Reconsidering the Life of Power: Ritual, Body, and Art in Critical Theory and Chinese Philosophy

238 Pages·2021·1.587 MB·English

by  James Garrison

RECONSIDERING
THE LIFE OF POWER
SUNY series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture
—————
Roger T. Ames, editor
R E C O N S I D E R I N G
THE LIFE OF POWER
Ritual, Body, and Art in Critical Theory
and Chinese Philosophy
James Garrison
Cover image courtesy of the author. Reprinted with permission.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2021 State University of New York
All rights reserved
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No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Name: Garrison, James, author.
Title: Reconsidering the life of power : ritual, body, and art in critical theory and
Chinese philosophy / James Garrison.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, 2021. | Series:
SUNY series in Chinese philosophy and culture | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020024802 | ISBN 9781438482118 (hardcover : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9781438482125 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Philosophy, Chinese. | Aesthetics, Chinese. | Critical theory—China.
Classification: LCC B5231 .G37 2021 | DDC 181/.11—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020024802
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
3344774411__SSPP__GGAARR__FFMM__0000ii--vviiiiii..iinndddd 44 33//2299//2211 77::5522 PPMM
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
Intercultural and Interdisciplinary Work: A Statement on Method 21
1 Subjectivation/Subjection 47
2 Autonomy and Appearance in Artful Ritual Practice 81
3 Confucianism and L(cid:223)ı (cid:18774)/(cid:18660): Ritual Propriety, Music,
and the Arts 97
4 Subjectality 119
5 Technique in Appearance 135
6 Somaesthetics 157
Final Thoughts 185
Notes 201
Index 223

