In both Mol’s notion of an “ontology-as-practice” and according to the implications of the Chinese concept of shi, “the dividing line between human subjects and natural objects has been breached” (Mol 44). For an understanding of Chinese philosophy, Jullien insists that rather than an “object of science” we “perceive nature intuitively” as a kind of circulating energy, actualized according to topographic configurations (91). If breaching the subject/object and human/nature divide allows Mol to imagine a “being alongside”, we are led, through The Propensity of Things, away from the problematic of ontological assumptions towards the Chinese concern not with being but with processes of becoming, and efficacy, or the “capacity to function”. Both philosophies engage a kind of material relationality, and yet “potentiality”, in Chinese thought, suggests an inherent dynamism, impelled by internal tensions and which resists any fixed form.
A painting does not take shape as a finished product, but achieves life (shi? ) at the earlier stage of uncertainty that characterizes its creation; the body holds no position independent of the movements stemming from and leading into it. We must “conceive of the dynamic in terms of the static” (11), since “the only reality is change” (216).
Jullien is not sure that we are “prepared to take various “dispositions” as our point of departure or to think in terms of “propensity”” (125). Certainly, the collapse of the divide between theory and practice in Chinese thought demands a conception of reality in which our notions of action, agency and causality are destabilized. Contrary to what Jullien terms an “ontological hierarchization” inherent to Western thought, Chinese philosophy holds movement and change to be an inherent tendency of that disposition which impels it. The yin and yang are contained within each other. Thus, it excludes forms of external intervention (the sovereign, God, destiny); reality is not that which we act upon, but rather that which we “cooperate” with (264).
I am left wondering about how to understand shi. Of course, “it was precisely the ambivalence of the term” that attracted Jullien, and perhaps he is right that I am not prepared to think differently; to escape precisely the “conceptual formalization” that is implicitly rejected by Chinese thought. However, in all the domains in which it is articulated shi is depicted as something to be “achieved” – by the military general, artist, poet, historian etc. What is this act if not intentional? How to truly replace “human initiative” with the potentiality of dispositions if there remains something we must “learn to seize” (13)?
“Let us imagine a new “physics” and stop thinking of nature abstractly in terms of fundamental opposites” (91)
How can any static situation be simultaneously conceived in terms of historical movement? Jullien asks at the beginning of The Propensity of Things. Before giving any succinct answer (in fact the whole book can be considered a long answer), he immediately signals the question’s apparent incongruity—at least for us. Static is not supposed to be the contrary to dynamic? Aren’t contraries supposed to be mutually exclusive? Jullien’s answer is: not necessarily, not to everyone, not for Chinese.
The book dwells around the concept of shi, it traces its appearance in the fields of warfare, politics, arts, history and philosophy, and in doing so, it slowly reveals how the notion of the static being dynamic can make sense. As far as I understood, shi is a concept that depending on the context where is used, is generally concerned with the disposition of things, how they are arranged in time and space as to accomplish the most efficacious. Shi comprises both postures and movements and the efficacy that it alludes to refers to “exploiting the propensity emanating from that particular configuration of reality, to the maximum effect possible.”
Efficacy here, then, has nothing to do with our notion of productivity. We know is something else, and Jullien does a good job outlining for us the differences of Western and Chinese thought. It comes from within, rather from without; practice and theory are indistinct; transformation is inexhaustible; and the spontaneous overcomes that what is planned. These indeed are not easy statements to assimilate. When speaking about "the maximum effect possible" questions such as maximum for whom, or to what purpose, spring naturally from our anthropological-political (western trained) minds. Things making sense naturally goes against the grain of all we have learn so far, since not only anthropologists have been in the quest for meaning, but our entire scientific apparatus. It is counter intuitive from its very core.
But are the contrasts between Chinese and Western thought as sharp as they are philosophically portrayed? It is strange that Jullien recurs to the now old anthropological idea of rediscovering the "features of an entire culture"(19). Where is this ambition for totality coming from? Is it related to the very reflections on Chinese thought that stress how the reality of things only manifests itself in a totality? Or, is it part of our scientific baggage that looks for laws, regularity and structure?
[Some questions that arose before and during reading:
Is there an inherent dispositional or behavioral tendency of objects or beings? Is that what Jullien is examining? As for the title, is Jullien situating his writing within a particular theoretical tradition? The title "The Propensity of Things" echoes of Foucault's "The Order of Things." Is Jullien attempting a philosophical or epistemological exploration of a non-Western tradition of interpreting the universe, in the vein of Foucault's study of Western categorizations, or other related/similar studies of the mid-to-late 20th century, and early 21st? To what extent is "shi" an integral concept of Chinese epistemology, and to what extent is Jullien imbuing "shi" with significance otherwise not present in Chinese tradition? And would that actually damage the validity or strength of his contentions?
I have not yet decided how to answer these questions. ]
I understand propensity to imply a basic tendency of behavior (i.e. I have a propensity for creativity, or the bear has a propensity for aggression), and objects are often discussed as having a propensity with regard to their "dispositions" as Jullien describes, their perceived functions or uses. I understand efficacy as potency, effectiveness, the ability of people or things to accomplish or fulfill a task or purpose within the range of an intended consequence. Therefore, Jullien's conception(s) of "shi" imply a facilitatory function or usefulness. Essentially, "shi" is the junction of static and dynamic as a Westerner might conceive it, whereas--if I understand Jullien, correctly--a Chinese speaker would understnad "shi" as encompassing both, that "things" exist as both dynamic and static at the same time, without division or actual differentiation, an identity of multiplicity if we refer to Ann Marie Mol.
When related to literature, art, or thought, shi implies an interpretative relationship between the various images of the whole. This does not imply fragmentation such as a concept of dichotomy would imply, but rather the total involvement of any thing we can identify as a singular object within the necessary comprehension of the whole. (The painting is not complete without its entirety visible, otherwise its meaning is blurred.) In the sense of dynamic change, change becomes an integral part of the propensity of the thing itself, caught continuously within a system of interpretation, "oscillation through alternation" (p. 161) as Jullien writes.
I find Socrates a fascinating and admirable figure. Most of all, I admire him for his integrity: not only for his integrity in the face of death, during his trial for impiety, but for his epistemological integrity—famously, he claimed to know only that he knew nothing. Socrates is fascinating not just as a figure, however, nor just as a philosopher, but also as a construction: the Socrates in Plato’s early dialogues is different than the one in the later works, and both differ from Xenophon’s accounts. The question of historical veridicality is never far away when looking at any of the Pre-Platonic Greek philosophers, which is one reason why the whole tradition seems rather fascinating. Another reason the tradition is fascinating is how diverse it is: considering all at once Pythagoras, the cult-leader and number-worshipper who believed in the transmigration of souls; Heraclitus, who thought the universe was made of ever-changing fire and held paradoxical, cryptic views of the “logos” so central to Greek thought; and Empedocles, a poet and magician who claimed to be able to control the weather and raise the dead, what seems amazing about the development of so-called “rational” philosophy is not how unified it was but rather that it developed at all. When we expand our view, and consider later additions to the Greek tradition such as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Diogenes, Stoicism, Epicurus, and so on, alongside earlier poetic thinkers like Hesiod and Homer, things get very complicated—we need to start talking about Athenians, Egyptians, Thracians, Spartans, and Persians. We need to start talking about dates and details and specifics.
