Chinese Surplus: Biopolitical Aesthetics and the Medically Commodified Body

265 Pages·2018·24.75 MB·English

by  Ari Larissa Heinrich

CHINESE SURPLUS
perverse modernities
A Series Edited by Jack Halberstam and Lisa Lowe
Chinese Surplus
Biopo liti cal aesthetics and
the Medically coMModified Body
ari larissa heinrich
Duke University Press • Durham and London • 2018
© 2018 Duke University Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of Amer i ca on acid-f ree paper ∞
Designed by Heather Hensley
Typeset in Warnock Pro by Westchester Publishing Services
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Heinrich, Ari Larissa, author.
Title: Chinese surplus : biopo liti cal aesthetics and the
medically commodified body / Ari Larissa Heinrich.
Description: Durham : Duke University Press, 2018. | Series:
Perverse modernities | Includes bibliographical references
and index. | Description based on print version rec ord
and cip data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.
Identifiers: lccn 2017035989 (print) |
lccn 2017044095 (ebook)
isbn 9780822372042 (ebook)
isbn 9780822370413 (hardcover : alk. paper)
isbn 9780822370536 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: lcsh: Human body (Philosophy)—C hina. | H uman
body— China. | Aesthetics— Political aspects— China. |
Aesthetics, Modern—21st  century. | Medicine in art. |
Human figure in art. | Biopolitics— China.
Classification: lcc b105.b64 (ebook) | lcc b105.b64 h456
2018 (print) | ddc 128/.60951— dc23
lc rec ord available at https:// lccn . loc . gov / 2017035989
Cover art: Zhang Dali, Chinese Offspring, 2003. Courtesy of
the artist.
For Sandy
This page intentionally left blank
CONTENTS
ix acknowl edgments
1 introduction
Biopo liti cal Aesthetics and the
Chinese Body as Surplus
25 chapter 1
Chinese Whispers: Frankenstein,
the Sleeping Lion, and the
Emergence of a Biopo liti cal
Aesthetics
49 chapter 2
Souvenirs of the Organ
Trade: The Diasporic Body
in Con temporary Chinese
Lit er a ture and Art
83 chapter 3
Organ Economics: Transplant,
Class, and Witness from Made
in Hong Kong to The Eye
115 chapter 4
Still Life: Recovering (Chinese)
Ethnicity in the Body Worlds
and Beyond
139 epilogue
All Rights Preserved: Intellectual
Property and the Plastinated
Cadaver Exhibits
159 notes
227 bibliography
239 index
This page intentionally left blank
ACKNOWLE DGMENTS
I gratefully acknowledge the Australian Research Council for its support
under the F uture Fellowship scheme (grant number ft110101007) toward
the completion of this book. Brief passages in chapter 2 appeared in earlier
form in “Souvenirs of the Organ Trade,” in Embodied Modernities: Corpore-
ality and Repre sen ta tion in Chinese Cultures, edited by Fran Martin and Ari
Larissa Heinrich (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2006). The Taiwan
National Science Council provided support for me to spend time as a visit-
ing researcher at Chung- Hsing National University in Taichung, Taiwan, in
2011; I thank especially Kuei- fen Chiu for her hospitality, as well as Yi-C hieh
Lin for her generosity with information about discourses of the “fake.” For
their intellectual support and encouragement, I am grateful to Carlos Rojas
and participants in the 2010 “Viral Knowledge” conference at Duke Univer-
sity; to Hsiao- yen Peng for allowing me to contribute to the Summer School
on Academic En glish and Literary Theory or ga nized in the summer of 2011
through Academia Sinica’s Institute for Lit er a ture and Philosophy; to Winnie
Won Yin Wong and participants in the 2011 interdisciplinary conference
“Shenzhen+China, Utopias+Dystopias,” or ga nized by the Department of
History, Theory and Criticism of Architecture and Art at mit; to Eric
Hayot, in the Department of Comparative Lit era ture, and participants in
the “China After Comparison” workshop at Pennsylvania State University