This is a study of visuality in early modern and modern China. Its focus, however, is not so much on imagery per se but rather on how vision itself has been conceived, imagined, and deployed in a variety of discursive contexts. Of particular interest is how these discourses of vision have been used to articulate issues of gender and desire, and specifically processes of gendered subject formation. Through detailed readings of narrative works by eight authors of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—ranging from the canonical to the popular to the esoteric—the study identifies three distinct constellations of visual concerns corresponding to the late imperial, mid-twentieth century, and contemporary periods, respectively. At the same time, however, it argues that those historical periodizations themselves do not reflect a smooth, unidirectional temporal movement; rather, they are the result of a complex process of retrospection and anticipatory projection. The goal of this volume is to use a focus on tropes of visuality and gender to reflect on shifting understandings of the significance of Chineseness, modernity, and Chinese modernity.

Contents
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Figures ix
 Credits xi
 
 Introduction: The Errant Gaze 1
 
 Part I Specularity 31
 1 Specularity and the Limits of
 Vision 35
 2 Woman and the Gibbon in Flowers in
 the Mirror 54
 3 Chen Sen and the Coin of Gender 82
 
 Part II Spectatorship 107
 4 Wumingshi and Pictorial Fetishism11
 1
 5 Jin Yong and Picturing Nationalism1
 36
 6 Eileen Chang and Photographic
 Nostalgia 159
 
 Part III Screened Projections 183
 7 Li Yung-p'ing and Spectral
 Cartography 187
 8 Gao Xingjian and Maternal
 Photographs 213
 9 Wang Shuo and Historical
 Portraiture 244
 10 Chu T'ien-wen and Cinematic Shadows
 274
 Reference Matter
 Works Cited 305
 Index 317