“Mapping Uncertain Depths: Mediating Meridians in 20th Century China”

• In Event: The Body in Biomedical Knowledge

Abstract

Science studies scholars have long appreciated the role of visualization and representation in shaping knowledge regimes in biomedicine, yet little attention has been paid to visually articulating alternative materialities of the body. This paper uncovers how mapping meridian tracts, known as jingluo in Chinese medicine, destabilized efforts to standardize images of Chinese anatomy and physiology. While major reformers tried to interpret Chinese medicine as science throughout the early 20th century, the materiality of the Chinese body remained highly contentious. Circulatory and nervous systems appeared evident in the biomedical body, but jingluo remained ambiguous. Though it was represented as a series of lines and dots to guide acupuncture and moxibation, the exact nature of meridian tracts were at once evident and undefined. What kinds of epistemologies were necessary for making sense of physiological phenomenon invisible to mechanical and biological ways of seeing?

Based on a close reading of visual and discursive print media, this paper traces the ways in which different historical actors sought to answer this question. In particular, it closely follows the attempt to completely eliminate jingluo in producing the first textbook on acupuncture and moxibation in Communist China, New Acupuncture and Moxibation (1954). By examining how lived experiences of the body conflicted and cohered with intellectual and political alliances, this paper brings together concerns in visualizing and representing scientific knowledge in STS with current debates in the history of medicine and Chinese studies.

Author

• Lan Angela Li, MIT