The Body and Modernity in the Travel of Lao Can

The aim of the current project is to examine the significance of Liu E’s 劉鶚 (1857-1909) The Travels of Lao Can 老殘遊記from a historical perspective of body modification. Instead of focusing on the literary modernity of the novel, as many researchers have been achieved, the study attempts to emphasize the novel as a locus where an individual’s relation with the state is reconstructed in China during the beginning of the 20th century. Such reformation of the relation between individuals and the state will be investigated in terms of the way the narrative imagines human body. Constructing new body— to modify individual’s body so as to enrich the state and strengthen the armed forces—was a crucial part of the agenda of the modern state in late 19th century China. It was during this early stage of the formation of modern state/body discourse that Liu E composed the novel. And the fact that the novel begins with clear allegories where Lao Can is pictured as one trying to rescue the state with western gadgets and healer of the sick Yellow River may alone justify the necessity to understand the novel in terms of body and politics, and evidence Liu E’s intention of taking part through the novel in the shaping of the discourse of China’s historical modernity. The project will illustrate the relation between the discourse of body and that of modernity in The Travels of Lao Can in the following aspects. The study will start by discussing how the body/state relation was reconfigured in new concept and experience of time. Secondly, the project will center on lyricism and modernity, demonstrating the tension between the lyrical moments and the highly celebrated state collectivism. To further delve into the issue of body and state, I will also analyze the way the relation between the two is conceptualized in the medical metaphors in the novel. The fourth part of the project will demonstrate how individual’s body is obtained and organized by modern state. Finally, I will bring into focus the uncontrolled body (of the boxer’s and the opium smoker’s) in the novel, exploring from an opposite but complementary view the issue of body and modernity in The Travels of Lao Can.