| This dissertation examines China's urban sexual culture by focusing on the activities of Zhang Jingsheng (1889-1970). Zhang was a French-trained professor of philosophy at Beijing University (1920-1926) and subsequently a Shanghai publisher and book store owner (1926-1929). In May, 1926 he published a book entitled Sex Histories (Xing shi) that would prove one of the Republican Era's (1912-49) most widely-read, banned, and controversial Chinese texts.;Through an analysis of the events in Zhang's life leading up to the Sex Histories controversy, and through content analyses of the book, subsequent debates, and other writings, a window is opened on China's 1920s-era urban sexual culture. After an initial biographical chapter on Zhang Jingsheng, the dissertation interprets the meaning of modernism and Utopia within the context of Zhang's philosophy. The next two chapters discuss a 1923 debate on the "Rules of Love" (aiqing dingze) with an eye towards understanding the production of the person through public discourse, and the constitution of an urban public realm concerned with questions of intimate life. The next chapter analyzes Zhang's political philosophy and his allegiance with the Paris anarchists, and then traces his confrontation with the Guomindang state. Following chapters contain an analysis of Zhang Jingsheng's attitude to human sexuality, a discussion of the debate that Sex Histories aroused in 1927-29, and a content analysis of Sex Histories itself. The content analysis is divided into three chapters devoted to understanding Sex Histories' modernist enterprise within the May Fourth literary milieu, the sexual ideology present in the work's six autobiographies, and finally a gender-based analysis of male sexual ideology counterpoised to the sole female narrative in the book.;The dissertation contributes to our understanding of the history of sexuality in China, while also attempting to widen our conception of the cultural politics of the May Fourth and immediate post May Fourth periods.;Zhang had studied Durkheimian sociology at the Universities of Paris and Lyons. Sex Histories was an attempt to examine contemporary Chinese sex life in this sociological vein. The work contained six (5 male and one female) "sex histories": autobiographical narratives of personal sexual development. The subject matter made the book both immediately controversial and popular, a fact abetted by Sex Histories' low price and small size. Both intellectual and state authorities attacked Sex Histories and Zhang himself. The book was banned (jin) and a public debate arose in the print media between Zhang and intellectual colleagues. School authorities carried out searches to locate and confiscate the work. And Zhang appeared in Shanghai civil court numerous times due to his publishing activities. Finally, in 1929, the Nationalist Party government arrested Zhang for "disseminating sex education, inciting youth.". |
