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Writing As Weaving: Intertextuality and the Huainanzi's Self-Fashioning As an Embodiment of The Writing as Weaving: Intertextuality and the Huainanzi’s Self-Fashioning as an Embodiment of the Way By Tobias Benedikt Zürn A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (East Asian Languages and Literature) at the UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON 2016 Date of final oral examination: 08/08/16 The dissertation is approved by the following members of the final oral committee: Mark Meulenbeld, Associate Professor, East Asian Languages and Literature Mark Csikszentmihaly, Professor, East Asian Languages and Cultures, UC Berkeley Anne Hansen, Professor, History Rania Huntington, Professor, East Asian Languages and Literature William H. Nienhauser Jr., Professor, East Asian Languages and Literature Michael J. Puett, Professor, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University © Copyright by Tobias Benedikt Zürn 2016 All Rights Reserved i Acknowledgements I would not have been able to develop and finish this dissertation without the wonderful help and support of my teachers, colleagues, family, and friends. Unfortunately, I cannot name all of those that impacted this project over the last eight years and that deserve thanks. I am nonetheless deeply grateful to all of you who have accompanied me along the way! First, I would like to thank my mentor Dennis Schilling without whom I would have never applied to a graduate program. Your enthusiasm, open-mindedness, and erudition will always be an inspiration to me! I am also incredibly indebted to my fantastic advisers Mark Meulenbeld and Mark Csikszentmihalyi who guided me marvelously over the last eight years far beyond the academic realm! My teachers Anne Hansen, Rania Huntington, William H. Nienhauser Jr., Michael Puett, Julia Murray, Gene Phillips, Li Yuhang, Adam Kern, and Steve Ridgely deserve special thanks for their relentless support and patience. My deepest gratitude is also extended to all my friends and colleagues in the US, Europe, and Taiwan. Without all of you, Hartwig Mayer, Christoph Thies, Meytal Zur, Hans-Peter Werner, Michael Naparstek, Markus Greulich, Christoph Beuchel, William Banks, Kasper Eskelund, Lizzy Conley, Ingmar Pfeiffer, Anthony Lovenheim Irwin, Angel Ryono, David Bratt, Du Heng, John Stavrellis, Jordan Baskerville, Glyn Philips, David Bratt, Miguel Llanos, Irene Rosinski, Daveon Coleman, David Dettman, Fabian Goppelsröder, Wanda Hummel, Eva Kobler, Liu Yilin, Max Merkle, Jaclyn Michael, Qin Ying, Steffi Rothenberger, Wolfgang Rüdiger, Anne Schiefer, Hanna Schrader, Wang Ji, Du Yan, Zhipei, You Yang, Kristina Nielsen, Liu Ziyun, Aaron Reich, Chen Lumeng, and all the others that I have forgotten to mention, this project would have never been realized! Thank you all for being the wonderful people you are! I also want to thank Jane for being there for me right from the start! I’m so thankful that I’ve found you! And finally, my greatest gratitude belongs to my family, my brother Stefan, and my parents Karin and Wilfried! You are just awesome! I am truly blessed to be part of such a terrific, exciting, and caring family! Thank you for staying with me through all these years! I love you! ii Abstract My dissertation “Writing as Weaving: Intertextuality and the Huainanzi’s Self-Fashioning as an Embodiment of the Way” re-evaluates the current treatment of the Huainanzi, a text that Liu An, the king of Huainan, presumably presented in 139 BCE at his inaugural visit to his nephew Emperor Wu, as a collection of philosophical treatises. It showcases how the authors of this highly intertextual scripture fashioned the text as a powerful manifestation of the Way (dao). In the first part of the dissertation, I demonstrate that the Huainanzi employs at least the three images of a tree’s root, a chariot wheel’s hub, and a weaving texture that are commonly associated with the cosmos and the power of the Dao to create a homology between the Liu clan’s scripture, the sage, and the Way. Hence, I propose that the authors of the Huainanzi apparently fashioned the text in image of the force that underlies the organization of the universe. In the second part of the dissertation, I demonstrate with the example of weaving that the Huainanzi does not only contain passages that depict the text in homological terms with the Way. Based on a perceived correlation of the practices of writing and weaving during the Han dynasty, I suggest that the producers of the Huainanzi in fact implemented the cosmic process of weaving in the scripture’s design and intertextual writing practice. In other words, by inserting and connecting various traces of the words of pre-Han writers in its texture, the Liu iii clan’s scripture presents itself both as being in image and as an embodiment of the Way and its powers—of the very force that connects and weaves together the celestial patterns and terrestrial forms into a cosmic texture. Consequently, I finally speculate that the authors of the Huainanzi might have created the Liu clan’s scripture in image and as an embodiment of the Way in order to produce a textual artifact that belongs to the universally resonating category of the Dao, which underlies the order and orchestration of the universe. iv Table of Contents Synopsis 1 1. Introduction: Intertextuality as a Means to Create the Huainanzi in Image of the Way? 4 1.1 Situating the Project within Huainanzi Studies: Religion vs. Philosophy? 