a central organizing principle of our cultural definition of manhood. Homophobia is more than the irrational fear of gay men, more than the fear that we might be perceived as gay. 'The word "faggot" has nothing to do with homosexual experience or even with fears of homosexuals,' writes David Leverenz (1986).
Page 9 - Orientalized' - and to believe that such things happen simply as a necessity of the imagination, is to be disingenuous. The relationship between Occident and Orient is a relationship of power, of domination, of varying degrees of a complex hegemony, and is quite accurately indicated in the title of KM Panikkar's classic Asia and Western Dominance* The Orient was Orientalized not only because it was discovered to be 'Oriental...
References to this book
Women and Gender in Chinese Studies Nicola Spakowski,Cecilia Nathansen Milwertz Limited preview - 2006 |