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Arts of Gender, parallels DIALECTICAL process through which the very…
Arts of Gender
categorizations of the perverse emerged in contradistinction to normative sexuality (heterosexual, reproductive), not out of repressive conditions of Victorian era but rather through technologies of disseminating power/surveillance (science, medicine)
MEDICALIZATION OF SEX: "Oddities of sex relied on a technology of health and pathology...since sexuality was a medical and medicalizable object, one had to try and detect it - as a lesion, a dysfunction, or a symptom - in the depths of the organism, or on the surface of the skin, or among all the signs of behavior"
POWER + PLEASURE
pleasure in enacting power, surveilling
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sex, however, void of pleasure--reduced to "productive" value of sex for ability to reproduce
TAXONOMY OF SEXUALITIES - classification of "perverse" sexualities outside reproductive, heteronormative sex reflects power each group holds as well as the kinds of power to which they are subjected; categorization also works to create/produce others' realities by making them knowable (it seems Shimizu's emphasis on the "unknowability" of sex, then, is a refusal of this systemic tendency to diagnosis it as something pathological)
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"corporeal malediction" -- what a term!!! placement of "perverse" bodies/sexualities in relation to normative ones
Edward Said, Orientalism
defining feature of Orientalism is West's ability to dictate and control representations of the Orient through claims to cultural hegemony--"has less to do with the Orient than it does with ‘our’ world” p. 12; “Orientalism as a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient” - these lines suggest that the narrative, representational framework the West employs to portray the Orient serve to reinforce its own dominance/domination
domination through science/ technology; also feeds into idea that the East is dormant, inanimate, backwards
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Orient as feminine, submissive, mute
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Said relies on heterosexual normative world making! - sex is binary, male/female - reads sex as "biological" and "anatomical" as laws do (Foucault)
DUELING LINEAGES - survival of Fu Manchu's bloodline/ancestry promised through Ling Moy and her oath to avenge family's death; involves cessation of Petrie lineage: "The blood is mine, the hate is mine, the vengeance shall be mine;" "May the blood of your father course warmly in your veins"
perilous force of Fu Manchu can be found in his ineluctability and infinite returns -- poses threats to physical and psychic borders; see scene when FMC enters John Petrie's study and appears behind him as a shadowy figure
Physical terror: secret passageway to Fu Manchu's lair is built into Petrie home-- fear of Asian other not only literally constitutes the domestic/the home, but also what threatens to cause its generational continuity
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Psychological terror: FMC can command Petrie's mind - "You see...your mind is completely under my control"
GENDER & RACE PERFORMATIVITY: Ling Moy assumes symbolic role of son - as the one to preserve/carry the family name: "I will be your son" - performativity as a world renowned "Oriental Dancer" (literally traveling to different parts of the world--South America) permits Ling Moy to occupy multiple spaces and roles & to also move undetected - daughter/son, Asian/honorary white, submission/dominance, ally/enemy
MASCULINITY & NATIONALISM - Ah Key, also Chinese, working with/for white men (Petries could signify white lineage of nation); Ah Key's masculinity/identity always defined through white proximity and his loyalty to Petrie survival; in accepting tutelage of white patriarchy and villifying Ling Moy (once a fellow compatriot), Ah Key is accepted into white collective
double death of Ling Moy and Ah Key necessary for Petries' (Ronald and Joan) survival -- Ah Key's loyalty to the white cause, reflected in his choice to die for it and betray his love, LM, imagined as noble sacrifice; his emasculation (through death) is what promises persisting white masculinity; "I always hated the name of Fu Manchu"
could Ah Key's desire for Ling Moy position her as the lost/refused homeland? Both dressed in "Eastern" clothing, Ling Moy says to Ah Key: "See us already sailing home for China" -- how does her death ensure he never returns? failure of this heterosexual union (what AK defines as a "counterfeit love") eradicates threats of China in domestic home (US)
whether affiliated with Fu Manchu or Petrie, Ling Moy still managed and constrained by gender oppressive norms (Lu Chung to Ling Moy: "There is your place"
FEARS OF MISCEGENATION
Asian love interest threatens to dilute, contaminate whiteness - physical devastation of white bodies
Celene Parrenas Shimizu,
The Hypersexuality of Race
BONDAGE/BIND OF REPRESENTATION -- cannot imagine Asian femininity outside of racialized sexuality; Asian women's bodies always rendered visible through sex and the ways in which expressions of sexuality incite "moral panic" - LOTUS BLOSSOM/DRAGON LADY DICHOTOMY
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"productive perversity" - if sex is what frames understandings of Asian American women's bodies, then women must work within those frameworks -- thus, Shimizu identifies limits to working OUTSIDE of hypersexuality because it is IMPOSSIBLE - instead, calls for "identifying with bad images" - how does one move from being an OBJECT OF DESIRE to a SUBJECT OF DESIRE?
"passionate attachment" - cites Judith Butler term to reference the way in which subjects intentionally claim and inhabit subordinate positions to be seen and validated -- in this sense, acc. to Shimizu, taking pleasure in these positions can potentially contest the multiple bondages (of representation) to which Asian women are tied
Jack London, "The Unparalleled Invasion" (1910)
psychological disparity justifies treatment of China-- "Her" people are "mental aliens" - it seems that personifying China as a "She" makes her an object of submission, conquest
YELLOW PERIL: if China is a "biohazard," rendered as liquid infection crossing countries, then how does biological warfare become the solution? other key words: sanitation, "plague-germ"
predatory SEXUALITY of China represented not only its reproductive capacity & population growth, but also through its ability to cross borders ("China was spilling over the boundaries of her Empire" p. 274; "There was no way to dam up the overspilling monstrous flood of life" p. 276)
David Palumbo-Liu, Asian/America
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term, Asian/American, reflects ongoing tension between these categories - reflects simultaneous inclusion/exclusion of Asian Americans in US
PLEASURE of Orientalism through "consumption" of Arakau's racial difference- Edith's material extravagance also includes Arakau; how is he thus made equivalent to the objects that Edith adorns herself with? how does Arakau simply present as an aesthetic, dissolving into the backdrop like the rice paper screens, Buddha statues, incense, etc.?
part of the allure in consuming Arakau as an object of Orientalism is perhaps his danger (to white purity-- the family/nation--how might marriage be a metaphor for union of nation? racial triangulation/miscegenation threatens bonds between Edith & Richard & marriage must be restored by end of film (with intervention of justice system & white collective)
POSSESSION/OWNERSHIP - who gets to claim the white woman (Edith)? Arakau's branding of Edith leaves a physical impression of his effect on her--white woman's body is scene of violence (not just branding, but other violating, intrusive moments that occur without Edith's consent)--suggests Arakau is an invasive species, who can elusively slide into white physical/psychological spaces
Edith Eaton/Sui Sin Far, Mrs. Spring Fragrance (1912)
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Judith Butler, "Critically Queer"
parallels DIALECTICAL process through which the very imagining of the "Orient"also involves simultaneous construction of the "West"
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The Cheat (1915) 
Daughter of the Dragon (1931)
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David Henry Hwang,
M. Butterfly (1988)
Foucault, "Implantation of the Perverse"
What does it mean, then, for Sui Sin Far, to escape "naming" her racial taxonomy? Fanon- "racial epidermal schema"
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