James L. Hevia

Photographies East : the camera and its histories in East and Southeast Asia

Introducing Photographies East , Rosalind C. Morris notes that although the camera is now a taken-for-granted element of everyday life in most parts of the world, it is difficult to appreciate “the shock and sense of utter improbability that accompanied the new technology” as it was introduced in Asia (and elsewhere). In this collection, scholars of Asia, most of whom are anthropologists, describe frequent attribution of spectral powers to the camera, first brought to Asia by colonialists, as they examine the transformations precipitated or accelerated by the spread of photography across East and Southeast Asia. In essays resonating across theoretical, historical, and geopolitical lines, they engage with photography in China, Japan, Taiwan, and Thailand, and on the islands of Aru, Aceh, and Java in what is now Indonesia. The contributors analyze how in specific cultural and historical contexts, the camera has affected experiences of time and subjectivity, practices of ritual and tradition, and understandings of death. They highlight the links between photography and power, looking at how the camera has figured in the operations of colonialism, the development of nationalism, the transformation of monarchy, and the militarization of violence. Moving beyond a consideration of historical function or effect, the contributors also explore the forms of illumination and revelation for which the camera has offered itself as instrument and symbol. And they trace the emergent forms of alienation and spectralization, as well as the new kinds of fetishism, that photography has brought in its wake. Taken together, the essays chart a bravely interdisciplinary path to visual studies, one that places the particular knowledge of a historicized anthropology in a comparative frame and in conversation with aesthetics and art history. Contributors . James L. Hevia, Marilyn Ivy, Thomas LaMarre, Rosalind C. Morris, Nickola Pazderic, John Pemberton, Carlos Rojas, James T. Siegel, Patricia Spyer

Leaving a Brand on China: Missionary Discourse in the Wake of the Boxer Movement

no white man had stepped before) and a memorial service for Queen Victoria at the Meridian Gate; bivouacking American and British troops at the temples of Agriculture and Heaven, respectively; photographing diplomats on imperial thrones and removing thrones to Europe; and appropriating Manchu ancestral tablets for delivery to the British Museum. Written accounts of the conflict present these activities as ones that profaned the sacred space of China and humiliated

THE ARCHIVE STATE AND THE FEAR OF POLLUTION: FROM THE OPIUM WARS TO FU-MANCHU

This article considers the relationship between the production of a British imperial archive on China and the global politics of empire over the last century and a half. Drawing upon the theoretical work of Bruno Latour, Gayatri Spivak and Thomas Richards,the archive is explored as a coherent set of material practices designed to decode and recode China and other colonized territories. Imagined as an interface between knowledge and the state, the British archive required the establishment of an epistemological network designed to generate knowledge on China. The knowledge so produced was then used to manipulate local scenes and to provide intelligence in ‘the Great Game’, the continuing contest with Russia over domination in Central Asia. Because of its desire for comprehensive knowledge of other peoples and places, the archive also generated its own phantasms, ones which threatened to undermine and destroy empire. This process of self-haunting is explored through the figure of Fu-Manchu, a discernible mu...

World Heritage, National Culture, and the Restoration of Chengde

On 4 July 1995 China Daily, the English-language newspaper of the government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), reported that the United NationsEducational, Scientific, andCulturalOrganization (UNESCO)had added four historic sites in greater China to its World Heritage list.1 These included the Potala at Lhasa and the Mountain Resort and Its Outlying Temples at Chengde.2 Located some two hundred miles northeast of Beijing, Chengde (also known as Rehe) contained an eighteenth-century palace and temple complex built under the early Manchu emperors of the Qing dynasty. One of its temples is an almost full-scale reproduction of the Potala. As if toprovide its owncommentaryon the relationsbetween these various historic sites and transnational cultural organizations, the same issueofChina Daily also ran excerpts from an article by Zhang Zhiwei, vice chairman of the Literature and Art Association of the Tibet Autonomous Region. Noting that it was important to preserve Tibet’s unique folk culture, Zhang

Tribute, Asymmetry, and Imperial Formations: Rethinking Relations of Power in East Asia

In organizing the conference “History and Chinas Foreign Relations, ” John Wills set two difficult tasks for the participants. The first was to consider the role of the academy in U.S. policy-making toward China and surmise whether academics were more influential in John Fairbanks day than today. The second involved a consideration of the models or theoretical constructs used for characterizing Chinas relations with other countries. Although there is much to say about the relation between area studies and the state, my focus will be on the latter topic, models and theories of foreign relations.

Image/Text::Text/Image

The Visualizing Culture controversy demonstrated the ongoing struggle in East Asia over the meaning of the twentieth-century conflicts between Japan and neighboring countries. Critics demanded that the images of Japanese and Qing soldiers required narrative context, but narratives differ substantially in Japan as opposed to its former colonies. The controversy also points to the explosion in publications and on the Web of visual imagery from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The ability to publish photographs at low cost means that those who do so should recognize that the image is not neutral; images have a malleable rhetorical force that defies reduction to a stable meaning.

Miscellaneous : Culture, the State and China studies

This essay addresss the theorical and methodological challenges raised by a collection of papers that combine the works of intellectual, political and social historians with those of literary studies scholars. The disciplinary diversity evident in the contributions is matched by a variety of topics spanning the last one thousand years of Chinese history. These sorts of longue duree interdisciplinary compilations are now somewhat rare in American sinology, having given way to ever more intricate periodization and more refined fields of specialization. Also rare are compilatiins that announce themselves at the outset as explicitly revisionist. In this case, revisions to earlier interpretations are represented by pieces which, almost without exception, combine new thematic elements for historical investigation with critical theories drawn from literary studies and cultural history outside the China field.