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Staging Personhood uncovers a hidden history of the Ming-Qing transition by exploring what it meant for the clothing of a deposed dynasty to survive onstage. Reading dramatic texts and performances against Qing sartorial regulations, Guojun Wang offers an interdisciplinary lens on the entanglements between Chinese drama and nascent Manchu rule.
About the author
Guojun Wang (Ph.D Yale, 2015) is assistant professor of Asian Studies at Vanderbilt University. His published articles include: “Reading Li Wa in Allusions: The Masculine Heroine in the Tang Tale “Li Wa zhuan” (in Chinse) Journal of Lanzhou Institute of Education, no. 4, 2008; and (forthcoming) :A Wedding Trap, a 17th-century Chinese Drama” (in Chinese) Compendium of Kun Opera.
Summary
After toppling the Ming dynasty, the Qing conquerors forced Han Chinese males to adopt Manchu hairstyle and clothing. Yet China’s new rulers tolerated the use of traditional Chinese attire in performances, making theater one of the only areas of life where Han garments could still be seen and where Manchu rule could be contested.
Staging Personhood uncovers a hidden history of the Ming–Qing transition by exploring what it meant for the clothing of a deposed dynasty to survive onstage. Reading dramatic works against Qing sartorial regulations, Guojun Wang offers an interdisciplinary lens on the entanglements between Chinese drama and nascent Manchu rule in seventeenth-century China. He reveals not just how political and ethnic conflicts shaped theatrical costuming but also the ways costuming enabled different modes of identity negotiation during the dynastic transition. In case studies of theatrical texts and performances, Wang considers clothing and costumes as indices of changing ethnic and gender identities. He contends that theatrical costuming provided a productive way to reconnect bodies, clothes, and identities disrupted by political turmoil. Through careful attention to a variety of canonical and lesser-known plays, visual and performance records, and historical documents, Staging Personhood provides a pathbreaking perspective on the cultural dynamics of early Qing China.
Additional text
Solidly felted, seamlessly knitted, and shrewdly illuminative, Guojun Wang’s scholarship is a brocade of erudition—or should I say, a magician’s cloak, waving for overdue attention to the disappearing act of Qing stage costumes and their ghostly presence. Sharply revealed in Wang’s needle eye, class, gender, ethnicity, and, above all, time-space are no longer set fault lines of history, but are themselves warped and woven to the effect of costumed personhood.