All of this is to help explain what I mean when I say that I don’t know what Francois Jullien means when he talks about “Greek thought” (see 216, etc), or even what he means when he uses (or his translator uses), rather extensively, the word “logic” (123, 131, 209, 233, et passim). This is only the tip of the rather dangerous iceberg which, in my opinion, nearly sinks Jullien’s book. This “iceberg” is “The West,” which shows up in The Propensity of Things as a monolithic, unitary bogeyman. By generalizing “The West” so broadly from thousands of years of history comprising hundreds of cultures and innumerable traditions of reasoning or thought, even if only “symbolically,” Jullien makes me wonder how capable he is of handling Chinese culture and the idea of “Shi.” Since I don’t know anything about China, I can’t tell if he is as reductive and crude in his treatment of Chinese culture as he is of “The West,” but I certainly hope not.
I say “nearly sinks,” because while in my view his general argumentative framework slips into a sea of vague Orientalism (Chinese Thought is not Western Thought; The Other has the Boon (complexity, ambiguity, sensitivity, etc.) that we lack), perhaps we can save something in this idea of shi, or propensity—something like an idea of holographic knowledge, an arrangement of patterns implicit in situations and praxes, something between logos and prognostication. This is an interesting thought and one well worth thinking—as many people “The West” have tried to do before.
I also had a problem with Jullien’s semi-comparative approach of “Western” vs. “Chinese” thought. I understand this as very tactical, matching his insistence on specificity, difference “to deepen comprehension” and push inquiry. But, what is the use of assuming our Western orientation or references as a given? I was also thinking a lot about the usefulness of certain terms like Mol’s “enact” and Jullien’s “disposition,” and the kinds of work that claiming or opening space like this does. In what ways do these words come from the work? Do they emanate from their subjects, a part of their propensity?
For me, Shi worked extremely in Jullien’s discussion of aesthetics, bringing the meaning of efficacy/propensity to life, through movement of the brush, undulating dragon tails movements through clouds across scale and as a way to connect various forms of tendencies of becoming through history, warfare, etc.
By chance I ended up in a Chinese garden on Saturday while lost in an unfamiliar city. I considered the shi of the miniature dragons on the temple rooftop. Did they expand beyond, through the potential of their disposition? I was infected by this very simple, but expansive consideration of the extension of my imagination through unfixed totality within the potential of disposition. His use of aesthetics, and concepts of rendering brings scale, potential, tendencies and extension to life. Pieces, parts, fragments in relation and interaction manifesting their own tendency to become animated, flowing from and through a tendency stemming from the situation makes a lot of sense through his interrelated, alternating themes…
Jullien’s instrumentalization of terms and excessive description in some ways undermines his theorization of shi, and the supposed naturalness of this concept. Perhaps this is purposeful, separating himself, aligning himself with his Western tradition? But, Jullien’s repetitions also match the ambivalence of the term shi, following what he follows as the natural alternations between banal and mystical, elusive and manifested animation. I think this book does a lot, pushing theory from “within,” and from “outside” allowing us to question what these tendencies are/mean, moving through relations and forces as contingent, specific, in movement.
I really liked Jullien’s method- which, in a general way highlights an episteme/ system of representations within Chinese thought; a current of preconception which is embedded ubiquitously at the level of the ‘world view’: meaning quite simply that this line of reasoning emerges and has resonances (for the Chinese) within all life experiences, situations; at all levels of action and performed by all actors (so long as they cunningly exploit the shi). We’ll call that a cultural attitude, a smooth crystallization of thought that drives epist. systematic functionality, or simply just real life. And this method seems perfectly suited to provide depth (e.g. multiple enactments or practices; tactical planning war, the tense brushstroke of the ideogram) and movement to this attitude (e.g. multiple points of application; calligraphy, the battlefield). Following then the discursive traditions of the word shi, situated across the fields of aesthetics, politics, and historical recognition, we see at each site the oscillation and deployment of shi as an adherence in a strict sense to affective organization on the one hand (manipulation can precipitate efficacy, but configuration still always inducing becoming), but also an allegiance to the ephemeral design of an event in a context (the dynamism inherent in the real world).
But really, the fairly explicit comparisons between Western and Eastern thought were for me the most entertaining. Centering around the ontological recognition of difference within each respective ‘world view’ (totality/ unity/ fluid becoming in the East vs. opposition/ contrast/ distinction in the West), Jullien speaks to a problem I, as an observer of ‘political phenomena’, frequently confront in my studies (perhaps even more so it seems to be symptomatic of a general problem found within most Western epistemological methodologies and inquiries). At some point or another, Jullien comments on the lack of a ‘cartesian polemic’ to unfold in the history Chinese philosophical thought- a disjunction between mind/ body, the real/ perceived- a fundamental dissymmetry between observer and subject. Instead, reality is absolute-and it always has been- absolutely dynamic. And here in lies the problem, let me try and enunciate:
(A). Becoming and Organizational Propensity Confers Meaning and Emergent Reality: To the chinese, organization inheres reality with substance- synthesis of multiple becomings, or whatever, that coalesce and anchor reality into one unified, perceptible world; in essence then, organization buffers meaning (framed in individuated contexts and on stratified levels of agency), and there are no higher organizational principles than fluidity and organization itself (like the contrast mentioned about Kantian thought a priori, and also no theology or cosmology either);
In contrast to
(B). Absolutes (like teleology) Structure Organization and Meaning in Advance: Western (political) epistemological systems which instead seek isolation, contrast, differentiation as its main tenets, fracturing the unity of ‘experience’ into discrete, autonomous units- leaving us with underlying, static operational principles that underpin the strategic appearance of the world. Therefore, it is the working out of concepts that engender organization, such that organization follows from established systems (bordering on inherent in the strictest cognitive sense) of representation that are already established (and here’s Kant’s a priori- causality, et al.)- and this is the Western system for the general recognition of alterity- static opposition of conceptual representations which divide the unity of a functioning world into isolated mechanistic operations. So then is the task of Political Science: fixed reductions.
