Collecting as Cultural Technique: Materialistic Interventions Into History in 20th Century China The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Chen, Guangchen. 2017. Collecting as Cultural Technique: Materialistic Interventions Into History in 20th Century China. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:41141785 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Collecting as Cultural Technique: Materialistic Interventions into History in 20th Century China A dissertation presented by Guangchen Chen to The Department of Comparative Literature in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of Comparative Literature Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts May 2017 © 2017 Guangchen Chen All rights reserved. Dissertation Advisor: Professors David Damrosch and David Wang Guangchen Chen Collecting as Cultural Technique: Materialistic Interventions into History in 20th Century China Abstract This dissertation explores the interplay between the collecting of ancient artifacts and intellectual innovations in twentieth century China. It argues that the practice of collecting is an epistemological attempt or a “cultural technique,” as formulated by the German media theorist Bernhard Siegert, to grasp the world in its myriad materiality and historicity. Through experiments on novel ways to reconfigure objects and study them as media on which intangible experiences are recorded, collectors cling to the authenticity of past events, preserve memory through ownership, and forge an intimate relationship with these objects. These aspects are illustrated by the strikingly close symbiosis in 20th-century China between intellectual innovations and collecting activities. It was a period when political turmoil led to mass dispersal of collections, which in turn stimulated the flourishing of (re)collecting. I examine four cases of prominent intellectuals creatively engaging in collecting 1) oracle bones, 2) ancient inscriptions, 3) handicrafts, and 4) ink paintings. These endeavors fundamentally reshaped archeology, literature, the history of art and design, and aesthetics in China. Therefore, I argue that these collectors’ materialist interventions into history played a crucial but hitherto unrecognized role in creating a new cosmopolitan culture. ! """! Table of Contents Introduction 1 1. Collecting and Knowing 1.1. The Relationship between Objects within a Collection 1.2. The Relationship between the Collection and the World 1.3. The Relationship between the Collector and the Collectible 2. Twentieth Century China: a Case Study 2.1. From the Beginning to the Nineteenth Century 2.2. The Twentieth Century: the Odyssey of the Imperial Collections 2.3. Four Collectors, Four Approaches I. Luo Zhenyu and the Oracle Bones: How Chinese Antiquarianism became Antiquated 43 Prologue: An Epoch of Archeological Discoveries? 1. Contesting the Oracle Bones: Script versus Object 2. A Competition between Two Modes of Thinking 2.1. The Luo-Wang Perspective 2.2. The Challenge of Modern Archeology 2.3. The Academia Sinica Perspective 3. The Collector versus the Archeologist 4. Politicizing Antiquarianism II. The Infinite Collection and the Mortal Collector: Lu Xun, Flea Market Revolutionary 104 1. Lu Xun, Collector and Scrivener 2. The Politics of Obsession 3. Ministry of Education, Liu Li Chang, and Anti-Collection 4. Lu Xun’s Textual Scholarship 4.1. Recovering the Escaped: Catalogue as the Index of Desire 4.2. Restoring the Mutilated: Urtext versus Ausgabe letzter Hand 4.3. Transcribing the Obscure: Dissolution of Writing as a Symbolic System 4.4. Invocating the Dead: Releasing the Voice from Textual Imprisonment ! "#! III. Huang Binhong: Authenticity, Connoisseurship and Cosmopolitanism 158 1. A Multifaceted Life 2. Collector and Connoisseur 2.1. Ancients Seals, Script Reform, and the Materiality of Painting 2.2. Transactions of Artworks and Thoughts on the Shanghai Cultural Market 3. Huang Binhong and Fu Lei: from Collecting to Cultural Cosmopolitanism 3.1. An Unexpected Affinity 3.2. Huang’s Late Style: A Chinese Contribution to Global Modernisms 4. Bequeathing the Past: How a Private Collection became a National Legacy IV. Shen Congwen: Aestheticizing the Handicraft 220 1. The Death of a Writer, the Birth of a Collector 1.1. An Exhibition on the Meridian Gate 1.2. The Dilemma of Apolitical Literature: A Difficult Transition 1.3. Oscillating between the Abstract and the Concrete 1.4. Flowery Patterns, Pots, Jars, Jugs... 2. Imaginary Conversation 1: Shen Congwen and Wang Guowei 2.1. The Un/Mediated