Alternative Kinship in the Wake of Absence: Women and Animals in the Politics of Feeding the Nation with Silent Flesh from Late Qing to Modern China

Abstract

This thesis examines the relationship between women and animals through the approach of ecofeminism, focusing on how both are constructed as “absent referents” by the nation-state. By analyzing the dominant representations of pandas and women, I investigate how they are rendered invisible within state narratives. In the late Qing and early Republican period, Lü Bicheng, a pioneering female figure in animal protection within a nationalist framework, largely overlooked the subjectivity of animals. In contrast, contemporary “aunties” who care for stray animals established kinship bonds through embodied affect, thus challenging the nation-state’s logic of reproductive futurism. Ultimately, although women and animals are often constructed as absent referents within dominant discourses, their lived practices and affective connections offer alternative forms of kinship that resist and reimagine these structures.Master of Art