Chenyu Binnenwerk V2.Indd

Cover Page The handle http://hdl.handle.net/1887/47489 holds various files of this Leiden University dissertation Author: Cheng, Chenyu Title: An incomplete inquiry : reading the filial piety stories through Lacan, or the other way around … Issue Date: 2017-04-06 An Incomplete Inquiry: Reading the Filial Piety Stories through Lacan, or the Other Way Around … © Copyright by Chenyu Cheng 2017 All Rights Reserved An Incomplete Inquiry: Reading the Filial Piety Stories through Lacan, or the Other Way Around … Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van Doctor aan de Universiteit Leiden, op gezag van Rector Magnificus prof.mr. C.J.J.M. Stolker, volgens besluit van het College voor Promoties te verdedigen op donderdag 6 april 2017 klokke 13.45 uur door Chenyu Cheng geboren te Beijing, China in 1976 Promotor: Prof. dr. Barend J. ter Haar Co-promotors: Dr. Isabel Hoving Dr. Yasco Horsman Promotiecommissie: Prof. dr. Ernst J. van Alphen Prof. dr. Meir Shahar (Tel Aviv University) Prof. dr. Daria Berg (University of St. Gallen) Contents Chapter 1 In Praise of Negativity: Introduction ........................................................................................... 1 I. Ideological Fantasy and Filial Piety ................................................................................... 4 II. Theory and Methodology ................................................................................................. 18 III. Post-Orientalism .............................................................................................................. 35 Chapter 2 At the “Beginning”…: the Basics ................................................................................................. 55 I. The division of the Nebenmensch .................................................................................... 57 II. The Absent Mother as das Ding ...................................................................................... 64 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 105 Chapter 3 Fantasy Transmuted: The Drive and Ideology ..................................................................... 115 I. The mOther’s Desire Reduced ........................................................................................ 116 II. The Divine Intervention and the Other’s Demand ................................................... 137 III. The Returned Course of the Drive and the “Headless Subject” ............................ 148 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 158 Chapter 4 Strange Objects in the Ershisi xiao ........................................................................................... 165 I. An Introduction to the Surplus....................................................................................... 166 II. Excrement and “Love” .................................................................................................... 189 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 202 Chapter 5 Perversion and the Father’s Will to Jouissance .................................................................... 207 I. A Female Body as a Fantasy Screen ............................................................................... 212 II. The Structure of Perversion: a<>$ ............................................................................... 217 III. Perversion as a Discursive-Social Link...................................................................... 228 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 235 Chapter 6 At the End…: There Are Only Two Fathers ............................................................................ 239 I. The Repressed Gu Sou ...................................................................................................... 241 II. The Imaginary Father: the Primordial Father and His Death ................................ 245 III. The Real Father: Gu Sou as the Father-of-Enjoyment ............................................. 248 IV. The Symbolic Father: Yao as the “Name-of-the-Father” ......................................... 259 V. Back to the Imaginary Father ........................................................................................ 263 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 272 Epilogue: Let’s Desire! ................................................................................................................ 281 Appendix 1: Translation of the Ershisi xiao Stories ............................................................ 285 Appendix 2: Translation of Chinese Book Titles ................................................................. 309 Bibliography .................................................................................................................................. 311 SUMMARY ....................................................................................................................................... 331 SAMENVATTING ............................................................................................................................ 333 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................................................. 335 CURRICULUM VITAE .................................................................................................................... 337 In Praise of Negativity: Introduction 1 1 Chapter 1 In Praise of Negativity: Introduction With the rise of China’s economic power on the global market, mainland China is now witnessing the so-called “renaissance of Confucianism.”1 One way of understanding this coincidence is to realize that China needs a new image which will suit its new position in the international community. Partly for the purpose of resisting western ideological influence (more especially the ideology of democracy), and partly due to the effective and long-lasting dominance by (Neo-)Confucianism in Chinese history, the return to the Confucian tradition becomes one of the strategies to refashion China’s cultural and national identity. In a recently published book— The Renaissance of Confucianism in Contemporary China, the editor makes the following claim: “China is in fact a country on its way to recapturing and rearticulating the Confucian moral and political commitments that lie at the foundations of Chinese culture” (R. Fan 1). This (re)definition of China or Chinese culture(s) as Confucian can be questioned on the basis of current scholarship on Chinese cultural history. For one thing, by denoting the school of “ru” (ru jia 儒家), the term of “Confucianism” itself obscures the differences within the “ru” tradition. Although the basic classics remain largely the same, interpretations of these texts have been subject to constant alterations throughout history. As a matter of fact, the ru school during the Western Han dynasty (206BCE - 8) is vastly different from its counterparts—the so-called Neo-Confucianism—in the Song (960-1279) and Ming (1368-1644) periods. Hence, this equation of Chinese culture(s) with Confucianism is overly simplistic, even when viewed from the perspective of the “ru” tradition itself. Besides the internal diversity within the ru school, there was a vast variety of other cultures. Scholars who have turned their attention away from the 2 Chapter 1 2 cultural-political centre and focused on the marginal—women, minority communities, folklores, underground religions, etc. — have revealed the cultural heterogeneity among the Chinese population. Even for a single individual, he could be a Confucian and, say, a Daoist at different times or on different occasions; it was not uncommon for a Confucian official to engage in non- Confucian religious activities. This cultural heterogeneity gives rise to the following question: to what extent can those people with different social-cultural backgrounds still view themselves as Chinese? Similar questions (but now on a more personal level) are posed by Freud in the preface to the Hebrew translation of Totem and Taboo. Freud admits that he is a man who is ignorant of the language of holy writ, who is completely estranged from the religion of his fathers—as well as from every other religion—and who cannot take a share in nationalist ideals, but who has yet never repudiated his people, who feels that he is in his essential nature a Jew and who has no desire to alter that nature. (Preface xv)2 He then goes on to ask himself: “Since you have abandoned all these common characteristics of your countrymen, what is there left to you that is Jewish” (Preface xv)? At this point, Freud himself does not have a concrete answer, stating simply that “[h]e could not now express that essence clearly in words; but some day, no doubt, it will become accessible to the scientific mind’ (Preface xv). In her essay “Moses the Egyptian and the Big Black Mammy,” Joan Copjec finds the answer in Freud’s last published book—Moses and Monotheism. As she demonstrates, central to Freud’s book is the hypothesis that there was a historical figure—the Egyptian Moses, about whom no historical record can be found; however, this unverifiable

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