Tuesday 15th February 2022, 5:15-6:30pm

Hovenden Room, All Souls College

Michelle Hsu (Wadham) - Romancing the Chinese Empire and Gender in Victor Segalen and George Soulié de Morant 

    Victor Segalen (1878-1919) was a doctor of the French navy who taught medicine and carried out archeological missions in China. George Soulié de Morant (1878-1955) worked for the French diplomatic corps as an interpreter and is known for his introduction of acupuncture into France in the 1930s. Both of them were proficient in Chinese and wrote extensively about China, using the Chinese empire during the Boxer uprising or revolutionary upheavals as the decor of their novels. In this presentation, I look into how Segalen’s René Leys (1922) and Soulié de Morant’s Bijou-de-ceinture ou le Jeune Homme qui porte robe, se poudre et se farde (1925) stage various forms of gender crossings and alter the terms in which social and gender hierarchies are evoked through the shift of cultural perspective. I will first show how René Leys, the eponymous hero of Segalen’s novel, uses information as capital to gain leverage in his homosocial relationship with Segalen the narrator. Then, I will discuss how the effeminate masculinity of the transvestite performer of Chinese opera in Bijou-de-ceinture is endowed with nationalistic agency through the gaze of a European protector amidst xenophobic resentment. What kind of gender identities can be gleaned from these readings? Even if Segalen and Soulié de Morant belong to the same generation and share an interest in Chinese culture, their approaches to writing differ from each other significantly. They are both concerned with incorporating the culture of the Other, whether of class, ethnicity, language or sexuality. This paper explores how they position themselves within frameworks of representation marked by romance, fantasy, and sinologist knowledge.