Animating the Inanimate: Automaton-clock and Cross-Cultural Exchange at the Qing Court
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Abstract
This paper examines how automaton-clocks at the Qing court were experienced and interpreted under the Qianlong Emperor. Focusing on an imported writing automaton-clock and domestically produced automaton-clocks from the imperial workshops and Guangzhou, it argues that these objects were not merely technological curiosities but affectively and ritually charged instruments through which imperial time, vitality, and authority were enacted. Their liveliness depended on a productive paradox: they appeared self-moving yet required controlled activation. Read through embodied writing, court spectacle, and theatrical display, automaton-clocks emerge as staged forms of illusion through which sovereignty was made visible and repeatedly renewed.