List of Illustrations Acknowledgments 1. The Execution of Wang Weiqin 2. The Laws of Punishment in Late-Imperial China 3. The Origins and Legitimacy Problems of Lingchi 4. Lingchi in the Ming Dynasty 5. Tormenting the Dead 6. Chinese Torture in the Western Mind 7. Qing Executions and European Supplices 8. Georges Bataille and the Supplice Chinois 9. Retrospective Notes Bibliography Index
An ambitious, important book that will stimulate wide reflection. The authors explore the most infamous of Chinese tortures, tracing the ways in which the concept of 'death by a thousand cuts' took on a life of its own in European discourse about China, as well as in China's discourse about itself. Not the least of the book's virtues is the way it dismantles hasty judgments and received ideas about Chinese culture, ideas that leak from past to present, from the judicial realm to other areas of human activity. Its interdisciplinary reach and the brio with which it is carried out are remarkable. -- Haun Saussy, author of Great Walls of Discourse and Other Adventures in Cultural China This original and ambitious work reaches out to a wide audience. It aims to explain the general position of 'torture' in the Chinese legal system and the specific roles of the extreme punishment known as lingchi, 'death by slicing,' in Chinese political practice. The authors draw on an impressive range of materials as well as an unusual variety of visual images to situate the practice of lingchi in Chinese history, world history, and Western imaginations. The book is revelatory on Georges Bataille's uncertain role in his famous work presenting Chinese death by slicing amidst European practices. The reconstruction of the history of the lingchi practice itself is nuanced and judicious. -- R. Bin Wong, author of China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience
Timothy Brook is Professor of History at the University of British Columbia. Jerome Bourgon is Researcher at the Institut d'Asie Orientale / Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Lyon. Gregory Blue is Associate Professor of History, University of Victoria.
An ambitious, important book that will stimulate wide reflection.
The authors explore the most infamous of Chinese tortures, tracing
the ways in which the concept of 'death by a thousand cuts' took on
a life of its own in European discourse about China, as well as in
China's discourse about itself. Not the least of the book's virtues
is the way it dismantles hasty judgments and received ideas about
Chinese culture, ideas that leak from past to present, from the
judicial realm to other areas of human activity. Its
interdisciplinary reach and the brio with which it is carried out
are remarkable.
*Haun Saussy, author of Great Walls of Discourse and Other
Adventures in Cultural China*
This original and ambitious work reaches out to a wide audience. It
aims to explain the general position of 'torture' in the Chinese
legal system and the specific roles of the extreme punishment known
as lingchi, 'death by slicing,' in Chinese political practice. The
authors draw on an impressive range of materials as well as an
unusual variety of visual images to situate the practice of lingchi
in Chinese history, world history, and Western imaginations. The
book is revelatory on Georges Bataille's uncertain role in his
famous work presenting Chinese death by slicing amidst European
practices. The reconstruction of the history of the lingchi
practice itself is nuanced and judicious.
*R. Bin Wong, author of China Transformed: Historical Change and
the Limits of European Experience*
In 1904, a French photographer documented the Chinese practice of
lingchi, a form of execution that involved slicing off limbs and
pieces of flesh. Europeans recoiled from what appeared to be a
gruesome, lingering death, citing it as evidence of a uniquely
Oriental ruthlessness. This fascinating study argues, however, that
lingchi was not entirely about physical suffering--the victim was
typically sedated with opium, and killed early in the process--but
about a "loss of somatic integrity," the posthumous shame of having
been reduced to body parts. Crimes that merited lingchi ranged from
killing a paternal grandparent to, in at least one case, cheating
on taxes. Throughout, the authors do their best to downplay the
exoticism of their subject, pointing to such Western practices as
drawing (disembowelling) and quartering (dismembering): "It is hard
to see much distinction in degrees of cruelty."
*New Yorker*
I highly recommend Death by a Thousand Cuts as a book that offers a
broad introduction to a history and a culture by concentrating on a
single subject.
*Vancouver Sun*
The authors present a nuanced picture of state-imposed execution
and, without at any time condoning, succeed in their goal of
contextualizing lingchi in relation to Western forms of punishment,
noting the availability of the death penalty for a variety of
relatively trivial offences in 18th-century England, as well as the
appalling conditions that prevailed on prison ships that sailed
from England to Australia...At a time when the debate about what
constitutes acceptable forms of physical punishment, as well as the
thorny question of a divergence between Western and Asian concepts
of human rights, is so prevalent, this challenging and important
work will appeal not solely to Sinologists, but to legal historians
and students of visual representation.
*Times Higher Education Supplement*
[This book is] a rude awakening to jolt us from the overused
numbness and put us face to face with the origin of the phrase, the
torture of lingchi. Because history has been sanitized by countless
retellings of television drama and simplified texts, the practice
of torture is often misunderstood, even by those of us who thought
we knew such things. In this notable book, the authors delve into
historical archives to produce documents, photos and analyses that
are more nuanced than a Hong Kong movie of torture fest, such as
the legendary Chinese Torture Chamber Story. Approached by a
Western perspective, the authors debunk the traditional Western
notion that ruthless executions were rooted in the Chinese culture.
Yet, the details they use are not for the faint of heart.
*China Daily*
Foucault's work explicitly informs Death by a Thousand Cuts but the
purpose of this new book is different from that of the French
philosopher. This fascinating and necessarily appalling study
describes how photographs of the executed man were circulated by
French soldiers and other westerners in the imperial capital and
the images added to others of "oriental despotism." Be warned: this
is a close reading of lingchi and its significance, which means it
contains plenty of toe-curling descriptions of slicing flesh and
gougings. Not for the faint-hearted, it offers an engaging insight
into the way China's highest legal punishment came to feed into
western notions of imperial China as a cruel society.
*South China Post*
This is a learned and educational book.
*Literary Review*
This elegant and innovatively transnational book is intent on
restoring lingchi to the legal, moral, and political context in
which it made some kind of sense--this is a history of violence
that refuses to take the place of pain and violence in human life
as timeless...With judicious analysis, imaginative reconstructions
from difficult and sparse sources, and a compelling sense of
injustice driving it all, the book is gripping.
*Times Literary Supplement*
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