Meditations on Mediation

Abstract

Shaoling Ma's Stone and the Wireless: Mediating China, 1861–1906 is an investigation of mediation in the final decades of the Qing empire (1644–1912), when China was forcefully incorporated into an uneven world order. The beautifully titled book foregrounds mediation rather than media as a theoretical framework for scrutinizing the relationship between media technologies and discursive practices. It constantly straddles the fluid border between technologies of inscription and their cultural, literary, and symbolic ramifications. In contrast to many recent studies, Ma does not treat media technologies as discrete artifacts. This is not a book on a singular medium like the phonograph or the telegraph. Understanding late Qing technology and culture, she argues, can take place only through demonstrating how different media bled into one another both technologically and discursively. As such, instead of taking a single medium, she explores them all. It's a whirlwind of ideas. Print, photography, stereography, telegraphy, and phonography appear together with diplomatic records, poetry, and science fiction.The Stone and the Wireless follows a rather unusual time frame. It starts in 1861 with the establishment of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Zongli Yamen) and ends with the establishment of the Ministry of Posts and Communications (Youchuan Bu) in 1906. The two dates mark a period in which the Qing witnessed an unprecedented transformation in diplomacy, bureaucracy, and communications. But this book is far from a structural analysis of these transformations. It is a meditation on mediation, as it follows the late Qing figures who contemplated the new world through new media. From diplomats to feminists, late Qing intellectuals lived and thought through the new technologies that surrounded them. The number of figures and themes covered in this book is impressive.Ma frames her book through three loaded concepts in three parts: “Recordings” (ji), “Transmission/Biography” (chuan/zhuan), and “Interconnectivity” (tong). Familiar to all China scholars, these terms acquire new meanings in Ma's work as she uses them for theorizing media in a late Qing context. While each of these mediatic practices has existed for centuries in China, their nineteenth-century reincarnations offer a fruitful ground to explore the technological, literary, and gendered entanglements of media and mediation. “Recordings” reflects on the medium of diplomatic and official records along with other technologies of inscription such as the phonograph. “Transmission/Biography” explores the mediations between femininity, technology, and sentimentality. “Interconnectivity,” the personal favorite of this reviewer, examines the infrastructural transformations that altered both Chinese literary thought and the representations of China in Western media.Literary scholars, media scholars, and historians will find a lot to think with in this book, as Ma brings together poetry, telegraphy, photography, and social uprisings under one rubric. Her chapters offer fascinating insights into a variety of themes. Chapter 3, for instance, strips the famous feminist Qiu Jin of her well-known revolutionary identity and instead reconsiders her as a commentator on lyrical and technological media, in particular poetry and photography. Chapter 4 on the telegraph and the Boxer Rebellion is an exciting inquiry into the politics and representations of information infrastructures. Especially noteworthy is her analysis of James Ricalton's stereographic records of China. Chapter 5 ruminates on the discourses of neuroanatomy and electrical brains through Xu Nianci's New Tales of Mr. Braggadocio. And the concluding remarks tie together all the themes through Chen Qiufan's contemporary sci-fi novel Waste Tide (2019). From bureaucracy to lithography, feminism to sci-fi, The Stone and the Wireless has something to offer anyone interested in the history of media.“We need an understanding of mediation,” writes Ma, “to untie the Gordian knot of technology, communications, and social relations of production” (210). It's a bold statement. And it is certainly the main strength of the book. The decision to step away from specific media technologies certainly enriches the narrative, as “mediation” allows the author to have an expansive reach into a variety of subjects. But it comes at a cost. Given the capaciousness of “mediation,” it sometimes becomes difficult to understand what exactly the author is problematizing. The historical narrative is at times overshadowed by sophisticated, yet overwhelming, inquiries into media theory and philosophy. Scholars who are interested in the physicality of media technologies will be rather disappointed, as this book is less about science and technology studies and more about media theory. And “wireless,” despite its prominence in the title, does not feature at all as a technology (which was introduced to China in 1904).These, however, are minor quibbles. Ma's book is a valuable addition to the growing literature on media in Chinese history. Her focus on the late Qing period, instead of the republican era, is especially worthy of praise. The Stone and the Wireless opens an intellectual space to think about mediation and ponder its strengths and weaknesses as a method. It will be an essential read for Chinese media studies going forward.