I can't say I've really understood The Propensity of Things. Perhaps it's because despite insisting on the ways that Shi resists separation of the principle and the concrete, Jullien has managed to write almost exclusively in a language of principles. He explains what Shi, propensity, tendency, and all the rest are and how they operate, but its never entirely clear exactly what things he's talking about. I found echoes throughout of familiar ideas from 'western thought' - structural-functionalism, marxist crisis theory, actor-network theory, deconstruction - but Jullien glosses all of these and does a disservice to both Western and Chinese thought by not engaging seriously with either, preffering, as a whole (his discussion of Hegel aside) to counterpose the west and China in an orientalist manner in which so many French philosophers seem particularly adept. In attempting to show that the categories our western minds are likely to become mired in are not the only ones available, he makes a move akin to Margaret Mead's, showing another tradition and its philosophy. But he seems oblivious to the history of anthropology and ongoing debates across disciplines that are asking many of the same questions as he is, and answering them in ways that are not as alien to Chinese conceptions as he insists (again, ANT comes most easily to mind).
On a more positive note, I found a productive resonance in his discussion of strategy and history with our discussion of Obama, Helmreich, and alliances. Resistance, Jullien insists, is not only futile but exhausting. Rather than resist, Shi suggests we look to the arrangement of things, configuring alliances that allow for convenient tendencies to express themselves. Seeing reality as always in transition (becoming not being), the political switches register from that of resistance/revolution to patience, alliance, and becoming-together. The seeming passivity that inheres to this mode is, however, perhaos the hardest idea to wrap a western political consciousness around - at least this particular one.
"There are also, probably in every culture, in every civilization, real places - places that do exist and that are formed in the very founding of society - which are something like counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted. Places of this kind are outside of all places, even though it may be possible to indicate their location in reality. Because these places are absolutely different from all the sites that they reflect and speak about, I shall call them, by way of contrast to utopias, heterotopias." Michel Foucault, "Of Other Spaces" (1967)
"China," "Chinese tradition," and "Chinese thought" as construed by Jullien in "The Propensity of Things" share a lot of their qualities with Foucault's heterotopias. His China exists outside of all places even though it can be localized on a map. And ultimately, his is not a book about China, but about the "prejudices of European reason"*. Jullien in an interview readily acknowledges the heterotopic character of his "Orient." To talk about the West he is looking for radical alterity: Greece looks interesting, but proves "too familiar," and so do India and the Arab world. China it is. He calls his choice "anti-exotic and theoretical"*, and explicitly frames it as not anthropological. He reads and juxtaposes texts to produce a maximum effect of alterity; he does not seem to be interested in exploring any text that might bring "the West" and "China" closer. Sinology, not anthropology.
However, if our reading were to try follow the logic of shi and approach the argument as it presents itself rather than as an upfront problem to be addressed in terms of Western anthropological theory (insert charges of orientalism and "othering" here), "Propensity..." could offer a compelling articulation of a lot of concerns and desires of contemporary ethnography and, indeed, our class.
I found Jullien's book resonating with our conversations about a non-denunciatory mode for ethnography. (What if "reality was not regarded as a problem but presented itself from the beginning as a credible process.") It speaks back to our discussion of shallowness and thinness in "Body Multiple," as opposed to the conventional expectations of ethnography as deep and thick. (What if "[i]t did not need to be deciphered like a mystery but simply to be understood in its functioning.") Finally, I found myself trying to imagine once again a kind of writing attentive not to how people give meaning to meaningless things, but rather how things matter on their own terms. (What if "[t]here was no need to project a "meaning" onto the world or to satisfy the expectations of a subject/individual for its meaning stemmed in its entirety, without requiring any act of faith, from the propensity of things." (Quotes from "Propensity...": 264-5)
* "A Philosophical Use of China: An Interview with Francois Jullien". Thesis Eleven 57(113): 114.
In his brilliant and incredibly challenging book, Jullien attempts to explain shi as an underlying framework to Chinese thought and culture (as a western thinker) or as a force within the culture of and emanating from objects and processes (as an eastern thinker). Jullien is perhaps, pushing for an alternation of Western and Eastern thought, since, according to him, as opposites they are complimentary and contained with each other. It is not against Western thought since it uses western thought in self-efficacy of its own validity; after all Jullien is a Frenchman, the book is divided into chapters and subchapters, it is a relatively lengthy book, it asks for causation. But, its whole subject is to describe implications of shi, thereby enacting and supporting it.
In Chapter 9, Jullien discusses the view of history as alternation. Jullien writes, “Wang Fuzhi’s view is that this falsely comforting attitude toward history, which promotes a uniform view of it, rests on an artificial basis that should be denounced,” (190) because history, “neither follows a continuous line of progress nor turns in circles.” (191) Through well defined examples, Jullien goes beyond showing that history can be seen as something other than linear and evolutionary. Can and how can this sense of history, as a collection of events, be used effectively in western thought?
These questions come up as a response to the call to action embedded in the text. “Far from leading us to resignation, basing our behavior on the determinism for tendency should encourage resistance in us,” (204) since, “while “a tendency is always predetermined”, it also remains within human power to manage it skillfully.” (203) Here Jullien is acknowledging the de-emphasis on the individual to the system but that the individual should not be discouraged by this. With this in mind, in the notes, Jullien describes the ideogram of shi/yi as a hand holding something, with the radical of force. (267) Since causation matters to the western thinker, is this a key to defining shi, since it is a realization of shi? How does the understanding of shi implement itself in the western sphere – can it go beyond measuring the difference and to what end?
(Note: While I, too, originally cringed at the terms “eastern” and “western” I think it actually works here. If looking at the two spheres as functioning actors – i.e. the western sphere produced a painting called Ceci n'est pas une pipe versus the eastern ideogram which would never produce this because of its meaning, scale, etc. – there is reason to speak in broad terms (especially since he is explaining the insignificance of human individual agency). Of course, Jullien claims to use, “western in a symbolic sense” on page 124, although one could argue that there is no symbolic sense in what he is describing.)
Jullien chooses the word shi (勢) as an entry point into Chinese ways of thinking. He states from the beginning that shi has multiple meanings and uses, and it is precisely this ambiguity that compelled him to write this book. As the translator noted, Jullien’s attempt of conveying the concept of shi presents inevitable problems of translation. His explanations and examples of how the concept of shi works in war strategies, calligraphy, poems and paintings are difficult to comprehend for a reader without prior knowledge of Chinese characters (their uses in everyday talk and in writing). And for someone with this kind of knowledge, his work may be problematic as he generalizes “Chinese thought” based on texts from the 4th century and does not explore how the word is composed (of four different characters) or used with other characters to explain a situation.
However, if his project is framed within exploring how someone makes sense of an event through disposition and arrangement of things, it offers an approach that situates human experience in an entirely different way. While Mol focused on how things come into being through relations and presented a world where interactions make things, Jullien presents a world where forces shaped by dispositions and arrangements of things lead to specific events and courses of action (and efficacy). In the world he describes, the parameter of understanding and the focus of experience and action is different. For example, a painting of value embodies not only the skills of an artist, but also the ability to communicate and present the world and the energy of the thing being drawn. Within this frame of thinking, human experience and actions become part of the world which surrounds him/her. And the focus shifts from human’s perception of things to forces (energies) that work their ways through how things are arranged.
