Cuckolds, Missing Ovaries, and Crucified Pigs: Grotesque Imagery and Intellectual History in 19th-Century China

My presentation will analyze the roles of and contestations over illustrated placards from the religiously inflected violence of the 1891 Anti-Foreign Riots in Hunan, China. Printed using wood-block techniques, these often lewd, provoking images depicted socially transgressive acts of violence by Christian missionaries and foreign merchants. They also encouraged retaliations by Chinese villagers, presenting a worldview in which correct Confucian relationships once again ordered society and in which the supranatural was immanent in worldly affairs. The images all feature religious themes, ranging from Daoist and Buddhist deities descending from the clouds to massacre “foreign devils” to portrayals of Chinese Christian converts being cuckolded by missionaries whilst worshiping a crucified pig/Christ. I argue that these posters framed the social tensions and epistemological ruptures attendant to imperialism within a cosmology in which supernatural forces were immanent and participating in worldly affairs. The producers of these images were responding, I argue, to the imposition of the modern discourse of a secular-religious divide in China. Presenting my work--and selected images--through the poster format will enable me to discuss how I relate the circulation and material histories of these images to the conclusions I draw through visual analysis methodologies.