Acknowledgments
This work uses text that the author has republished with permission, includ-
ing the following:
Garrison, James. “The Aesthetic Life of Power: Theories in Subjectivation
and Subjectality (An Overview).” Annals of the University of Craiova,
Philosophy Series, no. 34 (2014): 30–47. “Introduction” is a newer
version of this work.
———. “Intercultural and Interdisciplinary Work: A Statement on Method.”
In Orte des Denkens / Places of Thinking, edited by Murat Ates et al.,
80–98. Freiburg: Verlag Karl Alber, 2016. “Intercultural and Interdisci-
plinary Work: A Statement on Method” is a newer version of this work.
———. “Reconsidering Richard Shusterman’s Somaesthetics: The Confucian
Debate between Mèng Z(cid:223)ı and Xún Z(cid:223)ı.” Contemporary Pragmatism 12,
no. 1 (2015): 135–55. Chapter 6, “Somaesthetics,” is a newer version
of this work.
———. “Revolution in Kant’s Relation of Aesthetics to Morality: Regarding
Negatively Free Beauty and Respecting Positively Free Will.” In Kant
und die Philosophie in weltbürgerlicher Absicht: Akten des XI. Kant-
Kongresses 2010, edited by Stefano Bacin et al., vol. 4, 47–57. Berlin:
Walter de Gruyter, 2013. Chapter 1, “Subjectivation/Subjection,” uses
material from this earlier version.
———. “The Social Value of Ritual and Music in Classical Chinese Thought.”
Teorema: Revista internacional de filosofía 31, no. 3 (2012): 209–22.
Chapter 3, “Confucianism and L(cid:223)ı (cid:18774)/(cid:18660): Ritual Propriety, Music, and
the Arts,” uses material from this earlier version.
———. “What Should the World Look Like? Li Zehou, Confucius, Kant,
and the World Observer.” In Li Zehou and Confucian Philosophy, edited
by Roger T. Ames and Jinhua Jia, 118–34. Honolulu: University of
vii
viii Acknowledgments
Hawai‘i Press, 2018. Chapter 4, “Subjectality,” is a newer version of
this work.
If there is anything worthwhile here, it owes first and foremost to the
writing, teaching, mentorship, and authoritative conduct of Professor Roger
Ames, whose great work I hope here with this effort to appreciate in turn.
Additionally, this work was undertaken with substantial support from
the University of Vienna’s Department of Philosophy, with Prof. Dr. Georg
Stenger and Ms. Andrea Schönbauer meriting particular thanks. Prof. Richard
Shusterman, Dr. Sophie Loidolt, Dr. Anthony Everett, Dr. Megan Blomfeld,
Dr. Anke Graneß, Prof. Henry Rosemont (RIP), Prof. Tao-chung “Ted”
Yao 姚道中 (RIP), Prof. Eliot Deutsch (RIP), Prof. Graham Parkes, Prof.
Douglas Berger, Murat Ates, William White, and Robert Willem Diem also
deserve substantial appreciation for the help that each provided along the
way. Scripps College, particularly Professors Sheila Walker and Yuval Avnur
deserve appreciation, as does the Consortium for Faculty Diversity, which
made my time there possible. Likewise, thanks goes out to the University
of Puget Sound, particularly Justin Tiehen, Ariela Tubert, Sam Liao, Sara
Protasi, and Bill Beardsley in the Philosophy Department and Kris Imbrigotta
and Kent Hooper in the German Department. Thanks are also due to Ruhr
Universität-Bochum’s Theatre Studies Department and Meike Hinnenberg.
Further thanks go to my new institution, Baldwin Wallace University, and
my colleagues in the Philosophy Department, Amy Lebo, and Kelly Coble.
Professors Ron Bontekoe, Arindam Chakrabarti, Thomas Jackson, and David
McCraw at my first graduate institution, the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa,
deserve recognition as well. Thanks also go to my undergraduate home,
Whitman College, and particularly to Professors Patrick Frierson, Julia Ire-
land, James Soden (RIP) and Tom Davis, the latter of whom introduced me
to philosophy and posed the question that prompted this very book, along
with Trustee Emeritus John Stanton for first bringing me as an IT intern to
Vienna, where I would later compose much of this book.
My mother, Judy Leonard, and my brothers, Joseph and Jesse Garrison,
of course deserve thanks for their kindness and love, along with my aunts,
Carol Leonard and Alicia Rinehart. My deep and abiding gratitude also goes
to Matt McMurrer, David Beckley, Kevin Phillips, Bryan Haynes, Alyssa
Hays, and Vana Sarkisian each for being profoundly great friends. Anneliese
Rieger of PenArt Zeitschrift deserves heartfelt thanks for her crucial support,
feedback, care, and love during the time that this was written.
Introduction
It must cease forever describing the effects of power in negative terms:
it “excludes,” it “represses,” it “suppresses,” it “censors,” it “abstracts,”
it “masks,” it “conceals.” In fact power produces; it produces reality; it
produces domains of objects and rituals of truth.1
—Michel Foucault
The task of accounting for how persons, how subjects, are made brings a
convergence between what Euro-American traditions tend to deem to be the
separate domains of ethics and aesthetics. It is in this regard that alternative
voices, particularly those from East Asia, and even more particularly from the
Confucian tradition, possess a distinct advantage. Having had such a long
history in which to develop its own terms, Confucianism can address the
conjunctions of ethics, aesthetics, and politics that occur in person-making
in ways that the best, though still ultimately tradition-bound and reactive
efforts from Euro-American critical theory cannot.
Here the path is sixfold, going through the critical post-structuralist
notion of (1) becoming subject—subjectivation—and the accompanying
idea of (2) autonomy alongside (3) the classical Confucian idea of ritual—
l(cid:223)ı (cid:18660)—as well as contemporary notions of (4) subjectality, a Confucian/
Marxian- materialist approach to collective unconsciousness in social ritual,
(5) technique in appearance, and (6) somaesthetic (bodily) practice. This
results in an intercultural and interdisciplinary account of how a set of
traditions, some newer and reacting to dominant traditions and others rel-
atively older and with longer histories of internal conceptual development,
still nonetheless converge on an important issue for philosophy generally—
understanding and broadening the radically (a) relational, (b) discursive,
(c) bodily, (d) ritually impelled self.
1