If we are to exercise this way of thinking, what are the ways in which this force can be identified? What precisely is this disposition that we are to consider? Is this a matter of different logic, rationality or method?
“Reality always presents itself as a particular situation that results from a particular disposition of circumstances that is, in turn, inclined to produce a particular effect: it is up to the general, and equally to the politician, the painter, and the writer, to avail himself of the shi...so as to exploit it to its maximum potentiality” (260).
François Jullien in his essay The Propensity of Things seeks to uncover the logistical workings of the Chinese term shi. The term, he explains in his introduction, will be made into an answer to the question: “How can we conceive of the dynamic in terms of the static, in terms of 'disposition'?” In Western thought, Jullien explains, the dynamic and the static are positioned as contradictory states which have often troubled philosophers. This is precisely the philosophical problem Marshall Sahlins addresses in this collected essays Islands of History: how to account for historical change amidst social structure. Or, how is it that a social system comes to change through time? For our purposes, perhaps: How to understand the agency of things (an imprecise term perhaps in both Western and Chinese thinking)?
Jullien provides detailed exegeses on the term shi within Chinese writings on military & political strategy, calligraphy & painting technique, poetry & literary style, and historical philosophy. Within each of these, Jullien follows Chinese thinkers who have ventured to explicate this efficacy of the disposition of things. Shi is this dynamic tendency-principle constantly in motion, without direction or finality which oscillating between two poles (yin & yang, heaven & earth). It is a conception which evades Aristotle's concepts of subject/substratum and mover; there is no causality as such.
Such a break from familiar and crucial Western concepts I find difficult to think in for extended periods of time. How to use The Propensity of Things?--if use is even an applicable engagement with shi. 1) For a discipline entwined in enlightenment rationality, how might a turn away from causality be orchestrated? Certainly our discipline has dealt with the underdeterminancy of history and subjectification for several decades now; how might Shi add to this conversation? 2) In several places, Jullien off-handedly remarks about how shi is driven by an internal necessity—brought up several times in the chapter about history. Given the discipline's current obsessions with boundary crossings, and interpenetration, how might we think to open up the dynamics of shi to a open system?
I read this text with particular interest, having majored in something as an undergraduate called "East Asian Languages and Cultures" and having spent much time in Japan over the years. Like others, I felt unease at Jullien's treatment of the Chinese and Chinese culture/thought as essentialized totalities. What helps me to appreciate his effort, however, is how he is trying to avoid falling into other pitfalls - that is, "naive assimilation" (which presupposes that ways of being can be made commensurable through interpretation and translation) and "equally simplistic comparativism" (which fails to question its own foundations, thereby reinstating analytic dichotomies). Rather than thinking of Jullien's text as a representation of a people and a way of thinking, perhaps it's most useful to read it as he intended, as a philosophical experiment in how to think newly: "My prime purpose has been the pleasure of following up an idea" (20). Might his attempt have been more easily stomachable if he had been explicit about this, then, so what we weren't tempted into thinking that he is giving us some "essence" of what it means to be Chinese? Or maybe I am wrong; maybe this is, in fact, what he is trying to do here. Honestly, I'm still not sure.
I was reminded again and again of Empire of Signs, in which Roland Barthes meditates on a Japan that he deliberately invents as a way to challenge his own modes of thinking. Barthes clearly states that he is "in no way claiming to represent or to analyze reality itself (these being the major gestures of Western discourse)" (3). Rather than "represent" or "analyze" realities of either "the Occident" or "the Orient," Barthes is manipulating Japan as an invented system through which he can push the boundaries of his critical imagination: "What can be addressed, in consideration of the Orient, are not other symbols, another metaphysics, another wisdom (though the latter might appear thoroughly desirable); it is the possibility of a difference, of a mutation, of a revolution in the propriety of symbolic systems" (3-4). I think this is similar to what Jullien is trying to get at in The Propensity of Things, too - turning away from an emphasis on telos and truth, boundedness and reductionism, by thinking with and through the diffused, encompassing, "inherent dynamism" of shi.
Of course, there remains something ethically problematic about this, too - aren't these scholars merely exploiting the Orient as a philosophical resource, as a place upon which critiques of the West can be projected and validated? As Mateusz helpfully pointed out, China is a Foucauldian heterotopia for Jullien, which he defends as a choice that is "anti-exotic and theoretical." Barthes, too, says that he is not approaching the Orient with a "loving gaze," as his own attitude toward the Orient is strategic and, as he puts it, "indifferent." There are still debates raging on whether he is orientalizing or not. But I'm not sure if that's the most productive way to frame the debate. Yes, the starting point for Barthes and for Jullien is to use the Orient as a philosophical tool, a place apart, an invention for deconstructing Western reason. But it seems this conscious distance collapses, at least somewhat, in the course of the analysis; to use an anthropological trope, it seems that the "native's way of thinking" (invented or not) becomes at once the object of study and the adopted logic and mode of analysis (of self and other). What does this matter? Is there some kind of "reality" being grasped, after all (though it's surely not one about the mythical Orient)? Might we use shi as a conceptual tool, without relying on something like "Chinese thought" as a conceptual tool?
What is this shi? My impression from others posts so far is that they found Julien guilty of not using enough scare quotes around ambiguous concepts; but he very explicitly says that what drives him is the very ambiguity, the points of confusion about what comes out of the various representations of things through the kernel of “shi”.
From what I could tell he is writing against a certain logic that delineates things and the relationships that exist between them; which he accredits to being encoded into Western thought through Greece literature. With that in mind, what is the relationship between the logic of the text and the logic of the concept of shi?
In a way, shi points us to a very abstract and non-tangible space where things have an order that impinges upon us. These things exist outside of humans, but not necessarily in matter. In our own thought I think we are very accustomed to grounding our understanding in materiality, things that have “matter”. With that what is the relationship between “matter” and “meaning” in this text? If as Jacob claims, there are “echoes throughout of familiar ideas from 'western thought' - structural-functionalism, marxist crisis theory, actor-network theory” then we should be able to address this question of how to handle matter and meaning in this text. At this point in my ruminations I gather that the author is not "oblivious to current debates in the discipline". Rather, he is drawing attention to the fact that people have different thoughts, and ways of thinking about things, and the relationships that exist between them. The Chinese have a “way of representing reality” (71) and its ends. And by following the trajectories of meaning implicit in this kernel of reason, shi, a story comes together, a people’s intellectual, political strategic artistic, and etc histories take shape and become related. “We must, then, pursue our theme, tracking it through every domain, from that of the manipulation of military strategy to the most disinterested of creative artistic processes.” (71)
In both Mol’s notion of an “ontology-as-practice” and according to the implications of the Chinese concept of shi, “the dividing line between human subjects and natural objects has been breached” (Mol 44). For an understanding of Chinese philosophy, Jullien insists that rather than an “object of science” we “perceive nature intuitively” as a kind of circulating energy, actualized according to topographic configurations (91). If breaching the subject/object and human/nature divide allows Mol to imagine a “being alongside”, we are led, through The Propensity of Things, away from the problematic of ontological assumptions towards the Chinese concern not with being but with processes of becoming, and efficacy, or the “capacity to function”. Both philosophies engage a kind of material relationality, and yet “potentiality”, in Chinese thought, suggests an inherent dynamism, impelled by internal tensions and which resists any fixed form.
