Nüdan/Neidan: corpo femminile e corpo maschile nella letteratura alchemica cinese

Una due-giorni sull’alchimia interna femminile nella Cina classica. Che c’entra con la medicina, o con le piante?

Beh, il blog è mio :-), e il legame tra alchimia (dall’ottimo sito di Fabrizio Pregadio) interna cinese (e vedi anche Pregadio qui) e medicina cinese è particolarmente interessante, ad esempio per esaminare le differenti prospettive sul corpo originatesi nel seno della stessa tradizione, a volte partendo dallo stesso autore, come nel caso di Sun Simo, uno dei più importanti autori classici della medicina cinese (autore dei testi classici Beiji qianjing yaofang e Qianjing yifang).
Le differenti pratiche utilizzate in alchimia interna hanno interessanti contatti con una parte della medicina tradizionale cinese, in particolare con la medicina macrobiotica, e più in generale possono chiarire la cosmologia e la fisiologia tradizionali, le differenze tra corpo maschile e corpo femminile (vedi qui il classico articolo della Despeux), e magari a demistificare un mondo, quello della tradizione cinese, che come gli altri deve essere compreso all’interno di contesti di cambiamento sociale e culturale, differenze di genere, influenze religiose, ecc.

A breve una intervista sui contenuti della conferenza.

Female Meditation Techniques in Late Imperial and Modern China

A two-day conference

Sunday, November 09, 2008
9:00 AM – 5:00 PM
10383 Bunche Hall
UCLA
Los Angeles, CA 90095

Female Alchemy (nüdan) is a branch of inner alchemy (neidan) that developed in China from the late Ming dynasty onwards. In the prefaces to texts as well as in treatises themselves, much importance is laid upon the “difference” of the female body, in terms of cosmological and physiological setup, from the male body. Male and female bodies are compared and emotions, loci, and fluids are discussed in detail. However, male/female physiological differences had always been widely acknowledged in medical and alchemical treatises. Thus the emergence of nüdan must also be closely tied to social developments, such as tensions about gender balance. As women become more and more active agents in the public space, especially in the religious arena, a safer alternative, one that could be practiced at home and did not require contact with male teachers or fellow practitioners, was offered through nüdan by male intellectuals. This is easily explained if we look at the growing concern for chastity and proper female behavior in the Qing dynasty, and is supported by extensive sections on female behavior in female alchemy treatises. This phenomenon, with its gender and social implications, is just starting to be discussed and the field is slowly growing:
Catherine Despeux was the first to identify it as a phenomenon to Western audiences in her book Les Immortelles de la Chine ancienne and in a subsequent English version, Women in Daoism, authored together with Livia Kohn. Elena Valussi wrote the first Ph.D dissertation on the nüdan tradition, it historical developments and social implication in 2003; Sara Neswald just finished writing a dissertation on nüdan and its relationship with Tantric Buddhism. Xun Liu has done extensive work on early nüdan writings and has written on gender in Daoism. Suzanne Cahill has investigated issues of gender in Daoism her whole career. Charlotte Furth has investigated visions of the female body in Chinese medicine. This workshop is the first attempt to come together and discuss this tradition from multiple angles.