Organizer: Wai-yee Li, University of Pennsylvania
Chair: Anthony C. Yü, University of Chicago
Discussant: Chad Hansen, University of Hong Kong
This panel proposes to examine how and why language is related to power in early China. Power is defined here as relations of control, manipulation and domination. While all four papers focus on specific texts, ranging from canonical works such as the Tso chuan and the Shih chi to legal documents, almanac texts, and writings concerned with filial piety, the mode of analysis in all cases is both internal and contextual. In other words, these papers examine how words generate meaning and construct reality as well as the socio-historical conditions of their production and efficacy. A common concern is legitimacy and legitimation: how language structures, and is structured by, political authority. A concomitant issue is historical interpretation, because language is realized as an instrument of action and power through the understanding and representation of the past. Robin Yates's paper shows how the Qin legal-ritual discourse orders social, political, and cosmic reality, how it defines, and is in turn defined by, the relationship between the ruler and the ruled. Wai-yee Li discusses how the rhetoric of historical interpretation in the Tso chuanis related to a world of tensions and values in flux, as realized in changing historical situations and conceptions of language. Paula Varsano examines Sima Qian's dual vision of the legitimate function of written language and his personal role in the use and transmission of that language. Deborah Porter explores the language used to represent ideals of filial piety in early Chinese texts and its relationship to a crisis of political legitimacy.
Rhetoric and Historical Interpretation in the Tso Chuan
Wai-yee Li, University of Pennsylvania
This paper tries to define different attitudes toward language and rhetoric in the Tso Chuan and thereby to show how levels of this sedimented text relate to each other and to changing historical situations. The concern with definitions and the polysemy of keyterms (such as Li [rites]) in the Tso Chuan indicate a world of tensions and values in flux. Rhetoric, here broadly defined as linguistic performance and manipulation, especially in connection with historical interpretation, thrives on such tensions. The idea of "proper language" or "felicitous language" (shun-tz'u) and performance of equivocation where linguistic manipulation of truth is evident (e.g., set pieces of formal rhetoric violating "facts" presented in other parts of the text; passages of "indirect remonstrance" [chüeh- chien] of a ruler) define two poles in the conception of rhetoric: as legitimate and effective display of eloquence and erudition when stable reference is still possible, and as artful persuasion in a context of unstable reference wherein meaning is at risk. On another level, the rhetoric of historical judgment and interpretation is most tangible in the comments of "the person of superior understanding" (chün-tzu), the shaman-diviner, the historian, Confucius, and contemporary statesmen, and is in turn connected to the presumed exegetical imperative of the Tso Chuan. The underlying issue here is the idea of rhetoric as a response to historical events, the implied sense of disquiet and attempted control: does language impose order on history or/and does paradoxical, equivocal, extravagant language imitate the disorder of history?
The Exercise of Discourse: Qin Popular Culture and the Qin State
Robin Yates, McGill University
Using recent developments in comparative cultural theory and social history, the present paper will examine the problem of integrating the study of political and legal institutions of the Qin state with the study of Qin popular culture, particularly in the field of religious practice and belief, through an analysis of the language of the legal and almanac texts which reveal what might be called the legal-ritual discourse, or the discourse of manipulation (to use Jean Levi's term) of the Qin aimed at the governance of both the human and the supra-human world.
The almanac texts, the Yin-yang calendars and other texts from the Yinqueshan, together with the Shuihudi legal documents, provide unique insights into the lives of the common people. It is also likely that popular belief and practice was one of the main vehicles which the Qin state manipulated in order to generate consensus among the populace in support of the unification of China. At the same time, ordinary people manipulated popular cultural practice to resist demands of the state.
This paper will argue that reactions to the imperial project, mediated through social practice and belief, informed the legal-ritual discourse. This discourse shaped conceptions of time, space, and appropriate action, and was equally important for the creation of the new social, economic, and political order of the early empire. As such, this paper will attempt to offer a new theoretical perspective for the study of early Chinese imperial state and society.
Legitimation and the Writings of Sima Qian
Paula Varsano, University of Montreal
In the ongoing effort to define, once and for all, the exact nature of Sima Qian's contribution to Chinese letters, scholars both Chinese and Western have alternately proclaimed him the father of history and the father of fiction. While perhaps useful in initiating discussion within the field of genre theory in classical Chinese literature, such claims tend to distract attention away from what we perceive as the essence of his influence on subsequent narrative: his dual vision of the legitimate function of written language and his own personal role in the use and transmission of that language.
Sima Qian does not set forth a comprehensive theory of language or writing, but promising clues are to be gleaned from his work. Our analysis will focus on the following issues. First, the rhetoric of legitimation employed by Sima Qian, and the resulting implicit formulation of what I shall call the "writing reader." Second, Sima Qian's transformation of the earlier Confucian notion of kongyan, or "empty words," into kongwen , or "transparent text," as a means of defining a written language that coheres, not only with the parameters of Daoist and Confucian linguistic and literary thought, but also with Sima Qian's perception of himself as "writing reader." Finally, the way in which this concern for legitimation, as expressed in both the writing reader and kongwen, ultimately translates into the particular narrative style associated with the Shiji , a style that is to influence so much of subsequent Chinese narrative.
Incorporating the Filial: Language, Politics, and the Genesis of an Institution
Deborah Porter, University of Utah
I propose to examine the language used to represent ideals of filial piety in early Chinese texts. My paper will use recent theoretical developments in psychoanalysis to explain the establishment and development of social institutions (such as filial piety) and discursive practices (such as the representation of filial piety) in relation to unassimilated trauma.
In my paper I will explore the ways in which the language used to represent filial piety conceals or encodes within it references to a political trauma involving transgression of political standards of legitimacy. More specifically, the paradox underlying the sanctioning of cannibalism as the ultimate manifestation of filial piety will be examined as a discursive strategy used to conceal or disguise one specific drama of political legitimacy-which occurred in 872 B.C.-behind representations of filial behavior.
I will suggest that this specific form of representation is one that results when the conversion of trauma into language is obstructed. The inability to "digest" the ramifications of a particular political event leads to the articulation of trauma through the institutionalization of a specific form of communion with family elders. The literal ingestion of the body-cannibalism-functions as a figure or metaphor for the political transgression it is meant to disguise. It is also the symbolic means of effecting normal psychic assimilation. This reading suggests that we view the Chinese institutionalization of filial piety as a practice deriving from the need to refigure the memory of its source of production.