Queer Women in Chinese Parable: The Shadow of the Shadow

A queer academic anthology from Taiwan is titled Asked by the Shadow of the Shadow (罔两问景). The title comes from a parable in the Zhuang

The Book Cover of "Asked by the Shadow of the Shadow"

zi. “Wangliang” (罔两) refers to the faint fringe of a shadow—the shadow of the shadow—while “jing” (景) refers to the shadow itself.

In the parable, many wangliang question the shadow, asking why it behaves so inconsistently: just now you bowed your head, now you raise it; just now your hair was tied, now it is loose; just now you were sitting, now you are standing; just now you were walking, now you have stopped.

The shadow replies that it does not know why:

“I am like the shell left behind by a cicada, the skin shed by a snake. I look like I have some kind of essence, but I don’t. I rely on sunlight and firelight for my existence; darkness and night are my replacements. I exist because of what I depend on, and those things in turn depend on others. When others arrive, I arrive; when others leave, I leave; when others project strong masculinity, I too become masculine. But this kind of masculinity is not something that can be questioned!”

The reason this queer anthology is titled Asking the Shadow of the Shadow is because queers occupy a similar position to wangliang—they are the “shadow of the shadow.” They are marginal and faint, yet they raise questions about the existing social order of “subject” and “dependent.” If men are the “body” of society, and women the “shadow,” then queer women are wangliang. They exist on the margins, yet they interrogate.

In the preface to Asking the Shadow of the Shadow, the editors reflect on how, in the early 1990s when feminism was just emerging in Taiwan, the feminist movement itself began to exclude “others”:

“At the time, some feminists righteously declared: ‘Lesbians should speak for themselves.’ Debates erupted over whether sex workers could even be considered feminists. One outcome of this atmosphere was that in 1997, a full-time lesbian worker at Awakening Foundation was dismissed.”

This was clearly a new form of oppression embedded within the process of liberation:

“It was said that the women’s movement was growing rapidly, so its operations needed to become ‘professionalized.’ Some issues were given priority in order to make activism more efficient, and so on.”

Returning to the Zhuangzi parable: the shadow is a “single voice,” while the wangliang are a “collective.” The editors of Asking the Shadow of the Shadow explain it this way:

“The ‘many wangliang’ remind us: not everyone who speaks can be seen as an individual subject. Those who speak from positions too marginal to be represented in public or private spheres are often treated as merely part of a group, a crowd, a vague and undifferentiated opposition.”

The more mainstream the speaker’s position, the more likely their voice is heard as coming from a specific, identifiable person. The more marginal and faceless the speaker, the more they are seen simply as one of the “crowd”—a blurred, collective opponent.