The present thesis theoretically reformulates the relationship between geographic imagination and medical discourse in modern Chinese literature. The Introduction examines previous studies from C.T. Hsia’s “Obsession with China” to the present, and problematizes the almost unchallenged totality of China in interpreting medical discourse. Drawing on reconsiderations of Michel Foucault’s universalism, it proposes to deconstruct the totality of China in medical humanities from two theoretical dimensions: gender and locality. Chapter 2 probes women’s ‘special sickness’ within the patriarchal nation with the case of Ding Ling. It criticizes the neglect of sick women’s subjectivity in previous scholars’ realistic interpretations of Ding’s early works on one hand, and investigates the...[ Read more ]

The present thesis theoretically reformulates the relationship between geographic imagination and medical discourse in modern Chinese literature. The Introduction examines previous studies from C.T. Hsia’s “Obsession with China” to the present, and problematizes the almost unchallenged totality of China in interpreting medical discourse. Drawing on reconsiderations of Michel Foucault’s universalism, it proposes to deconstruct the totality of China in medical humanities from two theoretical dimensions: gender and locality. Chapter 2 probes women’s ‘special sickness’ within the patriarchal nation with the case of Ding Ling. It criticizes the neglect of sick women’s subjectivity in previous scholars’ realistic interpretations of Ding’s early works on one hand, and investigates the discipline and punishment conducted by the national power under the rule of the Chinese Communist Party over the issue of Ding’s writings on sick women. Chapter 3 is a negotiation of nationalist and cosmopolitan views on literature and medicine. Through a discussion of the role played by Hong Kong in the post-traumatic experience in Gao Xingjian’s One Man’s Bible, it argues that exile does not necessarily entail a cosmopolitan transcendence of cultural boundaries; instead, explicit meanings of locality still shape the form and intensity of illness. Chapter 4 focuses on an alternative map of literature and medicine delineated in Xin Qi Shi’s “The Green Crescent Moon” and Ye Si’s “Pathfinding in Kyoto”. It refutes the (mainland) China-centered marginalization of Hong Kong in previous studies, and calls for critical attention to the chain of metropolises—which is also a chain of modern sickness—in the global picture.