ReplyDeleteA painting does not take shape as a finished product, but achieves life (shi? ) at the earlier stage of uncertainty that characterizes its creation; the body holds no position independent of the movements stemming from and leading into it. We must “conceive of the dynamic in terms of the static” (11), since “the only reality is change” (216).
Jullien is not sure that we are “prepared to take various “dispositions” as our point of departure or to think in terms of “propensity”” (125). Certainly, the collapse of the divide between theory and practice in Chinese thought demands a conception of reality in which our notions of action, agency and causality are destabilized. Contrary to what Jullien terms an “ontological hierarchization” inherent to Western thought, Chinese philosophy holds movement and change to be an inherent tendency of that disposition which impels it. The yin and yang are contained within each other. Thus, it excludes forms of external intervention (the sovereign, God, destiny); reality is not that which we act upon, but rather that which we “cooperate” with (264).
I am left wondering about how to understand shi. Of course, “it was precisely the ambivalence of the term” that attracted Jullien, and perhaps he is right that I am not prepared to think differently; to escape precisely the “conceptual formalization” that is implicitly rejected by Chinese thought. However, in all the domains in which it is articulated shi is depicted as something to be “achieved” – by the military general, artist, poet, historian etc. What is this act if not intentional? How to truly replace “human initiative” with the potentiality of dispositions if there remains something we must “learn to seize” (13)?
“Let us imagine a new “physics” and stop thinking of nature abstractly in terms of fundamental opposites” (91)
ReplyDeleteHow can any static situation be simultaneously conceived in terms of historical movement? Jullien asks at the beginning of The Propensity of Things. Before giving any succinct answer (in fact the whole book can be considered a long answer), he immediately signals the question’s apparent incongruity—at least for us. Static is not supposed to be the contrary to dynamic? Aren’t contraries supposed to be mutually exclusive? Jullien’s answer is: not necessarily, not to everyone, not for Chinese.
The book dwells around the concept of shi, it traces its appearance in the fields of warfare, politics, arts, history and philosophy, and in doing so, it slowly reveals how the notion of the static being dynamic can make sense. As far as I understood, shi is a concept that depending on the context where is used, is generally concerned with the disposition of things, how they are arranged in time and space as to accomplish the most efficacious. Shi comprises both postures and movements and the efficacy that it alludes to refers to “exploiting the propensity emanating from that particular configuration of reality, to the maximum effect possible.”
Efficacy here, then, has nothing to do with our notion of productivity. We know is something else, and Jullien does a good job outlining for us the differences of Western and Chinese thought. It comes from within, rather from without; practice and theory are indistinct; transformation is inexhaustible; and the spontaneous overcomes that what is planned. These indeed are not easy statements to assimilate. When speaking about "the maximum effect possible" questions such as maximum for whom, or to what purpose, spring naturally from our anthropological-political (western trained) minds. Things making sense naturally goes against the grain of all we have learn so far, since not only anthropologists have been in the quest for meaning, but our entire scientific apparatus. It is counter intuitive from its very core.
But are the contrasts between Chinese and Western thought as sharp as they are philosophically portrayed? It is strange that Jullien recurs to the now old anthropological idea of rediscovering the "features of an entire culture"(19). Where is this ambition for totality coming from? Is it related to the very reflections on Chinese thought that stress how the reality of things only manifests itself in a totality? Or, is it part of our scientific baggage that looks for laws, regularity and structure?
[Some questions that arose before and during reading:
ReplyDeleteIs there an inherent dispositional or behavioral tendency of objects or beings? Is that what Jullien is examining? As for the title, is Jullien situating his writing within a particular theoretical tradition? The title "The Propensity of Things" echoes of Foucault's "The Order of Things." Is Jullien attempting a philosophical or epistemological exploration of a non-Western tradition of interpreting the universe, in the vein of Foucault's study of Western categorizations, or other related/similar studies of the mid-to-late 20th century, and early 21st? To what extent is "shi" an integral concept of Chinese epistemology, and to what extent is Jullien imbuing "shi" with significance otherwise not present in Chinese tradition? And would that actually damage the validity or strength of his contentions?
I have not yet decided how to answer these questions. ]
I understand propensity to imply a basic tendency of behavior (i.e. I have a propensity for creativity, or the bear has a propensity for aggression), and objects are often discussed as having a propensity with regard to their "dispositions" as Jullien describes, their perceived functions or uses. I understand efficacy as potency, effectiveness, the ability of people or things to accomplish or fulfill a task or purpose within the range of an intended consequence. Therefore, Jullien's conception(s) of "shi" imply a facilitatory function or usefulness. Essentially, "shi" is the junction of static and dynamic as a Westerner might conceive it, whereas--if I understand Jullien, correctly--a Chinese speaker would understnad "shi" as encompassing both, that "things" exist as both dynamic and static at the same time, without division or actual differentiation, an identity of multiplicity if we refer to Ann Marie Mol.
When related to literature, art, or thought, shi implies an interpretative relationship between the various images of the whole. This does not imply fragmentation such as a concept of dichotomy would imply, but rather the total involvement of any thing we can identify as a singular object within the necessary comprehension of the whole. (The painting is not complete without its entirety visible, otherwise its meaning is blurred.) In the sense of dynamic change, change becomes an integral part of the propensity of the thing itself, caught continuously within a system of interpretation, "oscillation through alternation" (p. 161) as Jullien writes.
I find Socrates a fascinating and admirable figure. Most of all, I admire him for his integrity: not only for his integrity in the face of death, during his trial for impiety, but for his epistemological integrity—famously, he claimed to know only that he knew nothing. Socrates is fascinating not just as a figure, however, nor just as a philosopher, but also as a construction: the Socrates in Plato’s early dialogues is different than the one in the later works, and both differ from Xenophon’s accounts. The question of historical veridicality is never far away when looking at any of the Pre-Platonic Greek philosophers, which is one reason why the whole tradition seems rather fascinating. Another reason the tradition is fascinating is how diverse it is: considering all at once Pythagoras, the cult-leader and number-worshipper who believed in the transmigration of souls; Heraclitus, who thought the universe was made of ever-changing fire and held paradoxical, cryptic views of the “logos” so central to Greek thought; and Empedocles, a poet and magician who claimed to be able to control the weather and raise the dead, what seems amazing about the development of so-called “rational” philosophy is not how unified it was but rather that it developed at all. When we expand our view, and consider later additions to the Greek tradition such as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Diogenes, Stoicism, Epicurus, and so on, alongside earlier poetic thinkers like Hesiod and Homer, things get very complicated—we need to start talking about Athenians, Egyptians, Thracians, Spartans, and Persians. We need to start talking about dates and details and specifics.
