Paper short abstract:

This paper explores Chinese medicine in the United States whereby much medicine is informed by a Western interpretation of how bodies are seen and treated in China. With the support of State power, these interpretations would serve as the template for the education and practice within the United States.

Paper long abstract:

Derived from the European projection of Chinese artistic motifs, the term "Chinoiserie" exemplifies an aesthetic of interpretation and imitation. In the United States, the transmission and practice of Chinese medicine consists, similarly, of Western gaze of Chinese medicine bodies, which is performed through the processes of interpretation and imitation. Yet, these processes also include the agency of biopower.

This paper examines the encounter with Chinese Medicine in the United States, which has often hidden behind tropes of its exoticism and alleged 2,000-year-old legacy. It interrogates the history of Chinese medicine in the United States, which was once a practice of the Chinese diaspora, but through the acclaim and legal regulation of acupuncture, transitioned to a mostly white-dominated medical practices constructed reminiscent to the imagination of Chinoiserie. Here, imagination becomes reality through the process of an Orientalised Biopower whereby the medical profession literally labels itself "Oriental" but also garners support from State power to view and treat bodies.

Informed by a multi-sited cross-country ethnography in the United States, much of the information in this paper was derived from interviews of key figures as well as observation of schools within the profession. The paper draws from postcolonial studies; however, instead of Edward Said's Orientalism, which relates more to Europe, the focus concentrates around the concept of American Orientalism.