In Praise of Blandness Proceeding from Chinese Thought and Aesthetics Frarçois Jullien Translated by Paula M. Varsano ZONE BOOKS • NEW YORK 2004 In Praise of Blandness Proceeding from Chinese Thought and Aesthetics Frarçois Jullien Translated by Paula M. Varsano ZONE BOOKS • NEW YORK 2004 2OO4 URZONE INC. Contents 40 White Street New York, NY 10013 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval >y>lem, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise (except for that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U. S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press) without written permission from the Publisher. Translator's Preface 7 Originally published as Eloge de la fadeur © 1991 François Jullien. Published by arrangement with Editions Philippe Picquier and Sea of Stories International Rights Prologue 23 Consulting Agency. I A Change of Sign 27 Printed in the United States of America. Distributed by The MIT Press, II The Landscape of the Bland 35 Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data III Blandness-Detachment 41 Jullien, François. [Eloge de la fadeur. English] IV The Sense of Neutrality 47 In praise of blandness: proceeding from Chinese thought and aesthetics/ by François Jullien; translated by Paula M. Varsano. V Blandness in Society 55 p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. VI Of Character: The Bland and the Plain 59 ISBN 1-890951-41-2 (cloth) 1. Aesthetics, Chinese. 2. Philosophy, Chinese. I. Title. VII "Lingering Tone" and "Lingering Taste" 65 BH221. C6J85 2003 20033057183 VIII Silent Music 69 2OO4 URZONE INC. Contents 40 White Street New York, NY 10013 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval >y>lem, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise (except for that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U. S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press) without written permission from the Publisher. Translator's Preface 7 Originally published as Eloge de la fadeur © 1991 François Jullien. Published by arrangement with Editions Philippe Picquier and Sea of Stories International Rights Prologue 23 Consulting Agency. I A Change of Sign 27 Printed in the United States of America. Distributed by The MIT Press, II The Landscape of the Bland 35 Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data III Blandness-Detachment 41 Jullien, François. [Eloge de la fadeur. English] IV The Sense of Neutrality 47 In praise of blandness: proceeding from Chinese thought and aesthetics/ by François Jullien; translated by Paula M. Varsano. V Blandness in Society 55 p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. VI Of Character: The Bland and the Plain 59 ISBN 1-890951-41-2 (cloth) 1. Aesthetics, Chinese. 2. Philosophy, Chinese. I. Title. VII "Lingering Tone" and "Lingering Taste" 65 BH221. C6J85 2003 20033057183 VIII Silent Music 69 IX The Blandness of Sound 79 Translator's Preface X Blandness's Change of Signs in Literature 85 XI The Ideology of Blandness 95 XII Flavor-Beyond-the-Flavorful, Landscape-Beyond-Landscapes 103 In 1991, François Jullien asked his readers to rethink their assump- XIII The "Margin" and the "Center" of Flavor 117 tion that blandness — the absence of clearly identifiable flavor, character, or color — is an undesirable quality. This is the decep- XIV Blandness or Strength 125 tively simple challenge he poses in In Praise of Blandness: Proceed- ing from Chinese Thought and Aesthetics, a work categorized by its XV Transcendence Is Natural 139 publishers as an "essay" and, as such, representative of what Tzve- tan Todorov has declared to be the sole literary genre in France to Notes 145 have thus far escaped a "generalized decline. " According to Todo- rov, the best essayists of our time (and he counts Jullien among Appendix A Notes on Major Chinese Figures Mentioned 157 them) are those who "are content to analyze the world around them from a critical perspective, in the best sense of the word. "1 Appendix B Glossary of Chinese Expressions 167 And for Jullien, perspective is everything — not just in the pre- sent, relatively early work, whose very title demands a radical and sustained shift in point of view, but in his philosophical project as a whole. Blandness, like his earlier works La Valeur allusive (Allusive value, 1985) and Proces ou creation (Process or creation, 1989) and most of the works that have appeared since, singles out and explores a specific "strategy of meaning" operating within traditional Chi- nese literary and philosophical culture, in hopes of setting in mo- tion a continuous reexamination and recalibration of European IX The Blandness of Sound 79 Translator's Preface X Blandness's Change of Signs in Literature 85 XI The Ideology of Blandness 95 XII