Corpse Brides: Yinhun and the Macabre Agency of Cadavers in Contemporary Chinese Ghost Marriages

Abstract

Recently, Chinese newspapers have captured the attention of their readers with stories of criminals pillaging graves and murdering people to obtain corpses to sell for use in “ghost marriages” (yinhun, 阴婚). One sensationalistic report even claims that “150,000 yuan (US$22,000) won’t even get you bones”. When the state casts yinhun as a “culturally backward” superstition incongruent with national visions of modernity, how are we to understand the resurgence of this practice? By tracing the history of ghost marriages, we argue that yinhun corpses are simultaneously dead and alive. Adapting Gell’s theory of the agency of art, we maintain that yinhun corpses may be traded as lifeless commodities, but they also possess powerful living agency that critically undergirds the social efficacy of the ghost-marriage ritual. Indeed, these cadavers perform a sort of macabre affective labour that soothes the anxieties of the living. As such, this article deepens our understanding of what we mean by “commodity”.