Seminal modernity: masturbation and the politics of abstinence in early Republican China (1912-1937)

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.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.A.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

E Asian Languages & Cultures

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2022

Author dc:creator

• Zhang, Shuo

Contributors dc:contributor

• Martin, Jeffrey
• Chow, Kai-Wing
• Shao, Dan

• Masturbation
• biopolitics
• print media
• Chinese modernity

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2022 Shuo Zhang

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/116257

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F116257