June 11 Yuhang Li

Yuhang Li

Ph.D. Candidate

Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations

University of Chicago

Oneself as a Female Deity: Representations of Cixi Dressing as Guanyin

Friday, June 11, 4-6 pm

CWAC 156

Abstract

In recent studies of the cult of Guanyin or Avalokiteśvara, the most influential female deity in China, scholars have primarily examined how Guanyin was first introduced from India to China and gradually feminized in the process of sinicization.  However, people have overlooked how believers refashioned their own identity in response to the gendered transformation of Guanyin. My paper will attempt to ask this question by discussing the practices of elite lay Buddhist women reproducing representations of Guanyin via woman’s things and woman’s body in late imperial China.  I will focus on the practices of the Empress Dowager Cixi (1835-1908), the actual monarch of Qing China, who had herself visually represented playing the role of Guanyin.  This paper will start with an examination of how Cixi, from a young age, had court painters draw portraits of herself as Guanyin and later when photography was introduced to China, she dressed up as Guanyin and was photographed as this deity. By looking at this case, we can grasp how Cixi represents her body in order to make it signify specific relations of gender and religion.  Moreover, she eventually mediates the production of her image through the modern technological form of the photograph, which involves new forms of spatiality.  Hence my paper will contribute to discussions about the reconstitution of space, religion, bodies and gender in modern China.

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