The Criminal Body and the Body Politic

Abstract

The contemporary Chinese state's preoccupation with controlling, measuring and extracting human and material resources from its rural population has deep roots in the Chinese tradition. So too the use of convicted criminals as a source of disciplined, ordered labor in the People's Republic of China hearkens back to practices as old as the centralized state itself. What is new in socialist China is the link between hard labor and thought reform. In the early empires, despite Confucian rhetoric that advocated reform through moral education, the state aimed to deter crime rather than to reform individuals deemed guilty of deviance. It was the criminal body, its economic needs, potential for labor, significance to rulers bent on displaying their power over matters of life and death, and didactic value to potential deviants, that commanded official attention. As this article argues, however, discourse about the body of the sentenced criminal illuminates more than pragmatic, economic concerns, but gets to the heart of deeper preoccupations about the relationship between political and cosmic order and the human body.