MCLC: Marvelous Creatures panel at AAS

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Daisy Yan DU <daisyyandu at ust.hk>
Subject: Marvelous Creatures panel at AAS
***********************************************************

Dear all

We will hold an AAS panel on animals in Chinese culture and history at
7:30 pm, March 27 (Thursday), 2014. We sincerely hope that scholars
interested in this topic can join us for intellectual stimulation and
discussion.  

Sincerely yours,

Daisy Yan Du

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Marvelous Creatures:
Figuring Animals and Humans in Chinese Culture and History

Chair and Organizer: Daisy Yan Du, Hong Kong University of Science and
Technology
Discussants: Haiyan Lee, Stanford University & Mark Swislocki, New York
University

Sponsored by the China and Inner Asia Council

Animals have played an important role in human history, functioning as
food sources, totems, tools, companions, and abstract figures for
philosophical and artistic reflection. This panel examines the
biopolitical significance of animals and humans in the context of Chinese
culture and history. The first two presenters discuss representations of
animals in cinema. Focusing on the lives and deaths of stray animals in a
variety of films, Yiman Wang foregrounds the cinematic mechanisms that
reinforce these animal representations and give rise to an ecocommunity in
which the human subject is decentralized. Interested in the
inter-relationship between animals, animation, and revolution, Daisy Yan
Du examines the disappearance of animals in animated film during the
Cultural Revolution and redefines this tumultuous era as a decade of
absent animals. The next two presenters share their critical insight on
the geopolitical significance of dogs. Claire Huot explores the names of
small dogs designated as brachycephalic (broad and short skulled).Tracing
the pedigree of these small dogs and examining the politics of naming
through a comparative approach, Huot unravels the complicated relations
between China and other countries. Menghsin Cindy Horng depicts the
complex ways in which the Taiwan dog’s status is implicated and in
conflict with various governing entities’ goals of standardization and
regulation. She argues that the indeterminacy of the so-called Taiwan Dog
is its defining feature, and, through her analysis, traces an alternative,
non-anthropocentric view of human history.


The Mortal Animal and the Techno Life–Ecocommunity in Chinese-language
Cinema    
Yiman Wang         
University of California–Santa Cruz

Since the dawn of cinema, the representation of the animals’ life and
death have mesmerized the audience, eliciting curiosity, fascination,
identification and reflection. Animal death, as a key memento mori moment,
reminds humans of their mortality and their inevitable failure to
transcend the ecosystem in which every being lives and dies to feed (into)
the rest of the system. In this paper, I dwell on animals (or animal
products) that go astray from the profit/efficiency/ration-oriented human
world, become useless, stranded, jettisoned, and yet manage to reclaim
their position in an ecosystem in which humans are inevitably enmeshed.  I
glean these animal presence and absence from a TV documentary, Sand and
Sea (dir. Kang Jianning, 1990), feature film Old Dog (dir. Pema Tseden
2011), and Chen Qiang’s animation series (2011) on a piece of delinquent
pork that tries to escape the fate of being eaten and a walking fish that
seeks to escape pollution.  I weave into my analysis a comparative study
with Chris Marker’s still photograph animation, Junkopia (1981). By
juxtaposing these works, I explore the ways in which film techniques are
deployed to underscore the surreal life of the stray and/or jettisoned
animal presence and absence.  I further discuss the role of film in giving
rise to modes of life that rupture anthropocentrism and open up an
ecocommunity that will ultimately engulf the human and decentralize them.

