8 Eunuchs in the East, Men in the West? Dis/unity, Gender and Orientalism in the Fourth Century

Tougher, Shaun

doi:10.1163/9789004291935_010

Cited by 4 publications

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“…Castration has appeared in places as diverse as Ancient Egypt, Persia, Algeria, and Feudal Europe, and it is therefore no stranger to human history. Studies on eunuchs in the historical context is a large field of scholarship, including Tougher’s latest monograph on Roman eunuchs (Tougher, 2020) and his investigations on emotion and eunuchs in relation to gender issues in the Byzantine Empire (Tougher, 2015, 2017, 2019), Ayalon’s (1999) analysis of power relations involving eunuchs in the Islamic harem, and Marmon’s (1995) take on eunuchs mediating the moral and physical space in premodern Islamic society. In China, eunuchs first appeared during the Shang dynasty around 1600 B.C.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bodily Changes: Castration as Cultural and Social Practice in the Space of the Forbidden City

Liu

Lan

2021

Sage Open

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This article examines the Chinese imperial body as “simultaneously part of nature and part of culture” and considers the interactions between the cultural body and physical body in sociological terms. The examination elaborates on the physical body as the manifestation of the demands of society mediated by cultural meanings. Bodily changes, such as castration, which Peng Liu argue is a trade between the physical body and cultural body in meeting the demands of Imperial Chinese society, affect the cultural embodiment of the body. This article examines the bodily actions of head eunuchs and how they interact with the emperor in the space of the Forbidden City during Imperial China. Eunuchs have undertaken an invasive physical operation to not only survive but thrive in imperial society. This reflects the constraints, struggles, and disciplining of the physically castrated and culturally embodied being.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bodily Changes: Castration as Cultural and Social Practice in the Space of the Forbidden City

Liu

Lan

2021

Sage Open

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“…Over time, their numbers and influence grew. A primicerius sacri cubiculi, or head of the emperor’s sacred bedchamber, managed the imperial bedroom; and a praepositus sacri cubiculi, another head of the emperor’s sacred bedchamber, effectively ran the empire (Hopkins, 1978; Tougher, 2015).…”

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confidence: 99%

The future is the past.

Betzig¹

2020

Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences

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Evolutionary theories have been tested in the laboratory-evaluating, among other things, a person's willingness to help. They've been tested in field studies, adding greater depth-foragers and herders and farmers have been looked at on every inhabited continent. They've been tested across cultures, adding the dimension of space-to get at, among other things, similarities and differences in mate choice. And occasionally they've been tested across history-adding the dimension of time. Some evolutionary historians have focused on historical demography; others have used a broad spectrum of sources to illuminate big history. Public Significance StatementStudies of human psychology and history help us understand how and why our behaviors vary with context. They should help us behave in more responsible ways.

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Eutropius as an oriental

Babnis

2021

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Eutropius, eunuch who became the consul of the Roman Empire in 399 AD under Arcadius, is a villain of Claudius Claudian’s invective In Eutropium. Argumentation in this piece is based on many negative topoi employed in the earlier Roman poetry. In doing this, the poet makes a particular use of stereotypes connected with the East, by dint of which he can attribute these features to the Eastern Roman Empire (epitomised by Eutropius) and – at the same time – to show that the right Roman virtues are fostered in the Western Roman Empire, controlled by the poet’s patron, Stilicho.

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8 Eunuchs in the East, Men in the West? Dis/unity, Gender and Orientalism in the Fourth Century

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

Bodily Changes: Castration as Cultural and Social Practice in the Space of the Forbidden City

Bodily Changes: Castration as Cultural and Social Practice in the Space of the Forbidden City

The future is the past.

Eutropius as an oriental

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