Untouchable : on the cultural politics of hands in Modern China
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- This dissertation explores the representation of touch and tactile culture in modern Chinese literature, film, and visual culture. The project investigates the many powers invested in human hands through narrative, taking a particular interest in the discourses that contribute to the construction of "untouchable" people and groups at various historical junctures. I argue that hands and protocols of touch are situated at the crux of major ideological and political tensions from the early Republican era to the new millennium. By examining how contentions about labor, sexuality, modernity, and national survival are played out in discourses of hands, my analysis offers fresh readings of seminal cultural texts and interrogates existing assumptions about intimacy and alienation in the modern era. This project not only contributes to the China field's emerging interest in sensory experience—which has been mostly limited to discussions of visuality, sound, and taste—but also opens up a new vista for sustained future inquiry about how tactility interacts with sight, taste, scent, and sound in a comprehensive aesthetic discourse of the body.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2024; ©2024 |
| Publication date | 2024; 2024 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Huerta, Elise Gabrielle |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Lee, Haiyan |
| Degree supervisor | Wang, Ban, 1957- |
| Thesis advisor | Lee, Haiyan |
| Thesis advisor | Wang, Ban, 1957- |
| Thesis advisor | Kohrman, Matthew, 1964- |
| Thesis advisor | Sommer, Matthew Harvey, 1961- |
| Degree committee member | Kohrman, Matthew, 1964- |
| Degree committee member | Sommer, Matthew Harvey, 1961- |
| Associated with | Stanford University, School of Humanities and Sciences |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Elise Gabrielle Huerta. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2024. |
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/pd536vq9166 |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2024 by Elise Gabrielle Huerta
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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