The Culture of Sex in Ancient China

Notes

Notes Introduction 1. See, e.g., Catharine A. MacKinnon, “Does Sexuality Have a History?” Michigan Quarterly Review 30 (1991), reprinted in Discourses of Sexuality: From Aristotle to AIDS, ed. Domna C. Stanton, Ratio: Institute for the Humanities (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992), 117–136; David M. Halperin, “Is There a History of Sexuality?” History and Theory 28.3 (1989), reprinted in Philosophy and Sex, ed. Robert B. Baker et al., 3d ed. (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus, 1998), 413–431; and Robert Padgug, “Sexual Matters: On Conceptualizing Sexuality in History,” Radical History Review 20 (1979), reprinted in Baker et al., 432–448. 2. Yin-ch’üeh-shan Han-mu chu-chien cheng-li hsiao-tsu , Sun Pin Ping-fa (Peking: Wen-wu, 1975), 115f. 3. See, e.g., Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Random House, Vintage Books, 1978–1986), vol. 1, 105f. 4. See, e.g., Bruce S. Thornton, Eros: The Myth of Ancient Greek Sexuality (Boulder , Colo.: Westview, 1997), 99–120, 201ff.; Sue Blundell, Women in Ancient Greece (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), 103; and esp. K.J. Dover, Greek Homosexuality (repr., New York: MJF, 1989), 100–109. For a recent criticism of phallocentrism and the primacy of the distinction between penetrator and penetrated , see James N. Davidson, Courtesans and Fishcakes: The Consuming Passions of Classical Athens (New York: Harper Collins, 1997), 168ff. Even those ancient Greek works (intended for men) that discuss the relative merits of sex with women and sex with boys should not be misunderstood as comparisons between the relative merits of heterosexuality and homosexuality. See esp. David M. Halperin, “Historicizing the Sexual Body: Sexual Preferences and Erotic Identities in the Pseudo-Lucianic Erôtes,” in Stanton, 236–261. The originality of constructionism, however, is sometimes overstated. For example, Margaret Mead, Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (New York: Morrow , 1935), 304ff., discussed the cultural roots of homosexual attitudes more 123 than six decades ago. Cf. also Bronislaw Malinowski, Sex and Repression in Savage Society, Meridian Books M15 (1927; repr., Cleveland: World Book Co., 1955), 161–238. 5. On the Jesuits in general and Matteo Ricci in particular, see, e.g., Howard L. Goodman and Anthony Grafton, “Ricci, the Chinese, and the Toolkits of Textualists ,” Asia Major, 3d ser., 3.2 (1990), 95–148, which is an extensive review of Jacques Gernet, China and the Christian Impact: A Conflict of Cultures, trans. Janet Lloyd (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); and Jonathan D. Spence, The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci (New York: Penguin, Elisabeth Sifton Books, 1984). 6. For the life and work of James Legge, see, e.g., Lindsay Ride, “Biographical Note,” in James Legge, The Chinese Classics (n.d.; repr., Taipei: SMC, 1991), vol. 1, 1–25. 7. Arthur Waley, trans., The Book of Songs: The Ancient Chinese Classic of Poetry, ed. Joseph R. Allen (New York: Grove, 1996). 8. Perhaps the most infamous example of the same approach is found in the work of A.E.J.B. Terrien de Lacouperie (d. 1894), who endeavored to prove that Chinese civilization was ultimately derived from that of Mesopotamia. See his Western Origin of the Early Chinese Civilisation from 2,300 B.C. to 200 A.D.; or, Chapters on the Elements Derived from the Old Civilisations of West Asia in the Formation of the Ancient Chinese Culture (London: Asher, 1894). Terrien de Lacouperie’s book has been roundly derided not only for its Orientalist approach but also for its implication that China is a “secondary” rather than a “primary” civilization. For an early example of such criticism, see Edward Harper Parker, Ancient China Simpli fied (London: Chapman and Hall, 1908), 186–193. 9. Cf. esp. Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Random House, Vintage Books, 1978), 3ff. See also Eric Hobsbawm, “The Curious History of Europe,” in On History (London: Little, Brown and Co., Abacus, 1998), 288. 10. For the reminiscences of two scholars who undertook scholarly work on sex before most of the academy was prepared for it, see Robert B. Baker, “‘Pricks’ and ‘Chicks’: A Plea for ‘Persons,’” in Baker et al., 297ff.; and Vern L. Bullough, “Sex in History: A Redux,” in Desire and Discipline: Sex and Sexuality in the Premodern West, ed. Jacqueline Murray and Konrad Eisenbichler (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), 3–22. 11. See, e.g., Matthew H. Sommer, Sex, Law, and Society in Late Imperial China, Law, Society, and Culture in China (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2000...