DOI article:
Mittler, Barbara: Transboundary Bodies: Eunuchs, Humanity, and Historiography in China
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.16708#0166
Kapitel 10
Transboundary Bodies
Eunuchs, Humanity, and Historiography in China
Barbara Mittler
Eunuchs are a human invention, using human raw Materials.
Eunuchs, in other words, are not human, but the capacity to
make eunuchs is uniquely human.
What are eunuchs? Nonhuman monsters.
And what are humans? Monster makers.
(Taylor 2000: 213)
Xiong (Zhang Xiong, fl. 1520) deeply hated his father because
of the fact that his father did not love him and caused him
to castrate himself and therefore refused to see him when
he visited. But his fellow eunuch urged him to see his father
whereupon he lowered a curtain and beat his father, öfter which
he embracedhim and wept: such was his inhumanity AS
(History of the Ming, Mingshi 304: 7795)
Eunuchs are perhaps the most reviled group in Chinese historical writing. The dy-
nastic histories are replete with constant complaints about them. Transboundary
creatures, caught between two sexes, themselves quite literally the fluid border
between (female) yin and (male) yang,2 they are depicted as sycophants, traitors,
profiteers, spendthrifts and sex-addicts. They are considered extraordinary beings,
I would like to thank my research assistants, Xiong Jingjing and Ann Kathrin Dethlefson, for their
ever patient and prompt replies to all of my requests for locating materials I needed and taking over
most of the formatting work on this article.
1 The translation follows Fryslie 2001.
2 Furth 1988:5: "In Chinese biological thinking, based as it was on yin-yang cosmological views,
there was nothing fixed and immutable about male and female as aspects of yin and yang."
B. Mittler (El)
Institut für Sinologie, Akademiestraße 4-8, 69117 Heidelberg, Deutschland
E-Mail: barbara.mittler@zo.uni-heidelberg.de
M. Hilgert, M. Wink (Hrsg.), Menschen-Bilder,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-16361 -6_10, © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012
149
Transboundary Bodies
Eunuchs, Humanity, and Historiography in China
Barbara Mittler
Eunuchs are a human invention, using human raw Materials.
Eunuchs, in other words, are not human, but the capacity to
make eunuchs is uniquely human.
What are eunuchs? Nonhuman monsters.
And what are humans? Monster makers.
(Taylor 2000: 213)
Xiong (Zhang Xiong, fl. 1520) deeply hated his father because
of the fact that his father did not love him and caused him
to castrate himself and therefore refused to see him when
he visited. But his fellow eunuch urged him to see his father
whereupon he lowered a curtain and beat his father, öfter which
he embracedhim and wept: such was his inhumanity AS
(History of the Ming, Mingshi 304: 7795)
Eunuchs are perhaps the most reviled group in Chinese historical writing. The dy-
nastic histories are replete with constant complaints about them. Transboundary
creatures, caught between two sexes, themselves quite literally the fluid border
between (female) yin and (male) yang,2 they are depicted as sycophants, traitors,
profiteers, spendthrifts and sex-addicts. They are considered extraordinary beings,
I would like to thank my research assistants, Xiong Jingjing and Ann Kathrin Dethlefson, for their
ever patient and prompt replies to all of my requests for locating materials I needed and taking over
most of the formatting work on this article.
1 The translation follows Fryslie 2001.
2 Furth 1988:5: "In Chinese biological thinking, based as it was on yin-yang cosmological views,
there was nothing fixed and immutable about male and female as aspects of yin and yang."
B. Mittler (El)
Institut für Sinologie, Akademiestraße 4-8, 69117 Heidelberg, Deutschland
E-Mail: barbara.mittler@zo.uni-heidelberg.de
M. Hilgert, M. Wink (Hrsg.), Menschen-Bilder,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-16361 -6_10, © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012
149