Consumption, Body, and Biopolitics: Opium and the Modernity of National Salvation in China

• Main Authors: Huang, Hung-chao, 黃宏昭
• Other Authors: Chu, Yuan-Horng
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2012
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/50955909308749344207

博士 === 東海大學 === 社會學系 === 100 === The main concern of this dissertation is the relationship between opium and the modernity of national salvation in China. Opium was a special material in the early modern China. It was traditional medicine and habitus, but at the same time, it was harmful to body and life , and leading to social and economy problems, and even wars. Opium contributed to the negative images of Chinese as weak and dangerous people, and equaled to let the state perish as we knew. In other words, opium was portrayed as a danger to the health of the individual and the nation. Although opium smoking had been prohibited, but it still remained legal trade under government supervision for years, because opium was an excellent source of revenue. So that, it was a threat to the state-building and the national survival. It is the problematique of this dissertation how to develop from opiumization to de-opiumization and how to develop the modernity of national salvation in China. The issues involved are including addiction, commodity consumption, state control, and national salvation. Furthermore, it is not only national salvation but also transformation of modernity. Several studies have been made on finance, economic benefits, global trade, foreign relations or state-making. But the relationship between opium and the modernity of national salvation has never been studied so far. After studied a lot of historical documents, we see the process of modernization in China was surrounded by opium as the social pathologies, and moreover, how to remove the pathological situation restore to order of normal. Further, this dissertation is concerned how to control opium consumption, how to police opium body, how to govern life, and how to carry out the process of modernization. We may consider the subject under the following heads: (A) how to get a grip on the relationship between opium consumption and politics, and the process of policing opium; (B) how the visual effects of opium body formed the sense of shame and the policing vision on the body; (C) how biopolitics constructed the modernity of national salvation in China. In summary, the process of opium and the modernity of national salvation was the process from opiumization to de-opiumization. Through opium we understand that the modernization of China was built of salvation in consumption politics, visual / body politics, and biopolitics. Furthermore, the sense of crisis of ‘ruin the state and destroy the race’ and the sense of shame constituted the inner motivation of modernity in China.