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Canada • Gcnder Perl'ormatlvity and Ritual Performance in South-east China Samantha Anderson Department of East Asian Studies McGillUniversity, Montreal March 1996 A thesls submitted ta the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Master's of Arts © Samantha Anderson 1996 • National Library Bibliothèque nationale .+. of Canada du Canada Acquisitions and Direction des acquisitions et Bibliographie Services Branch des services bibliographiques 395 Wellington Sileet 395. rue Wellington Ollawa, Ontario Ottawa (Ontario) K1A ON4 K1A ON4 The author has granted an L'auteur a accordé une licence irrevocable non-exclusive licence irrévocable et non exclusive allowing the National Library of permettant à la Bibliothèque Canada to reproduce, loan, nationale du Canada de distribute or sell copies of reproduire, prêter, distribuer ou his/her thesis by any means and vendre des copies de sa thèse in any form or format, making de quelque manière et sous this thesis available to interested quelque forme que ce soit pour persons. mettre des exemplaires de cette thèse à la disposition des personnes intéressées. The author retains ownership of L'auteur conserve la propriété du the copyright in his/her thesis. droit d'auteur qui protège sa Neither the thesis nor substantial thèse. Ni la thèse ni des extraits extracts from it may be printed or substantiels de celle-ci ne otherwise reproduced without doivent être imprimés ou his/her permission. autrement reproduits sans son autorisation. ISBN 0-612-12002-3 Canada ABSTRACf • This thesis explores issues of subjectivity and gender around ri tuaI activity in Xianyou county, Fujian Province, China. Il focuses on three groups of women: Buddhist nuns, mediums and village women engaged in the ritual caretaking of their families. Il also examines a :.pirit writing text from the late Qing dynasty (1644-1911). It is suggested that subject positions and kin positions are to a certain extent coextensive and that participation in certain riluals is what constitutes one as a gendered sut.ject (as a "woman") and in certain kin roles (as a wife, daughter-in-Iaw, etc.) Other gendered subject positions (such as that of melancholic lover) are explored in an attempt to complicate any simple determinism that might accompany to easy a correspondence of kin position with sex role. ABSTRAIT Cette thèse se veut une exploration de la question de la subjectivité et du genre entourant les activités rituelles dans le canton de Xianyou, Province de Fujian, Chine. L'etude porte sur trois groupes de femmes: des religieuses Bouddhistes, des mediums et de villageoises engagées dans les soins rituel donnés à leur famille. Un texte d'écriture spirituelle datant de la dynastie des Qing (1644-1911) est aussi examiné. • ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS • So many people have helpcld me in so many ways 1 hardly know where 10 begin. Thank you especially to Professor Kenneth Dean who inlroduced me to the study of the religions of China, employed me, encouraged me to take the time to do a year of fieldwork even at the Master's level, helped me make contacts and find a situation in Fujian where 1 could do this kind of research, read my thesis and helped with the translation of the piece of spirit writing that forms the substance of my final chapter. Thank you to Professor Zheng Zhenman for taking me around Xianyou, introducing me to innumerable people who helped with my work, spending hours patiently explaining to me in simple Chinese so that 1 could understand about local culture in Xianyou, ritual practise, the role of the temple in a community etc. and even for occasionally acting as my interpreter. Thank you to Trish Salah who spent innumerable hours agonizing with me over theoretical issues and who read, reread and offered criticism on every version of this thesis. 1 would also like to acknowledge the assistance of the Religious Affairs Bureau of Xianyou county, and in particular the help of Ms Huang Ying who acted as my interpreter and took many hours off work to accompagny me to various temples and nunneries. Many other people have helped me in thinking through various issues that impinged on my work and in more material • ways through jobs, food and comfort that helped me keep body jji and sOlll together over the last few years. So thank you to John Anderson, Amar Bahadoorsingh, Chen Qiuming, David Reid, • François Dandumnt, Grace Fong, Victor Hoari (for giving me a copy of Ecstatic Reli~ion), Constance Macintosh, Brian Noblc, Roopa Nair, Michael Szonyi, Elyse Tera, David Van Fraasen, Jim Wilcox, Allison Wolf, Zheng Aiping and finally to my parents, Joan Anderson and Gary Anderson who sent me to China in the first place and then didn't freak out when 1 didn't come back. Finally 1 would Iike to acknowledge financial support from McGiIl University in the form of two major fellowships, and to the Canada-China Exchange Programme for a scholarship to study in China for a year. Samantha Anderson Montreal, March 1996. • iv • TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Introduction p.1 2. Gender Performativity and the patriline: domestic ritual at Spring Festival... p. 18 3. Abject in the field of dreams: contamination in Xianyou nunneries p. 30 4. Mediums and anthropology: (dis)possessing a binary........p. 51 5. Possession and melancholia: the poetry of Huo Buyun.......p. 72 • 1 One: Introduction • From September 1993 to July 1994 1 was a history student at Xiamen University in Fujian Province, in south-east China. At that time 1 conducted neldwork in Xianyou county in the Minzhong region of Fujian Province. As 1 was unable to get permission from the government to stay in any one place for a long period, 1 ended up traveling al1 over the Xianyou plain and even occasional1y into the remote mountainous regions. 1 visited innumerable temples, attended numerous ceremonies, saw countless operas (which 1 have now developed a taste for) embarrassed myself with my ignorance about Chinese religion and was taught an enormous amount about China and Chinese religion by ail kinds of people: Buddhist nuns, intellectuals, village women, mediums, fortune-tel1ers, temple headmen, advertising agents, and the list goes on. When 1 began my fieldwork 1 possessed only a vague notion of my research goals beyond the fact that 1 was interested in the ri tuai practices of women. Of course, 1 soon discovered that women engaged in a vast array of ritual activities, and they had various roles to play: as nuns; as mediums; as members of the Three-in-one religion; 1 as participants in village level cult activities, such as youxian pilgrimages and festivals; as lThe Threc-in-one (Sanyi liao) was founded by Iiteratus Lin Zhao'en (1517­ 98) in an effort to popularize Confucianism by combining it with Chan Buddhist thought and Taoist meditational practises. See Berling (1980) for an account of Lin Zhao'en's Iife and thought and Dean (forihcoming) for a discussion of ihe tradition since ihe lime of Lin Zhao'en. There are over • 1000 Thrce-in-one temples in ihe Xinghua region today. 2 representatives of their families in hOllsehold and anceSfor worship. Il seemed obviolls that women were much more active • than men in all aspects of religious life in which they couId participate (women, of course, cannot become Taoist priests). 1 was very confused that this was not readily apparent to everyol1e else as weIl. Attending a ritual such as a pudu (universal salvation of souls) in a Three-in-one temple. 1 observed that excepting the ritual specialists, the only participants were women. Wanting to chart the particular requirements that religious activities made on women, 1 asked why only women were in the congregation? only gradually became accustomed to the response the question received: a flat denial that this was the case. 1 only began to understand this response when 1 realized that what WllS meant was that no rules prevent men l'rom participating. though they normally do not. ln thinking about how to bring this extremely diverse body of material together in something more than a generalized "this is what women do". 1 also felt the need to attend to recent feminist construals of "woman" as an unstable category.