Seminal modernity: masturbation and the politics of abstinence in early Republican China (1912-1937)
Zhang, Shuo
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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/116257
Description
Title
Seminal modernity: masturbation and the politics of abstinence in early Republican China (1912-1937)
Author(s)
Zhang, Shuo
Issue Date
2022-07-19
Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)
Martin, Jeffrey
Committee Member(s)
Chow, Kai-Wing
Shao, Dan
Department of Study
E. Asian Languages & Cultures
Discipline
E Asian Languages & Cultures
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
M.A.
Degree Level
Thesis
Keyword(s)
Masturbation
biopolitics
print media
Chinese modernity
Abstract
This thesis examines the regulation of masturbation and, by implication, male sexuality during China’s early republican years (1912-1937) through the lens of anti-masturbation literature as featured by urban print media in Tianjin and Shanghai. By comparing and contrasting the discursive roles played by three different civic actors in rationalizing sexual abstinence, notably the state, May-Fourth educated elites, and religious as well as medical societies, I argue that the Republic’s biopolitical climate and the spread of print had enabled a field of politics where enlightenment discourses were appropriated to the advantage of these various civic actors, thus turning the Republic’s biogovernance into a dynamic unfolding process, rather than a unilateral top-down process of repression of the male body.
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