ReplyDeleteAll of this is to help explain what I mean when I say that I don’t know what Francois Jullien means when he talks about “Greek thought” (see 216, etc), or even what he means when he uses (or his translator uses), rather extensively, the word “logic” (123, 131, 209, 233, et passim). This is only the tip of the rather dangerous iceberg which, in my opinion, nearly sinks Jullien’s book. This “iceberg” is “The West,” which shows up in The Propensity of Things as a monolithic, unitary bogeyman. By generalizing “The West” so broadly from thousands of years of history comprising hundreds of cultures and innumerable traditions of reasoning or thought, even if only “symbolically,” Jullien makes me wonder how capable he is of handling Chinese culture and the idea of “Shi.” Since I don’t know anything about China, I can’t tell if he is as reductive and crude in his treatment of Chinese culture as he is of “The West,” but I certainly hope not.
I say “nearly sinks,” because while in my view his general argumentative framework slips into a sea of vague Orientalism (Chinese Thought is not Western Thought; The Other has the Boon (complexity, ambiguity, sensitivity, etc.) that we lack), perhaps we can save something in this idea of shi, or propensity—something like an idea of holographic knowledge, an arrangement of patterns implicit in situations and praxes, something between logos and prognostication. This is an interesting thought and one well worth thinking—as many people “The West” have tried to do before.
Nina Mehta
ReplyDeleteThe Propensity of Things
I also had a problem with Jullien’s semi-comparative approach of “Western” vs. “Chinese” thought. I understand this as very tactical, matching his insistence on specificity, difference “to deepen comprehension” and push inquiry. But, what is the use of assuming our Western orientation or references as a given?
I was also thinking a lot about the usefulness of certain terms like Mol’s “enact” and Jullien’s “disposition,” and the kinds of work that claiming or opening space like this does. In what ways do these words come from the work? Do they emanate from their subjects, a part of their propensity?
For me, Shi worked extremely in Jullien’s discussion of aesthetics, bringing the meaning of efficacy/propensity to life, through movement of the brush, undulating dragon tails movements through clouds across scale and as a way to connect various forms of tendencies of becoming through history, warfare, etc.
By chance I ended up in a Chinese garden on Saturday while lost in an unfamiliar city. I considered the shi of the miniature dragons on the temple rooftop. Did they expand beyond, through the potential of their disposition? I was infected by this very simple, but expansive consideration of the extension of my imagination through unfixed totality within the potential of disposition. His use of aesthetics, and concepts of rendering brings scale, potential, tendencies and extension to life.
Pieces, parts, fragments in relation and interaction manifesting their own tendency to become animated, flowing from and through a tendency stemming from the situation makes a lot of sense through his interrelated, alternating themes…
Jullien’s instrumentalization of terms and excessive description in some ways undermines his theorization of shi, and the supposed naturalness of this concept. Perhaps this is purposeful, separating himself, aligning himself with his Western tradition? But, Jullien’s repetitions also match the ambivalence of the term shi, following what he follows as the natural alternations between banal and mystical, elusive and manifested animation. I think this book does a lot, pushing theory from “within,” and from “outside” allowing us to question what these tendencies are/mean, moving through relations and forces as contingent, specific, in movement.
The Propensity of Things: Points of Interest
ReplyDeleteI really liked Jullien’s method- which, in a general way highlights an episteme/ system of representations within Chinese thought; a current of preconception which is embedded ubiquitously at the level of the ‘world view’: meaning quite simply that this line of reasoning emerges and has resonances (for the Chinese) within all life experiences, situations; at all levels of action and performed by all actors (so long as they cunningly exploit the shi). We’ll call that a cultural attitude, a smooth crystallization of thought that drives epist. systematic functionality, or simply just real life. And this method seems perfectly suited to provide depth (e.g. multiple enactments or practices; tactical planning war, the tense brushstroke of the ideogram) and movement to this attitude (e.g. multiple points of application; calligraphy, the battlefield). Following then the discursive traditions of the word shi, situated across the fields of aesthetics, politics, and historical recognition, we see at each site the oscillation and deployment of shi as an adherence in a strict sense to affective organization on the one hand (manipulation can precipitate efficacy, but configuration still always inducing becoming), but also an allegiance to the ephemeral design of an event in a context (the dynamism inherent in the real world).
But really, the fairly explicit comparisons between Western and Eastern thought were for me the most entertaining. Centering around the ontological recognition of difference within each respective ‘world view’ (totality/ unity/ fluid becoming in the East vs. opposition/ contrast/ distinction in the West), Jullien speaks to a problem I, as an observer of ‘political phenomena’, frequently confront in my studies (perhaps even more so it seems to be symptomatic of a general problem found within most Western epistemological methodologies and inquiries). At some point or another, Jullien comments on the lack of a ‘cartesian polemic’ to unfold in the history Chinese philosophical thought- a disjunction between mind/ body, the real/ perceived- a fundamental dissymmetry between observer and subject. Instead, reality is absolute-and it always has been- absolutely dynamic. And here in lies the problem, let me try and enunciate:
(A). Becoming and Organizational Propensity Confers Meaning and Emergent Reality: To the chinese, organization inheres reality with substance- synthesis of multiple becomings, or whatever, that coalesce and anchor reality into one unified, perceptible world; in essence then, organization buffers meaning (framed in individuated contexts and on stratified levels of agency), and there are no higher organizational principles than fluidity and organization itself (like the contrast mentioned about Kantian thought a priori, and also no theology or cosmology either);
In contrast to
(B). Absolutes (like teleology) Structure Organization and Meaning in Advance: Western (political) epistemological systems which instead seek isolation, contrast, differentiation as its main tenets, fracturing the unity of ‘experience’ into discrete, autonomous units- leaving us with underlying, static operational principles that underpin the strategic appearance of the world. Therefore, it is the working out of concepts that engender organization, such that organization follows from established systems (bordering on inherent in the strictest cognitive sense) of representation that are already established (and here’s Kant’s a priori- causality, et al.)- and this is the Western system for the general recognition of alterity- static opposition of conceptual representations which divide the unity of a functioning world into isolated mechanistic operations. So then is the task of Political Science: fixed reductions.
