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Understanding the supernatural seems to be in epistemological tension with the formation
and theorization of queer subjecthood, which is generally characterized as secular
and progressive. Under the framework of neo-liberal modernity and Western sexual exceptionalism,
"normative queer subjects" have been constructed as rational and incompatible with
understandings of spirituality, faith, or religion. Similarly, certain mainstream
strands of queer theory seem to be committed to "an existential scepticism regarding
the possibility of a transcendent, divine source of meaning." This incompatibility
can also be found in scholarship on queer history. Such tension has been markedly
exacerbated by Michel Foucault's works, which drive historians to "privilege science
and medicine as the epistemic leverage for the formation of modern gender and sexual
identities." The resulting overlooking of supernatural elements also exists in the
field of China's queer history, which tends to focus on more tangible powers and regulations
of gender transgression through empirical analysis of political, legal, and medical
discourse. This is acknowledged by Wu Cuncun, who recognizes the important influence
of Foucault and suggests that, as a result, '"much of [the] attention given to sexual
attitudes in Chinese history in recent years has centred on discussions of law and
authority." Apart from these contemporary scholarship traditions, the marginalization
of supernatural elements has also resulted from earlier and larger epistemological
assumptions closely entangled with colonialism and Orientalism. Judith T. Zeitlin
observes that literature of the strange had been indiscriminately read as superstitious
or timeless religious beliefs by nineteenth-century sinologists and missionaries due
to colonialist assumptions that Western science was inherently superior to indigenous
ways of explaining the natural world. Similar assumptions also existed when explaining
human bodies and desires. Such antisuperstitious reading even prevailed through the
twentieth century, with multiple waves of antisuperstition movements arising from
the Republic of China period to the People's Republic of China today. Thus, human
subjectivities and gendered meanings behind Chinese supernatural storytelling traditions
have been further concealed by Western and modern epistemes.
Scholars have produced brilliant works drawing upon late imperial legal sources. However,
these works tend to revolve around cases of sodomy, and the embedded judicial discourse,
which prioritized conviction of criminals, inevitably distorted and overshadowed human
agency and emotional elements such as passion and love among nonnormative sexual subjects.
Aiming to complete the picture with emotional and romantic bonds, several works look
at homoerotic novels and literary accounts by late imperial elite men, which tend
to focus on the urban homoerotic scene and the gender-crossing phenomenon related
to the entertainment sector. However, such emotional bonds were largely products
of elite men's self-representation or rhetorical strategies, whereas subaltern men's
own subjectivities were inevitably excluded. Also excluded were queer women in late
imperial China, who have left even fewer traces in these writings.
To overcome this historiographical and theoretical marginalization, this article aims
to recenter the supernatural in exploring the meanings and constructions of gender
nonnormativity in late imperial China. As the scholarship on premodern Chinese writings
of the supernatural showcases, these writings had a long intellectual tradition, and
the anomalies documented were considered not only as ontological categories recording
natural phenomena or literary fabrication but also as a rhetorical and epistemological
category influencing social, cultural, and moral discourse. Similarly, understandings
of the supernatural also formed an indispensable part of late imperial China's gender
system, and literary constructions of gender and supernatural motifs did not, as Zeitlin
considers, "passively reflect social or religious reality but [were] actively involved
in shaping it." Furthermore, the yin/yang paradigm of gender differences was essentially
based on the two fundamental cosmological pulses of yin and yang in ancient Chinese
cosmology. This cosmological notion, as Song Geng illustrates, went through Confucianization
and became inextricably linked with morals and hierarchies regulating family and gender
relations that were derived from the principle of tianren heyi (the unity of Heaven
and man).
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