Queering Gender, Sexuality, and Becoming-Human in Qing Dynasty Zhiguai

Queering Gender, Sexuality, and Becoming-Human in Qing Dynasty Zhiguai
Author: Thomas William Whyke
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2023-09-24
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9819942586

Download Queering Gender, Sexuality, and Becoming-Human in Qing Dynasty Zhiguai Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

This book offers queer readings of Chinese Qing Dynasty zhiguai, ‘strange tales’, a genre featuring supernatural characters and events. In a unique approach interweaving Chinese philosophies alongside critical theories, this book explores tales which speak to contemporary debates around identity and power. Depictions of porous boundaries between humans and animals, transformations between genders, diverse sexualities, and contextually unusual masculinities and femininities, lend such tales to queer readings. Unlike previous scholarship on characters as allegorical figures or stories as morality tales, this book draws on queer theory, animal studies, feminism, and Deleuzian philosophy, to explore the ‘strange’ and its potential for social critique. Examining such tales enriches the scope of historic queer world literatures, offering culturally situated stories of relationships, desires, and ways of being, that both speak to and challenge contemporary debates.