Retribution, Reward, and Reincarnation: Gender Nonnormativity as the Supernatural in Late Imperial China’s Gender System

Abstract

u n d e R s t a n d i n g t h e s u p e R n a t u R a l seems to be in epistemological tension with the formation and theorization of queer subjecthood, which is generally characterized as secular and progressive. Under the framework of neoliberal modernity and Western “sexual exceptionalism,” “normative queer subjects” have been constructed as rational and incompatible with understandings of spirituality, faith, or religion.1 Similarly, certain mainstream strands of queer theory seem to be committed to “an existential scepticism regarding the possibility of a transcendent, divine source of meaning.”2 This incompatibility can also be found in scholarship on queer history. Such tension has been markedly exacerbated by Michel Foucault’s works, which drive historians to “privilege science and medicine as the epistemic leverage for the formation of modern gender and sexual identities.”3 The resulting overlooking of supernatural elements also exists in the field of China’s queer history, which tends to focus on more tangible powers and regulations of gender transgression through empirical analysis of political, legal, and medical discourse. This is acknowledged by Wu