#105 "Confucius Comes Home"

Zhang Huan, "Q Confucius no. 2" (left) and "Q Confucius no. 6," part of an exhibit at the Rockbund Art Museum in Shanghai, 2012. Description by Professor Sam Crane, Williams College: "The big animatronic Confucius bust ("Q Confucius no. 2") is speechless: the Sage is not offering us his wise words.  Rather, he just looms there, quietly inhaling and exhaling, in a shallow pool of water, a hulking presence. . . . Equally unusual is "Q Confucius no. 6," a robotic Confucius that lurches about within a steel cage. . . . [He] is not settled and comfortable. He thrashes about, armless (unable to hold on to anything), wordless, uncertain.  To me, this does not suggest Confucianism as solution but, rather, Confucianism as another site of struggle and confusion and unrest.  A supposed cultural golden age of the past cannot be reclaimed in the modern/postmodern present.​
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Project categories

As we finish out unit I, this is a good time to reflect on the components we are hoping to tackle over the course of the semester:

• Context:
  • Geographic context. Where in China did this person live? How did the natural environment influence this person's community?
  • Historical context. When did this person live? How would you characterize this era? What historical context is crucial to understanding this individual the community in which s/he lived?
• Sources:
  • Sources. What sources can we use to construct a narrative about this person? How did earlier historians in China create the foundation for knowledge that survives today about this person? What questions do we need to keep in mind as we interpret available sources?
• Identity:
  • Personal identity. How might we understand this individual by analyzing categories of gender & sexuality, class & social status, or other personal identity markers?
  • Chinese identity. How does this person engage in longstanding conversations essential to Chinese thought and identity?
• Representation:
  • Elite culture. How has history been represented in elite cultural traditions?
  • Popular culture. How has history been represented in popular literature and culture?
  • Mirror on the present. How do the recorded experiences of earlier individuals serve as a mirror on present events or ideas

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Timeline

• Highlight:
  • Pre-Cultural Revolution criticism of Confucius.
  • When/how the Cultural Revolution connected to Confucius.
  • Post-Cultural Revolution revival.

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​Yu Dan on Confucius and the Confucius Temple Performances

​Discussion

• Begin by taking 2-3 minutes to look over the article and the “consider” questions that were listed on the assignments page. Feel free, also, to formulate your own questions as well.
• Consider questions:

• What is China’s “spiritual void” (jingshen kongxu 精神空虛)? Based on the article, what factors may be behind it? What place does the work of Confucius play in “filling” that void?
• To what extent are figures like Yu Dan (於丹) or the director of the Confucius Temple (孔廟) in Beijing drawing directly on what you have read of Confucius? To what extent are they responding to tradition that has accrued over many centuries? And to what extent are they inventing something new to respond to contemporary circumstances?
• There are several points of tension within Osnos’s article. Identify and explain one of these debates.