Body, Discourse, and the Cultural Politics of Contemporary Chinese Qigong Author(s): Jian Xu Source: The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 58, No. 4 (Nov., 1999), pp. 961-991 Published by: Association for Asian Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2658492 . Accessed: 17/06/2014 21:32 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Association for Asian Studies is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Asian Studies. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 62.122.79.21 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 21:32:15 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Body,Discourse, and the CulturalPolitics of ContemporaryChinese Qigong JIAN XU M4ANY ASIANCULTURES HAVE RICH traditions of self-cultivationthat exercise mind and bodythrough physical and meditationaltraining. Research and scholarshipwith respectto thosetraditions have focusedfruitfully on how the body is cultivatedto serveas an agentof resistanceagainst various forms of social control.Of thesemany writingson thissubject, I will herename only a suggestivefew: Joseph Alter's study of Indian wrestling (1993), for example, tracks the wrestlers'self-conscious reappropriationof theirbodies fromthe power of the state througha regimented disciplineaimed at resistingdocility. John Donohue's studyof theJapanese martial art karate(1993) exploreshow, in the West, karate'ssymbolic and ritualfunctions createa psychologicaldynamic that countersthe prevalentfragmentation of urban life.Douglas Wile's researchon Chinesetaiji quan (1996) similarlyreconstructs the cultural/historicalcontext in whichthis martial art was created.He showsthat what motivatednineteenth-century literati to create taiji quan was its representational functionrather than its practicalutility. That is, Taiji quan "may be seen as a psychologicaldefense against Western culturalimperialism" (p. 26) insofaras it produced a secure sense of the national self that helped China adapt to a new internationalenvironment (p. 29). All of thesestudies place the body-in-cultivation in a specifichistorical context; they maintain that the individual,physical body both registersand revealsthe nationalsociopolitical landscape. Chineseqigong is yetanother form of Asian bodilycultivation that invites critical analysisand culturalsituating. Although there are as yet fewsuch studies,at least twoarticles deserve citation. One is ThomasOts's study(1994) ofspontaneous-qigong. 1 Ots too posits the body as culturallyinscribed and constructed,but in additionhe exploreshow, being set freefrom cultural constraints by qigongpractice, the bodycan expressthe emotional self repressedby the state. Likewise,Nancy Chen (1995) JianXu is a Ph.D candidatein ComparativeLiterature at The Universityof Iowa. I would like to thankMaureen Robertson, Deborah Linderman,and the two anonymous reviewersofJAS fortheir valuable help at differentstages of my writing. 'Ots firsttranslates zifa donggong8 a4)i to "qigongof spontaneousmovements." Later, he calls it "spontaneous-qigong."Ots describesbriefly how it occursand what it is like (1994, 122). Generally,"spontaneous-qigong" refers to bodily movementsthat occur when qigong practitionersenter a trance-likestate in whichthey still retaina clearconsciousness but accede to theirinvoluntary bodily impulses. TheJournalof Asian Studies58, no. 4 (November1999):961-991. (? 1999 by the Associationfor Asian Studies,Inc. 961 This content downloaded from 62.122.79.21 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 21:32:15 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 962 JIAN XU examinesqigong practice both as a new space of privateexperience and a new formof urban interactionthat transcendthe constraintsof the state. Both of these studies point to a ratherintense political struggletaking place aroundqigong practice. On one side ofthis struggle, the commonpractitioners of qigong embrace the spontaneous natureof its practiceand use it as a strategyto dissociatetheir bodies fromstate controland power;on the otherside of the struggle,the statebureaucracy attempts to lead qigongpractitioners into "some realmof state-approvedcultural values" (Ots 1994, 132) and to "harnessthe immense and unexplainablepower of qigong by creating boundariesof legitimatescientific enterprise while appropriatingits use for an officiallymediated public sphere"(Chen 1995, 360). Those "state-approvedcultural values" referto suchmental qualities as "control,quietness, relaxation, and harmony" (Ots 1994, 132-33), whichare seen to oppose the involuntaryarousal of spontaneous movementsthat might in