Flavor-Beyond-the-Flavorful, Landscape-Beyond-Landscapes 103 In 1991, François Jullien asked his readers to rethink their assump- XIII The "Margin" and the "Center" of Flavor 117 tion that blandness — the absence of clearly identifiable flavor, character, or color — is an undesirable quality. This is the decep- XIV Blandness or Strength 125 tively simple challenge he poses in In Praise of Blandness: Proceed- ing from Chinese Thought and Aesthetics, a work categorized by its XV Transcendence Is Natural 139 publishers as an "essay" and, as such, representative of what Tzve- tan Todorov has declared to be the sole literary genre in France to Notes 145 have thus far escaped a "generalized decline. " According to Todo- rov, the best essayists of our time (and he counts Jullien among Appendix A Notes on Major Chinese Figures Mentioned 157 them) are those who "are content to analyze the world around them from a critical perspective, in the best sense of the word. "1 Appendix B Glossary of Chinese Expressions 167 And for Jullien, perspective is everything — not just in the pre- sent, relatively early work, whose very title demands a radical and sustained shift in point of view, but in his philosophical project as a whole. Blandness, like his earlier works La Valeur allusive (Allusive value, 1985) and Proces ou creation (Process or creation, 1989) and most of the works that have appeared since, singles out and explores a specific "strategy of meaning" operating within traditional Chi- nese literary and philosophical culture, in hopes of setting in mo- tion a continuous reexamination and recalibration of European IN PRAISE Of BLANDNESS TRANSLATOR PREFACE cultural compasses and of the practice of philosophy in the West. capture in discourse: namely, the kind of potential that originates Recognized professionally as a sinologist, Jullien has frequently not In human initiative but instead results from the very disposi- and publicly asserted that he came to this field not out of a passion tion of things. "3 for things Chinese but out of a desire to gain a clearer perspective For those familiar with Chinese philosophy, shi may not at first on the roots of his own tradition as found in Greek philosophy. He have seemed an obvious subject for extensive examination. So describes his lifelong foray into Chinese philosophy as "a never- much more remains to be said, and is being said, about more per- ending detour" and recently told an interviewer that his motives sistent (not to say fetishized) terms like ten, li, and even dao. The in studying China were and are exclusively "anti-exotic and theo- book successfully puts any such doubts to rest, arguing persua- retical, " spurred by the recognition that, simply put, the only way sively not only for the significance of this concept in the develop- to clearly see the self is from the outside. Why did he find in ment of Chinese thought but for its usefulness as an analytic tool. China the preferred "outside" venue from which to look back in? Jullien's choice of shi — and blandness, for that matter— as a sub- He offers three reasons: its philosophy is expressed in a language ject of extended rumination is as much guided by its absence from not shaped by the Indo-European syntax and etymology that so Western philosophical discourse as by its presence in the Chinese. powerfully molded Western philosophy; China was not histori- What he is looking for are "possibilities of thought" that have not cally influenced by Western civilization until late in its history; yet been contemplated by his own philosophical forebears. While and, finally, Chinese thought is preserved in a rich storehouse of Jullien has acquired and continues to creatively apply the tools texts that are still extant — and, he adds, "texts are what I had typically found exclusively in the workshop of the professional learned to work on. "2 sinologist, his goal is considerably larger: the recasting of the A cursory survey of his work over the last twenty years bears types of questions that philosophy writ large can pose. out his avowed commitment to the text; his studies and essays are This is not to minimize his contribution to the study of tradi- invariably based in philologically grounded readings. But, con- tional Chinese civilization. Whatever his ultimate goal, Jullien's trary to the apparent simplicity of his explanation, this practice is excavation of such far-reaching strands of thought and strategies not merely a matter of habit; it grows out of a conviction that the of meaning as found in the notions of indirect signification (La local, repeated linguistic expression is among the most reliable Valeur allusive; Detour and Access, 1995), efficacy (Traite de l'effica- points of access into a vast philosophical system.