Body, Subject and Power in China (review)

Reviews 601 in tìieir lives (pp. xxix-xxx). These points aside, however, there is little to ask in the way ofimprovement in the text other than the inclusion of Chinese characters. In sum, having turned the pages ofthe years with Mrs. Nie, having pored over the accompanying charts and maps, and having stopped to consider those many lives around her that will remain forever undocumented, one can only be grateful to the translator/editors and to Mrs. Nie's family for having brought this "well-regulated life" to light in our times. Although at times a slim silhouette ofa life by modern Western autobiographical standards, Testimony ofa Confucian Woman nonetheless fulfills the inherent promise of the Foreword: to allow modern Western readers the opportunity not only to gain access to a unique document ofsocial history but also to join the Nie family in appreciating "a fine example of a Chinese lady" (p. xi). Vivian-Lee Nyitray University ofCalifornia-Riverside Vivian-Lee Nyitray is an assistantprofessor in the departments ofReligious Studies and Literatures and Languages, and Director oftheAsian Languages and Civilizations Program. In addition to her continuingwork on Chinese biography, she is completing a manuscript on the confrontation between Confucianism andfeminism. Angela Zito and Tani E. Barlow. Body, Subject and Power in China. Chicago : University ofChicago Press, 1994. Hardcover $45.00, isbn 0-22698726 -4. Paperback $16.95, ISBN 0-226-98727-2. Body, Subject andPower in Chinais an unusual book. The tide itselfleaves a broad range ofpossibilities open to the imagination. It might actually be considered one ofthe very rare attempts at cultural criticism in the field ofChinese studies. All the essays included in this volume aim at a "deconstruction" ofcommonsense perceptions ofthe body in Chinese culture. There is no one, single "body" in this collection ofessays, because the authors have dealt with a variety oftopics and texts that exclude such a homogeneity and because they make it plain that within Chinese culture itselfthere is a variety of"bodies" over time and space. The body,© 1996 by University m china as in ^ West> is & historical construction that requires an approach free from Western commonsense perceptions. The book is articulated into four parts. The first, "Dispersing Bodies," deals with the conceptualization ofthe body in Chinese medicine and art. Shigehisa ofHawai'i Press 6?2 China Review International: Vol. 3, No. 2, Fall 1996 Kuriyama's paper examines the role in human health that the Chinese attributed to the wind in late antiquity, where it appeared as "the preeminent cause ofdisease." Out of the idea that wind was a sign of the displeasure of departed ancestors—expressed through pain and disease inflicted on the living—there emerged a perception of the body: the "study of illnesses and the study of the body became virtually inseparable." In classical medicine, the wind became a disease factor in a body that was subject to irregularity in the flow of energy connecting the organs. Such a perception arose from an understanding of the irregularities that affected cosmic harmony. Qi eventually displaced the wind as a central concept, and "the notion ofbody crystallized ... as a site ofindependent rhythms" that failed to replicate the regular pace of the cosmic order. This notion of the body emerged from die confrontation of the received and unchallenged notion ofa seamless and regular cosmic harmony with the mundane regularity ofdisorders ofthe physical body. Dealing with the issue ofnudity and its absence as a genre from Chinese painting , Joan Hay develops an argument for a perception ofthe body in Chinese pictorial art. She proposes that because the body could only exist in reference to a social setting, its representations varied according to the context in which it was set. In contrast to the Western tradition, die nude was meaningless, since what was significant about the body was its outward appearance, not the appearance ofthe flesh itself . From this perspective, the uniquely Western quest for the nude does not make sense in China. Pushing her argument further, Hay explains that whereas in Western literary depictions ofthe body form is dismissed in favor oftexture (for instance in erotic texts), in Chinese painting such a representation was simply socially impossible . Texture, therefore, is to be...