Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie orientale

Journal | Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie orientale
Journal issue | 58 | 2022
Research Article | Gendering Piety, Justice and Violence: On the Aesthetics of Self-Killing in Han-Chinese, Naxi and Lahu Cultures (from the Late-Ming to Mid-20th Century)

Gendering Piety, Justice and Violence: On the Aesthetics of Self-Killing in Han-Chinese, Naxi and Lahu Cultures (from the Late-Ming to Mid-20th Century)

Abstract

Self-killing in late imperial and modern China called into play gender disparities, and secular and religious morals often at odds with each other. Scholarship has long focused on Confucian virtue ethics that led young widows to follow their husband to death, or take a chastity vow and disfigure themselves to avoid rape, but little effort has been made to examine suicide practices cross-culturally. This paper compares such practices among Han women from the southeast coast and indigenous Naxi and Lahu women of upland Yunnan, throwing light on the aesthetics behind their struggles for justice, free-choice marriage and beliefs in posthumous love.


Open access | Peer reviewed

Submitted: April 13, 2022 | Accepted: June 6, 2022 | Published June 30, 2022 | Language: en

Keywords Afterlife beliefs • Filiality • Gender-role distinctions • Self-inflicted violence • Suicide

Copyright © 2022 Tommaso Previato. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/AnnOr/2385-3042/2022/01/019


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