31 1.2 Historical Background of the Huainanzi 68 2. Being in Image of the Way: Cosmicized Aspects of the Huainanzi 111 2.1 Beyond the Tree: The Huainanzi’s Diverse Depictions of the Way and the World 136 2.2 Being a Hub: The Way, Sage, and Liu Clan’s Scripture as a Uniting Center 158 2.3 Being a Weaver: The Way, Sage, and Liu Clan’s Scripture as Connecting Agents 207 2.4 Intermediary Remarks I: Being in Image of the Way 227 3. The Image Fields of Weaving 231 3.1 The History and Process of Weaving 235 3.2 Weaving and the Universe 246 3.3 Weaving, Ordering, and the Sages’ Discovery of Fabrics 258 4. The Image Fields of Writing 274 4.1. The History and Process of Writing 275 4.2. The Sagely Discovery of Writing and the Ordering of the Universe 291 5. The Imaginaire of Writing as Weaving and Intertextual Practice in the Huainanzi 307 5.1. The Imaginaire of Writing as Weaving 309 5.2. The Huainanzi’s Weaving in of Textual Traces 317 5.3 Intermediary Remarks II: Embodying the Way 335 6. Conclusion: The Huainanzi as a Performative Text? 337 7. Bibliography 359 1 Synopsis In her seminal essay “Against Interpretation” from 1964, Susan Sontag (1933 – 2004) tackled the dominant position of interpretation as the default mode of engagements with cultural objects. Since she sounded the call to defy the common hermeneutic strategy of emphasizing content over form more than fifty years ago, the phenomenon of privileging the production and deduction of meaning over the immediate presence of cultural objects persists in the Humanities. In my specific case, scholars in the field of Early China still read scriptures predominantly within an assumed philosophical context displaying a reductionist approach to writings that precludes from the outset the possibility of any non-discursive function(s) for texts. In other words, their interpretations rarely consider textual artifacts to be agents within contexts such as ritual or gift exchanges. My dissertation “Writing as Weaving: Intertextuality and the Huainanzi’s Self-Fashioning as an Embodiment of the Way,” addresses this issue from the vantage point of the Huainanzi, a highly constructed and intertextual scripture from the second century BCE that scholars have traditionally read in philosophical terms. Contrary to its current interpretation as an encyclopedic collection of philosophical treatises, the dissertation shows that the Huainanzi, 2 which Liu An, the king of Huainan, presumably presented in 139 BCE at his inaugural visit to his nephew Emperor Wu, had been fashioned as a powerful manifestation of the Way (dao). In the first part of the dissertation, I demonstrate that the Huainanzi employs at least the three images of a tree’s root (ben), a chariot wheel’s hub (gu) or axle (zhu), and a weaving (jingwei) or knotting (jigang) texture that are commonly associated with the cosmos and the power of the Dao to create a homology between the Liu clan’s scripture, the sage, and the Way. Hence, I propose that the Huainanzi had been fashioned in image (xiang) of the force (de) that underlies the organization of the universe. In the second part of the dissertation, I showcase through the example of weaving that the Huainanzi is not merely depicted in homological terms with the Way. Based on a perceived correlation of the practices of writing and weaving during the Han dynasty, I suggest that the Huainanzi in fact mimics and implements the cosmic process of weaving in its design and intertextual writing practice. By inserting and connecting various traces of the words of pre-Han writers and kings in its texture, Liu An and his workshop apparently fashioned the Liu clan’s scripture both as being in image and as an embodiment (ti) of the Way and its powers (daode)—of the very force that connects and weaves together the celestial patterns (tianwen) and terrestrial forms (dixing) into a cosmic texture. 3 Consequently, I speculate in my conclusion that Liu An and his workshop might have created the Liu clan’s scripture in image and as an embodiment of the Way in order to produce an object that belongs to the category (lei) of the Dao whose universally resonating power impacts the entire world. As a result, my dissertation claims that we should further explore the possibility of non-discursive functions for Liu An’s miscellaneous and highly intertextual texture and potentially many other early Chinese texts.
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