their unpredictabilitythreaten the state's cultural hegemony.As the state sets up limits to normalize"scientific" and "authentic" practicesand to stigmatize"false" and "superstitious"ones, qigong loses its emotional contentas "a culturalmetaphor" through which many can expresstheir feelings (Ots 1994, 133). The recentgovernmental suppression of Falun Gong fullybears out thepolitical natureof the strugglediscussed by Ots and Chen. The Falun Gong practitioners' peacefulprotest at theZhongnanhai government complex, as well as thegovernment's reactionto it, tell much about how the "public sphere"is differentlyconceived by the practitionerson the one hand and the stateon the other.What the practitioners wantis theright to practicea formof qigong they believe in withoutstate intervention. Qigonghas claimedthe bodyas a space of privateexperience and its practicea public space independentof the state'scontrol. On the otherside, however,the government still views the embodiedspace of qigongto be subjectto its regulationprecisely due to itspublic nature.The practiceof assigning different cultural values to variouskinds of qigongpractice is the government'sstrategy to gain controlover the new public space. The Falun Gong practitioners'sit-in protest itself was an attemptto use the public space as a legitimate sphere in which to voice their discontentwith governmentalinterference, whereas the governmentconstrued the public space as a spherein which only statepower is to be exercised.The subsequentgovernmental campaignto stigmatizeFalun Gong,as counteredby the sympathizers' protest, almost uncannilygives proof to thepattern of the struggle described in thesetwo early studies by Ots and Chen. However,even at thetime Ots and Chen werewriting, the qigong re (qigong craze), whichwas originallydefined by the attractionsof spontaneousqigong, was in factall but obsolete, since many schools of qigongpractice had become institutionally regulated.2Yet, interestingly,even though the state bureaucracyseems to have penetratedthe fieldof practice,the struggleover qigong nevertheless continued on a discursivelevel into the 1990s.3 Situatedboth in scientificresearches on qigongand in the prevailingnationalistic revival of traditionalbeliefs and values,this discursive 2Chen writes: "By late 1990 the state regulatorybureau furtherenforced regulations concerningthe strictlicensing of mastersand registrationof practitioners"(1995, 356-57). 3Theqigong craze ended when spontaneous-qigongwas stigmatizedand suppressedby the regulationof the state organizations.Ots writes:"Without spontaneous-qigong,the 'qigong craze' would not have come into existence"(1994, 131). Take Falun Gong forexample: al- thoughafter the protestthe state declaredFalun Gong illegal, controversycontinues with respectto its moral/culturalvalues. Articlesdefending and denouncingstate suppression con- tinueto appear,only the battlefieldhas now becomeglobal, thanksto the World Wide Web. This content downloaded from 62.122.79.21 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 21:32:15 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions CULTURAL POLITICS OF CONTEMPORARY CHINESE QIGONG 963 strugglehas articulateditself as an intellectualdebate and enlistedon both sides a host of well-knownwriters and scientists-so much so that a veritablecorpus of literatureon qigongresulted. In it, two conflictingdiscourses became identifiable. Taking "discourse"in its contemporarysense as referringto formsof representation thatgenerate specific cultural and historicalfields of meaning,we can describeone such discourse as rational and scientificand the other as psychosomaticand metaphysical.Each strivesto establishits own orderof power and knowledge,its own "truth"about the "reality"of qigong.However, both these discoursesconfirm the extraordinaryhealing power of qigong,although they differdrastically in their explanationsof manyof its phenomena.The controversycenters on the questionof whetherand how qigongcan induce"supranormal abilities" (Qf, I) teyigongneng). The psychosomaticdiscourse emphasizes the inexplicablepower of qigong and relishes its occult workings,whereas the rationaldiscourse strives to demystifymany of its phenomenaand to situateit strictlyin the knowledgesof modernscience. The materialexistence of each of thesediscourses can be ascertainedat two sites of the social field.The firstsite is that of the institution,which connectsqigong to economicand publicprocesses.4 The secondsite is theindividual body, which connects qigongto the realm of experienceand desire.5Let us deal firstthen with the institutionalizationofqigong.