The Dis/appearance of Animals in Animated Film during the Chinese Cultural
Revolution, 1966-1976
Daisy Yan Du
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Conventional studies of the Chinese Cultural Revolution usually come from
a human-centered perspective that focuses on politics, revolution, class
struggle, trauma, resistance, and agency as represented in such
established artistic forms as literature, feature film, theatre, painting,
and poster. This kind of approach is presence-centered by drawing
attention to the most visible scenarios under the revolutionary limelight
at that time. In contrast, this article calls attention to what was
invisible in the much-discussed cultural scene at that time: how animals
were represented and underrepresented in the marginalized form of
animation. Animation, like fairytales, fables, and parables, is usually an
artistic form of fantasy full of (talking) animals. Prior to the Cultural
Revolution, animated films were replete with (anthropomorphic) animals. As
animated films began to be dominated by politicized human actions in the
mid 1960s, animals systematically disappeared from the silver screen until
the late 1970s. The Chinese Cultural Revolution can be redefined as a
decade of absent animals. However, these animals did not vanish completely
during the Cultural Revolution; rather they took refuge in the bodies of
ethnic minorities and villains, waiting for opportunities to return, get
revenge, and talk back. The disappearance of animals in the mid 1960s
marked the start of the Cultural Revolution. When the animals finally
returned to the silver screen in the late 1970s, the seemly impregnable
ideology of the Cultural Revolution gradually disintegrated.
                   

Small Dog, Big List of Names
Claire Huot
University of Calgary
Recent genetic studies pinpointing the origin of canis familiaris in China
have resolved only one among many points of East-West contention revolving
around the figure of the dog. In the first Chinese dictionary, the Shuowen
Jiezi, dogs are classified according to head sizes and length of limbs.
This paper will focus on those small dogs designated as brachycephalic
(broad and short skulled). In Kennel Club nomenclature, three of these are
currently regarded as distinct “ancient Chinese breeds”: the Shih Tzu,
Pekingese, and Lhasa Apso. Chinese texts tell a very different story: not
only are designations for these breeds extremely numerous, but they have
varied over time, and according to the class, gender, geographical,
religious, and ethnic origins of those doing the naming. In certain times
and places, these small creatures have been perceived as lowly “ba” dogs;
whereas, in other contexts, they have been elevated to the status of
“fu/fo” dogs, or Buddhist lions. The mapping is rendered even more complex
by the inclusion of three additional small breeds also represented in
Chinese texts: the Pug, Maltese, and Japanese Chin spaniel. By
contextualizing appellations and verifying their representations in visual
art and artifacts, it is possible to construct a cultural history of the
pedigree of the small dog in and outside China. A comparative study of the
symbolic roles inherent in the naming of these animals reveals a great
deal about relations between China and ‘the Rest.’

Down the Mountain and Off the Streets: the Taiwan Dog and the Making of a
‘National’ Breed
Menghsin Cindy Horng
University of California-Berkeley

The Taiwan Dog, also known as the Formosan Mountain Dog and the Taiwan
tugou, is a type of native dog subject to the vicissitudes of human
barbarism and benevolence. Regarded as vermin, they have been purged in
the name of modernization and public sanitization under various colonial
regimes. Selectively bred in conservation programs established in recent
decades, some are celebrated as emblems of indigenous pride, romanticized
primitivism, and competitive potential – specifically, in the arenas of
internationally sanctioned dog shows. Yet, the uncontrolled reproduction
of free-roaming stray dogs has led to a surplus for export through
trans-Pacific rescue organizations. From the street mongrel to the show
champion, the peril and survival of these creatures maintains a tenuous
dependency on human interventions, often writ large on a geopolitical
scale. This presentation draws from a range of sources, including
documentary films, newspaper articles, photographs, and interviews with
breeders, rescue volunteers, adopters and other breed guardians, to depict
the complex ways in which the Taiwan dog’s status is implicated and in
conflict with various governing entities’ goals of standardization and
regulation. Though these dogs are presented as a distinct taxonomic
entity, I argue that the indeterminacy of the so-called Taiwan Dog is its
defining feature, and precisely what makes it visible and viable as a
particular kind of living archive. In so doing, I question the limitations
of the anthropocentric archive as I attempt to capture these elusive
canine shadows which have so closely trailed the steps of human history.