Hysterical translation: an interepistemic exploration between Deleuzian affect theory and the qi theory in TCM

Abstract

Hysteria has always been a heatedly debated topic in both the medical and the non- medical arenas with around four thousand years’ history. However, the different ways it has been translated into Chinese are all barely satisfactory from the perspective of interepistemic translation since they haven’t fully explored the translationalities between the epistemic regimes of East and West. In this paper, the author proposes a counter-hegemonic Western regime that shares quite a few convergences with the Chinese regime based on qi theory. The author translates interepistemically between Gilles Deleuze on hysteria in Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation ([1981] 2003) and the qi theory in traditional Chinese medicine and argues that the Deleuzian conception of affect channels a lot of convergences, theoretically and philosophically, with qi in TCM, as both are vibrant, dynamic, and evolving destabilizing and restabilizing forces that always break through fixed organisms and boundaries.

KEYWORDS: Hysteria; Gilles Deleuze; Traditional Chinese Medicine; Qi Theory; The Body Without Organs