Object 2.2. The Dream of the Red Chamber a. The Incompatibility of Aesthetics and Ethics b. A Truth History of Two Fake Objects 3. Imaginary Conversation 2: Shen Congwen and William Morris 3.1. The Lonely Museum Guide 3.2. The Rise of Applied/Decorative Arts 3.3. William Morris 3.4. The Politics and Aesthetics of the Handicraft Conclusion 284 Bibliography 296 ! #! Acknowledgements Over the past six years I have received support and encouragement from a great number of individuals. Foremost among them are the members of my dissertation committee, Professors David Damrosch, John Hamilton, Almut-Barbara Renger, David Der-wei Wang and Eugene Wang. They provided crucial guidance at every turn of this project’s development. I am grateful to them for giving me license to freely explore and experiment. I also owe a great deal of thanks to Professors He Bian, John Blair, Xavier Bouvier, King-kok Cheung, Verena Conley, James Engell, Olga Lomová, Jerusha McCormack, Stephen Owen, Wai-yee Li, Katharina Piechocki, Karen Thornber, Veronika Tuckerova, Zhang Pei and Zhu Qingsheng for their valuable advice. I am particularly grateful to Professor Leo Ou-fan Lee, Mr. Fou Ts’ong and Mr Fu Min for their generous support. I would like to thank my fellow doctoral students and friends Nina and Ga!per Begu!, Graham Chamness, Heng Du, Matylda Figlerowicz, Julian Friederich, Emily Mae Graf, Rebecca Kastleman, Raphael Koenig, Yun Ni, Chloe Garcia Roberts, Alice Xiang, Miya Xie, Emma Zofia Zachurski, Lusia Zaitseva and many others for the countless stimulating and fruitful intellectual exchanges. Luke Chong, Dai Miao, He Yuan, Adele Tiengo, Bill Thompson, the late Dora Turner, and my cousin Zheng Yi provided me with much emotional support that allowed me to go through difficult times. Above all I would like to thank my family. My mother Zheng Yanling has provided so much love, care and support; she has also made countless sacrifices so that I can be where I am today. My loving wife Allison brings much joy into my life, and patiently supported me through the ! #"! dissertation’s demanding writing process. I am also grateful to my parents-in-law for their generiosity and kindness. Finally, I owe the greatest debt of gratitude to my late father Ted Chen Weiguang, to whose memory this dissertation is dedicated. A loving guardian, enlightened guide and loyal friend, he shaped every stage of my intellectual development, and provided the most important inspiration for my life. The original idea that evolved into this dissertation was the first one that I pursued in his absence. He would have enjoyed reading it, and I hope it qualifies as a tribute to him. ! #""! To the memory of my father, Ted Chen Weiguang. ! #"""! Introduction Collectors are happy people. - a quote attributed to Goethe1 Every beloved object is the center point of a paradise. - Novalis2 Possession is always accompanied by loss, and gathering by dispersion. This is but common sense. Someone loses a bow, someone else gets it: is this worth mentioning? - Li Qingzhao3 This dissertation originates from an observation: there exists a striking interplay in twentieth- century China between intellectual innovation and the collecting of ancient artifacts. On the one hand, this century is distinguished by the radical efforts to shake up centuries of traditional learning and replace it with brand-new alternatives. On the other hand, this is also a period of mass dispersal and intense (re)collecting activities to a degree rarely seen before, which by nature assume a conservationist, or let us say, conservative, outlook. All the more striking is the fact that the two tendencies often find expression in the same group of people. My argument is that this parallel is by no means accidental. Instead, there is a close symbiosis between the act of collecting and the creation of new literature, the reorganization of existent knowledge and the production of new one, and the development of disciplines and their methodologies. This project !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 1 Hans Gerhard Graf, ed., Jahrbuch der Goethe-Gesellschaft. 3. Band (Weimar: Verlag des Goethe-Gesellschaft, 19162 Novalis), 330., Philosophical Writings, trans. Margaret Mahony Stoljar (New York: SUNY Press, 1997), 31. 3 Li Qingzhao, “Postscript to A Record of Metals and Stones,” in Zhao Mingcheng: A Record of Metals and Stones (Shanghai: Shanghai Shuhua Chubanshe, 1985), 560. therefore aims at explaining this symbiosis, with focuses on Huang Binhong 黃賓虹 (1865- 1955), Luo Zhenyu 羅振玉 (1866-1940), Lu Xun 魯迅 (1881-1936),