Chinese Surplus: Biopolitical Aesthetics and the Medically Commodified Body
by Ari Larissa Heinrich
Duke University Press, 2018 Cloth: 978-0-8223-7041-3 | eISBN: 978-0-8223-7204-2 | Paper: 978-0-8223-7053-6 Library of Congress Classification B105.B64H456 2018
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
What happens when the body becomes art in the age of biotechnological reproduction? In Chinese Surplus Ari Larissa Heinrich examines transnational Chinese aesthetic production to demonstrate how representations of the medically commodified body can illuminate the effects of biopolitical violence and postcolonialism in contemporary life. From the earliest appearance of Frankenstein in China to the more recent phenomenon of "cadaver art," he shows how vivid images of a blood transfusion as performance art or a plastinated corpse without its skin—however upsetting to witness—constitute the new "realism" of our times. Adapting Foucauldian biopolitics to better account for race, Heinrich provides a means to theorize the relationship between the development of new medical technologies and the representation of the human body as a site of annexation, extraction, art, and meaning-making.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Ari Larissa Heinrich is Professor of Chinese Literature and Media at the Australian National University . He is the author of The Afterlife of Images: Translating the Pathological Body between China and the West, also published by Duke University Press, and coeditor of Embodied Modernities: Corporeality, Representation, and Chinese Cultures.
REVIEWS
“A compelling account of how the aesthetics of corporeal politics has come to condition the rhetorics and epistemologies of life, realism, existence, authenticity, technology, reproduction, and the body itself, Chinese Surplus will forever change the way we think about the power of visual embodiment in an age of increasing angst over property/propriety rights, technological determinism, and human’s role in their imbricated historical legacy.”
-- Howard Chiang Journal of the History of Biology
"Chinese Surplus is an ambitious project that weaves together a transnational and transhistorical consideration of aesthetic production and biomedical commodification. . . . Heinrich’s project does the groundbreaking work of connecting the global power dynamics of contemporary cultural productions engaged with fragmentation and labeled inauthentic with longer histories of imperialism."
-- Kathryn Cai Catalyst
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix Introduction. Biopolitical Aesthetics and the Chinese Body as Surplus 1 1. Chinese Whispers: Frankenstein, the Sleeping Lion, and the Emergence of a Biopolitical Aesthetics 25 2. Souvenirs of the Organ Trade: The Diasporic Body in Contemporary Chinese Literature and Art 49 3. Organ Economics: Transplant, Class, and Witness from Made in Hong Kong to The Eye 83 4. Still Life: Recovering (Chinese) Ethnicity in the Body Worlds and Beyond 115 Epilogue. All Rights Preserved: Intellectual Property and the Plastinated Cadaver Exhibits 139 Notes 159 Bibliography 227 Index 239
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Chinese Surplus: Biopolitical Aesthetics and the Medically Commodified Body
by Ari Larissa Heinrich
Duke University Press, 2018 Cloth: 978-0-8223-7041-3 eISBN: 978-0-8223-7204-2 Paper: 978-0-8223-7053-6
What happens when the body becomes art in the age of biotechnological reproduction? In Chinese Surplus Ari Larissa Heinrich examines transnational Chinese aesthetic production to demonstrate how representations of the medically commodified body can illuminate the effects of biopolitical violence and postcolonialism in contemporary life. From the earliest appearance of Frankenstein in China to the more recent phenomenon of "cadaver art," he shows how vivid images of a blood transfusion as performance art or a plastinated corpse without its skin—however upsetting to witness—constitute the new "realism" of our times. Adapting Foucauldian biopolitics to better account for race, Heinrich provides a means to theorize the relationship between the development of new medical technologies and the representation of the human body as a site of annexation, extraction, art, and meaning-making.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Ari Larissa Heinrich is Professor of Chinese Literature and Media at the Australian National University . He is the author of The Afterlife of Images: Translating the Pathological Body between China and the West, also published by Duke University Press, and coeditor of Embodied Modernities: Corporeality, Representation, and Chinese Cultures.
REVIEWS
“A compelling account of how the aesthetics of corporeal politics has come to condition the rhetorics and epistemologies of life, realism, existence, authenticity, technology, reproduction, and the body itself, Chinese Surplus will forever change the way we think about the power of visual embodiment in an age of increasing angst over property/propriety rights, technological determinism, and human’s role in their imbricated historical legacy.”
-- Howard Chiang Journal of the History of Biology
"Chinese Surplus is an ambitious project that weaves together a transnational and transhistorical consideration of aesthetic production and biomedical commodification. . . . Heinrich’s project does the groundbreaking work of connecting the global power dynamics of contemporary cultural productions engaged with fragmentation and labeled inauthentic with longer histories of imperialism."
-- Kathryn Cai Catalyst
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix Introduction. Biopolitical Aesthetics and the Chinese Body as Surplus 1 1. Chinese Whispers: Frankenstein, the Sleeping Lion, and the Emergence of a Biopolitical Aesthetics 25 2. Souvenirs of the Organ Trade: The Diasporic Body in Contemporary Chinese Literature and Art 49 3. Organ Economics: Transplant, Class, and Witness from Made in Hong Kong to The Eye 83 4. Still Life: Recovering (Chinese) Ethnicity in the Body Worlds and Beyond 115 Epilogue. All Rights Preserved: Intellectual Property and the Plastinated Cadaver Exhibits 139 Notes 159 Bibliography 227 Index 239
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
It can take 2-3 weeks for requests to be filled.
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE