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An Archaeology of Castration: The Image of the Eunuch in Nineteenth-Century France

Kindred, Clayton William
http://orcid.org/0009-0000-3286-651X
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1732109741734242

Abstract Details

2024, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, History of Art.
In the decades following Edward Said’s 1978 formulation of the discursive theory of Orientalism and the publication of his book of the same name, scholars working in a variety of disciplines, including the history of art, have deployed the theory to explain the nature of the historical relationship between the Eastern and Western worlds. One defining concept of Orientalism proposed by Said that is also found in the work of these other scholars is that the historical interaction between the East and West has been governed by a gendered hierarchy that proposes the East to be feminine and the West masculine. The material products of this interaction are Orientalism, according to Said, thus revealing his belief that the discourse of Orientalism is not only binarily gendered but also heterosexually oriented. While this manner of thinking has inarguably produced important works on the art of Orientalism, it has also limited its interpretation. Primarily relegated over the past four decades to studies of enticing harems, cavalier European explorer-painters, savage warriors, and generative landscapes, art historical scholarship has largely heterosexualized Orientalist art and essentialized its gendered components. Recently, however, an increasing number of scholars working in both the history of art and in associated disciplines have begun to suggest that such a theorization is problematically binary, and that it fails to entertain the possibility that other narratives and motifs, such as those concerning queer bodies, gender nonconforming individuals, and male homoeroticism, are found within the linked textual and visual archives of Orientalism. One such motif is the eunuch, whose image is frequently found in nineteenth-century France. Focused on France and French colonial contexts and geographies, this dissertation examines the representation of the eunuch during the long nineteenth century. It suggests that the image of the eunuch functioned as a type of Orientalist composite that simultaneously confirmed French Orientalist beliefs about the Orient – that it was backward, incomplete, and illogical – and also represented European fascination with it as a region of various erotic bodies and experiences not unrelated to colonial possibilities. Functioning therefore as a fetishistic symbol of both repulsion and desire, the eunuch occupies a space of ambivalence in the otherwise overwhelmingly heterosexist discourse of Saidian Orientalism. Appearing en masse around the turn of the nineteenth century, the eunuch became one of the most frequently reproduced and collected Orientalist images by the fin-de-siècle. At once a castrated slave and keeper of women, educated courtier and occasional soldier, the eunuch disrupts popular conceptions of gender and sexuality in nineteenth-century European art. This dissertation addresses these notions by attending to the image of the eunuch in three chapters, each devoted to different formats and media: prints, painting, and ephemera, including photography and postcards. Privileging portraits of eunuchs, this study demonstrates that the image of the eunuch evolved throughout the nineteenth century and was appropriated at different times for different purposes, ranging from the documentative to the propagandistic and even the pornographic. Typically generalized but occasionally depicting a known individual, eunuch portraits expand the archive of Orientalist art, problematize the heterosexist underpinnings of Saidian Orientalism and its legacy, and write the figure of the Eastern/Ottoman eunuch back into accounts of Orientalism that have often regarded him as nothing but a colonial stand-in.
Andrew Shelton (Advisor)
Lisa Florman (Committee Member)
Karl Whittington (Committee Member)
355 p.
Art History
Edward Said; Linda Nochlin; Orientalism; Postcolonialism; Eunuch; Harem; Foucault

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Kindred, C. W. (2024). An Archaeology of Castration: The Image of the Eunuch in Nineteenth-Century France [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1732109741734242

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Kindred, Clayton. An Archaeology of Castration: The Image of the Eunuch in Nineteenth-Century France. 2024. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1732109741734242.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Kindred, Clayton. "An Archaeology of Castration: The Image of the Eunuch in Nineteenth-Century France." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2024. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1732109741734242

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

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© 2024, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.