I can't say I've really understood The Propensity of Things. Perhaps it's because despite insisting on the ways that Shi resists separation of the principle and the concrete, Jullien has managed to write almost exclusively in a language of principles. He explains what Shi, propensity, tendency, and all the rest are and how they operate, but its never entirely clear exactly what things he's talking about. I found echoes throughout of familiar ideas from 'western thought' - structural-functionalism, marxist crisis theory, actor-network theory, deconstruction - but Jullien glosses all of these and does a disservice to both Western and Chinese thought by not engaging seriously with either, preffering, as a whole (his discussion of Hegel aside) to counterpose the west and China in an orientalist manner in which so many French philosophers seem particularly adept. In attempting to show that the categories our western minds are likely to become mired in are not the only ones available, he makes a move akin to Margaret Mead's, showing another tradition and its philosophy. But he seems oblivious to the history of anthropology and ongoing debates across disciplines that are asking many of the same questions as he is, and answering them in ways that are not as alien to Chinese conceptions as he insists (again, ANT comes most easily to mind).
ReplyDeleteOn a more positive note, I found a productive resonance in his discussion of strategy and history with our discussion of Obama, Helmreich, and alliances. Resistance, Jullien insists, is not only futile but exhausting. Rather than resist, Shi suggests we look to the arrangement of things, configuring alliances that allow for convenient tendencies to express themselves. Seeing reality as always in transition (becoming not being), the political switches register from that of resistance/revolution to patience, alliance, and becoming-together. The seeming passivity that inheres to this mode is, however, perhaos the hardest idea to wrap a western political consciousness around - at least this particular one.
An ethnographic use of heterotopy?*
ReplyDelete"There are also, probably in every culture, in every civilization, real places - places that do exist and that are formed in the very founding of society - which are something like counter-sites, a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted. Places of this kind are outside of all places, even though it may be possible to indicate their location in reality. Because these places are absolutely different from all the sites that they reflect and speak about, I shall call them, by way of contrast to utopias, heterotopias." Michel Foucault, "Of Other Spaces" (1967)
"China," "Chinese tradition," and "Chinese thought" as construed by Jullien in "The Propensity of Things" share a lot of their qualities with Foucault's heterotopias. His China exists outside of all places even though it can be localized on a map. And ultimately, his is not a book about China, but about the "prejudices of European reason"*. Jullien in an interview readily acknowledges the heterotopic character of his "Orient." To talk about the West he is looking for radical alterity: Greece looks interesting, but proves "too familiar," and so do India and the Arab world. China it is. He calls his choice "anti-exotic and theoretical"*, and explicitly frames it as not anthropological. He reads and juxtaposes texts to produce a maximum effect of alterity; he does not seem to be interested in exploring any text that might bring "the West" and "China" closer. Sinology, not anthropology.
However, if our reading were to try follow the logic of shi and approach the argument as it presents itself rather than as an upfront problem to be addressed in terms of Western anthropological theory (insert charges of orientalism and "othering" here), "Propensity..." could offer a compelling articulation of a lot of concerns and desires of contemporary ethnography and, indeed, our class.
I found Jullien's book resonating with our conversations about a non-denunciatory mode for ethnography. (What if "reality was not regarded as a problem but presented itself from the beginning as a credible process.") It speaks back to our discussion of shallowness and thinness in "Body Multiple," as opposed to the conventional expectations of ethnography as deep and thick. (What if "[i]t did not need to be deciphered like a mystery but simply to be understood in its functioning.") Finally, I found myself trying to imagine once again a kind of writing attentive not to how people give meaning to meaningless things, but rather how things matter on their own terms. (What if "[t]here was no need to project a "meaning" onto the world or to satisfy the expectations of a subject/individual for its meaning stemmed in its entirety, without requiring any act of faith, from the propensity of things." (Quotes from "Propensity...": 264-5)
* "A Philosophical Use of China: An Interview with Francois Jullien". Thesis Eleven 57(113): 114.
In his brilliant and incredibly challenging book, Jullien attempts to explain shi as an underlying framework to Chinese thought and culture (as a western thinker) or as a force within the culture of and emanating from objects and processes (as an eastern thinker). Jullien is perhaps, pushing for an alternation of Western and Eastern thought, since, according to him, as opposites they are complimentary and contained with each other. It is not against Western thought since it uses western thought in self-efficacy of its own validity; after all Jullien is a Frenchman, the book is divided into chapters and subchapters, it is a relatively lengthy book, it asks for causation. But, its whole subject is to describe implications of shi, thereby enacting and supporting it.
ReplyDeleteIn Chapter 9, Jullien discusses the view of history as alternation. Jullien writes, “Wang Fuzhi’s view is that this falsely comforting attitude toward history, which promotes a uniform view of it, rests on an artificial basis that should be denounced,” (190) because history, “neither follows a continuous line of progress nor turns in circles.” (191) Through well defined examples, Jullien goes beyond showing that history can be seen as something other than linear and evolutionary. Can and how can this sense of history, as a collection of events, be used effectively in western thought?
These questions come up as a response to the call to action embedded in the text. “Far from leading us to resignation, basing our behavior on the determinism for tendency should encourage resistance in us,” (204) since, “while “a tendency is always predetermined”, it also remains within human power to manage it skillfully.” (203) Here Jullien is acknowledging the de-emphasis on the individual to the system but that the individual should not be discouraged by this. With this in mind, in the notes, Jullien describes the ideogram of shi/yi as a hand holding something, with the radical of force. (267) Since causation matters to the western thinker, is this a key to defining shi, since it is a realization of shi? How does the understanding of shi implement itself in the western sphere – can it go beyond measuring the difference and to what end?
(Note: While I, too, originally cringed at the terms “eastern” and “western” I think it actually works here. If looking at the two spheres as functioning actors – i.e. the western sphere produced a painting called Ceci n'est pas une pipe versus the eastern ideogram which would never produce this because of its meaning, scale, etc. – there is reason to speak in broad terms (especially since he is explaining the insignificance of human individual agency). Of course, Jullien claims to use, “western in a symbolic sense” on page 124, although one could argue that there is no symbolic sense in what he is describing.)
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ReplyDeleteThe Propensity of things
ReplyDeleteFrancois Jullien
Jullien chooses the word shi (勢) as an entry point into Chinese ways of thinking. He states from the beginning that shi has multiple meanings and uses, and it is precisely this ambiguity that compelled him to write this book. As the translator noted, Jullien’s attempt of conveying the concept of shi presents inevitable problems of translation. His explanations and examples of how the concept of shi works in war strategies, calligraphy, poems and paintings are difficult to comprehend for a reader without prior knowledge of Chinese characters (their uses in everyday talk and in writing). And for someone with this kind of knowledge, his work may be problematic as he generalizes “Chinese thought” based on texts from the 4th century and does not explore how the word is composed (of four different characters) or used with other characters to explain a situation.
However, if his project is framed within exploring how someone makes sense of an event through disposition and arrangement of things, it offers an approach that situates human experience in an entirely different way. While Mol focused on how things come into being through relations and presented a world where interactions make things, Jullien presents a world where forces shaped by dispositions and arrangements of things lead to specific events and courses of action (and efficacy). In the world he describes, the parameter of understanding and the focus of experience and action is different. For example, a painting of value embodies not only the skills of an artist, but also the ability to communicate and present the world and the energy of the thing being drawn. Within this frame of thinking, human experience and actions become part of the world which surrounds him/her. And the focus shifts from human’s perception of things to forces (energies) that work their ways through how things are arranged.
