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

Download or read book Queering Gender, Sexuality, and Becoming-Human in Qing Dynasty Zhiguai written by Thomas William Whyke and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-09-24 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.