The Spatiality of Emotion in Early Modern China - by Ling Hon Lam (Paperback)

About the Book

Ling Hon Lam gives a deeply original account of the history of emotions in Chinese literature centered on the idea of emotion as space. Tracing how the emotion-realm underwent significant transformations from the dreamscape to theatricality in sixteenth- to eighteenth-century China, this book is a major rethinking of key terms in Chinese culture.

Book Synopsis

Emotion takes place. Rather than an interior state of mind in response to the outside world, emotion per se is spatial, at turns embedding us from without, transporting us somewhere else, or putting us ahead of ourselves. In this book, Ling Hon Lam gives a deeply original account of the history of emotions in Chinese literature and culture centered on the idea of emotion as space, which the Chinese call "emotion-realm" (qingjing).

Lam traces how the emotion-realm underwent significant transformations from the dreamscape to theatricality in sixteenth- to eighteenth-century China. Whereas medieval dreamscapes delivered the subject into one illusory mood after another, early modern theatricality turned the dreamer into a spectator who is no longer falling through endless oneiric layers but pausing in front of the dream. Through the lens of this genealogy of emotion-realms, Lam remaps the Chinese histories of morals, theater, and knowledge production, which converge at the emergence of sympathy, redefined as the dissonance among the dimensions of the emotion-realm pertaining to theatricality.The book challenges the conventional reading of Chinese literature as premised on interior subjectivity, examines historical changes in the spatial logic of performance through media and theater archaeologies, and ultimately uncovers the different trajectories that brought China and the West to the convergence point of theatricality marked by self-deception and mutual misreading. A major rethinking of key terms in Chinese culture from a comparative perspective, The Spatiality of Emotion in Early Modern China develops a new critical vocabulary to conceptualize history and existence.

Review Quotes

The Spatiality of Emotion in Early Modern China is a daring rethinking of emotion as it was conceptualized in early modern China. Up-ending the dominant characterization of emotions, Ling Hon Lam shows that emotions were implicitly situations of space, conceived of and perceived in spatial terms. Challenging expectations and rectifying suppositions about the most basic level of human interaction with the environment and culture, Lam elucidates questions central to the philosophy of affect and to ontology from an unprecedented comparative perspective.--William Egginton, Johns Hopkins University

Spatiality of Emotion in Early Modern China is a heavy read with rewarding and informative rabbit holes into the development of essential aspects of Chinese drama in comparison with their European counterparts.--Asian Review of Books

A provocative, profound, and profoundly original rethinking of the history of Chinese literary thought and its literary manifestations in imperial and modern China, whose repercussions will be felt within Chinese studies and within world literary circles for a long time to come.--Patricia Sieber, Ohio State University

Ambitiously drawing upon the studies of literature, philosophy, and anthropology/ritual studies, Lam successfully brings the literary representation of emotion in premodern Chinese literature and theater to the fore, highlighting the spatialized
character of emotion in both print and theatricality and the dynamics between performers and spectators. The book enormously contributes to the reader's understanding of traditional Chinese aesthetics, its cultural production, and the
importance of spatialized emotion in Chinese cultural representation--GUO WU, Allegheny College "The Chinese Historical Review "

Brilliantly written and boldly conceptualized.--Wei Shang, Columbia University

Lam argues with verve that the vocabulary of spatiality and theatricality is crucial for understanding emotions in the Chinese tradition. From the earliest formulations of the functions of poetic articulation as a space of social, political, and cosmic resonance to the logic of self-division and of being a spectator to one's emotions in Ming fiction, Lam offers new and interesting perspectives on Chinese literature.--Wai-yee Li, Harvard University

Lam's vaulting ambition to retell the story of just about every topic near and dear to the heart of a literary scholar: representation, fictionality, theatricality, emotion, and performance, among others. Amazingly, this tall order is pulled off via an even taller order--a counterintuitive thesis that Lam presents at the outset and defends strenuously and successfully throughout the book: that emotion is less an inside-out psychological or neuro-chemical process than an outside-in spatial process.--Haiyan Lee "Modern Chinese Literature and Culture "

Ling Hon Lam has written a book that makes important contributions both to the study of early modern Chinese drama and to broader discussions of affect theory by adding Chinese studies to this scope.--JASMINE YU-HSING CHEN, Utah State University "Asian Theatre Journal "

Ling Hon Lam's book is a major breakthrough in early modern Chinese literary and theater studies. Lam challenges conventional wisdom that sees emotion as an expression of inner faculties, and seeks to reframe emotion as affective performativity, theatrical manifestation, and above all, spatial construct. He draws from performing arts and media studies, identifies philosophical and psychological contestations, and ponders the power of the theatrics of emotion both on the stage and in everyday life. Historically informed and theoretically provocative, Lam's book will set a new standard for Chinese theater studies and cultural and spatial history.--David Der-wei Wang, Harvard University

Ling Hon Lam's book opens new dimensions for studying emotion by reaching beyond the well-trodden paths of late imperial China.--Chen Kaijun, Brown University "Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews "

Simultaneously engaging Chinese literary history "on its own terms" and on someone else's terms (Michel Foucault, Martin Heidegger, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Emmanuel Levinas, Slavoj Zizek, to name a few), [Lam's] The Spatiality of Emotion in Early Modern China offers equally close encounters with both, all the while giving trenchant critique of the very "terms" themselves.--Hu Ying "Critical Inquiry "

Sounds, including words, reverberate in spaces, including the "inch-space" of the heart. Framing the history of the emotions in original and surprising ways and undoing traditional oppositions between "inside" and "outside" through attention to the spaces that nurture or limit feeling, Ling Hon Lam puts Chinese vernacular literature in a new place and gives us the sensation of belonging to a continuous, centuries-long community of spectators. This is cultural history of astonishing scope and imagination.--Haun Saussy, University of Chicago

Through the analytical prism opened up by the concept of emotion-realm (qingjing), Lam provides a refreshing reading and interpretation of many critical thinkers, including Heidegger, Foucault, and Rancière, as well as psychology and affect theory. . . . Because of its scope of coverage, the book can serve as a reference source for rethinking Chinese literature in relation to modern critical theories.--GUOJUN WANG, Vanderbilt University "Journal of Asian Studies "

About the Author

Ling Hon Lam is assistant professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Berkeley.