If we are to exercise this way of thinking, what are the ways in which this force can be identified? What precisely is this disposition that we are to consider? Is this a matter of different logic, rationality or method?
“Reality always presents itself as a particular situation that results from a particular disposition of circumstances that is, in turn, inclined to produce a particular effect: it is up to the general, and equally to the politician, the painter, and the writer, to avail himself of the shi...so as to exploit it to its maximum potentiality” (260).
ReplyDeleteFrançois Jullien in his essay The Propensity of Things seeks to uncover the logistical workings of the Chinese term shi. The term, he explains in his introduction, will be made into an answer to the question: “How can we conceive of the dynamic in terms of the static, in terms of 'disposition'?” In Western thought, Jullien explains, the dynamic and the static are positioned as contradictory states which have often troubled philosophers. This is precisely the philosophical problem Marshall Sahlins addresses in this collected essays Islands of History: how to account for historical change amidst social structure. Or, how is it that a social system comes to change through time? For our purposes, perhaps: How to understand the agency of things (an imprecise term perhaps in both Western and Chinese thinking)?
Jullien provides detailed exegeses on the term shi within Chinese writings on military & political strategy, calligraphy & painting technique, poetry & literary style, and historical philosophy. Within each of these, Jullien follows Chinese thinkers who have ventured to explicate this efficacy of the disposition of things. Shi is this dynamic tendency-principle constantly in motion, without direction or finality which oscillating between two poles (yin & yang, heaven & earth). It is a conception which evades Aristotle's concepts of subject/substratum and mover; there is no causality as such.
Such a break from familiar and crucial Western concepts I find difficult to think in for extended periods of time. How to use The Propensity of Things?--if use is even an applicable engagement with shi. 1) For a discipline entwined in enlightenment rationality, how might a turn away from causality be orchestrated? Certainly our discipline has dealt with the underdeterminancy of history and subjectification for several decades now; how might Shi add to this conversation? 2) In several places, Jullien off-handedly remarks about how shi is driven by an internal necessity—brought up several times in the chapter about history. Given the discipline's current obsessions with boundary crossings, and interpenetration, how might we think to open up the dynamics of shi to a open system?
I read this text with particular interest, having majored in something as an undergraduate called "East Asian Languages and Cultures" and having spent much time in Japan over the years. Like others, I felt unease at Jullien's treatment of the Chinese and Chinese culture/thought as essentialized totalities. What helps me to appreciate his effort, however, is how he is trying to avoid falling into other pitfalls - that is, "naive assimilation" (which presupposes that ways of being can be made commensurable through interpretation and translation) and "equally simplistic comparativism" (which fails to question its own foundations, thereby reinstating analytic dichotomies). Rather than thinking of Jullien's text as a representation of a people and a way of thinking, perhaps it's most useful to read it as he intended, as a philosophical experiment in how to think newly: "My prime purpose has been the pleasure of following up an idea" (20). Might his attempt have been more easily stomachable if he had been explicit about this, then, so what we weren't tempted into thinking that he is giving us some "essence" of what it means to be Chinese? Or maybe I am wrong; maybe this is, in fact, what he is trying to do here. Honestly, I'm still not sure.
ReplyDeleteI was reminded again and again of Empire of Signs, in which Roland Barthes meditates on a Japan that he deliberately invents as a way to challenge his own modes of thinking. Barthes clearly states that he is "in no way claiming to represent or to analyze reality itself (these being the major gestures of Western discourse)" (3). Rather than "represent" or "analyze" realities of either "the Occident" or "the Orient," Barthes is manipulating Japan as an invented system through which he can push the boundaries of his critical imagination: "What can be addressed, in consideration of the Orient, are not other symbols, another metaphysics, another wisdom (though the latter might appear thoroughly desirable); it is the possibility of a difference, of a mutation, of a revolution in the propriety of symbolic systems" (3-4). I think this is similar to what Jullien is trying to get at in The Propensity of Things, too - turning away from an emphasis on telos and truth, boundedness and reductionism, by thinking with and through the diffused, encompassing, "inherent dynamism" of shi.
Of course, there remains something ethically problematic about this, too - aren't these scholars merely exploiting the Orient as a philosophical resource, as a place upon which critiques of the West can be projected and validated? As Mateusz helpfully pointed out, China is a Foucauldian heterotopia for Jullien, which he defends as a choice that is "anti-exotic and theoretical." Barthes, too, says that he is not approaching the Orient with a "loving gaze," as his own attitude toward the Orient is strategic and, as he puts it, "indifferent." There are still debates raging on whether he is orientalizing or not. But I'm not sure if that's the most productive way to frame the debate. Yes, the starting point for Barthes and for Jullien is to use the Orient as a philosophical tool, a place apart, an invention for deconstructing Western reason. But it seems this conscious distance collapses, at least somewhat, in the course of the analysis; to use an anthropological trope, it seems that the "native's way of thinking" (invented or not) becomes at once the object of study and the adopted logic and mode of analysis (of self and other). What does this matter? Is there some kind of "reality" being grasped, after all (though it's surely not one about the mythical Orient)? Might we use shi as a conceptual tool, without relying on something like "Chinese thought" as a conceptual tool?
What is this shi? My impression from others posts so far is that they found Julien guilty of not using enough scare quotes around ambiguous concepts; but he very explicitly says that what drives him is the very ambiguity, the points of confusion about what comes out of the various representations of things through the kernel of “shi”.
ReplyDeleteFrom what I could tell he is writing against a certain logic that delineates things and the relationships that exist between them; which he accredits to being encoded into Western thought through Greece literature. With that in mind, what is the relationship between the logic of the text and the logic of the concept of shi?
In a way, shi points us to a very abstract and non-tangible space where things have an order that impinges upon us. These things exist outside of humans, but not necessarily in matter. In our own thought I think we are very accustomed to grounding our understanding in materiality, things that have “matter”. With that what is the relationship between “matter” and “meaning” in this text? If as Jacob claims, there are “echoes throughout of familiar ideas from 'western thought' - structural-functionalism, marxist crisis theory, actor-network theory” then we should be able to address this question of how to handle matter and meaning in this text. At this point in my ruminations I gather that the author is not "oblivious to current debates in the discipline". Rather, he is drawing attention to the fact that people have different thoughts, and ways of thinking about things, and the relationships that exist between them. The Chinese have a “way of representing reality” (71) and its ends. And by following the trajectories of meaning implicit in this kernel of reason, shi, a story comes together, a people’s intellectual, political strategic artistic, and etc histories take shape and become related. “We must, then, pursue our theme, tracking it through every domain, from that of the manipulation of military strategy to the most disinterested of creative artistic processes.” (71)