Artificial Bodies in Early Modern China

Abstract

Artificial Bodies in Early Modern China investigates the significance of the prosthetic human body and artificial life in early modern Chinese literature and thought. Whereas the prosthetic human body describes technical transformations of a form presumed to be naturally endowed, the animation of artificial humanoids marks their potential to emulate the naturalness of humans. The project contextualizes the imagination and practice of surgical interventions, alternative anatomies of the human body, and the production and animation of artificial life (particularly artificial humanoids) in both traditional Chinese writings and their encounters with European culture in the early modern era. By bringing together these seemingly idiosyncratic cases, I reconsider the shifting boundaries of the “human” in early modern Chinese literature and thought. My study develops a new framework for understanding “strange tales” by focusing on the theme of artificial bodies. I not only engage with relatively neglected materials (e.g., Yu Chu xinzhi 虞初新誌) but also offer a fresh reading of canonical works (e.g., Liaozhai zhiyi 聊齋誌異) by examining literary writings, philosophical discourses, medical texts, and technical treatises from an epistemological and comparative perspective. In doing so, I identify an increasing awareness of generic conventions in literary writing and uncover the strategic manipulations of such conventions, as well as the creative reappropriations of specialized knowledge from disparate fields in the early modern era. I argue that prosthetic human bodies and artificial humanoids respond to, wrestle with, and redefine the epistemology of naturalness while negotiating with the cosmological order or the lack thereof. Moreover, these artificial bodies paradoxically express their artificial realities by recurrently claiming their approximation to the ideal of naturalness or by invoking the concept of cosmological resonance, thereby blurring the boundary between humans and artificial humanoids. The dissertation can be divided into two major parts, devoted respectively to prosthetic bodies and artificial humanoids. In the first part, Chapter 1 explores the imagination and practice of surgical interventions and examines how they weave medical knowledge into narratives that, in turn, reveal the epistemology of the prosthetic, fragmented, and grotesque body within the traditional framework of cosmological transformation. Chapter 2 concentrates on imagery of heart and head transplantation that speaks to psychiatric disorders, the cultivation of the mind, and divinatory physiognomy in and beyond storytelling. In the second part, Chapter 3 examines tales of artificial humanoids, such as tomb figurines, statues, and dolls, and lays bare how their animation exerts an influence on human existence in both private and social milieus within a qi-based cosmos that theoretically promises the animation of all things. Chapter 4 begins with an analysis of puppetry and mechanical contrivances in theatrical or quasi-theatrical spaces in the middle period and teases out the paradox embedded in the figure of mechanical puppets portrayed as both spontaneous performers and passive marionettes. Chapter 5 explores how Chinese literati incorporated European mechanics, clockworks, and automata into the traditional cosmological framework in the early modern period by referring back to the conventional imagery of puppetry in literary and intellectual discourses through reinterpretations and renegotiations. By engaging with a wide range of texts, I interpret premodern materials on their own terms in the early modern moment when the intellectual landscapes of both Europe and China were undergoing significant transformations. I argue for their relevance in the contemporary world amid changing views of artificial intelligence and prosthetic bodies as a source of both fascination and fear.