Notes on Xiaoye You, Genre Networks and Empire

You, Xiaoye. Genre Networks and Empire: Rhetoric in Early Imperial China. Southern Illinois University Press, 2023. 

This book will be, I imagine, a challenging read for people in rhetorical studies (and even comparative rhetoric) who are not familiar with historical and literary (and rhetorical) scholarship on early imperial China. You focuses mostly on the Han dynasty, but also necessarily brings in the Qin and the pre-imperial kingdoms of the Zhou, Shang, and Xia. He's also discussing genres that scholars in rhetorical studies rarely address. In fact, as I mentioned recently and long ago, some comparative rhetoricians have advised against casting a broader net when identifying what counts as "rhetoric" in a particular setting. Fortunately, You seems to have ignored this advice. 

But saying that this book will be a challenging read doesn't mean it shouldn't be read. I found it full of interesting ideas about ancient Chinese conceptions of what people were doing when they engaged in debate or tried to persuade rulers toward particular courses of action--all political work, where the decision-making process involved imbricated genres and "multimodal" presentations that sometimes included music, food, and wine as modes of communication/persuasion. This suggests seeing rhetoric very broadly, including interpreting what is usually just seen as a "setting" or "context" for rhetoric as an active participant in the rhetorical process--part of the "genre networks" of You's title. He makes the point that studying genre networks provides insights into Chinese (and other) rhetorical practices that are not offered by studies of individual texts (p. 170).

The term 文體經緯, which he translates as "genre networks," indirectly comes from Liu Xie's (劉勰) Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons (文心雕龍), although it's not clear that Liu used this term (I found both文體 and 經緯 here, but not together). You uses but doesn't dwell on Liu's discussion of genres; at times he criticizes it for its overly literary approach that tends to "deprive[] texts of much of their sociohistorical agency" (p. 145). Relatedly, he also suggests that Liu's conception of "genres" is too fixed on text types. You seems to prefer Sima Qian's (司馬遷) approach, which "emplaced discourses in unfolding events featuring genres as key actors mediating and shaping the events through genre networks" (p. 15). 

Although he criticizes Liu Xie for seeing genres as fixed text types, in some cases, You (helpfully) outlines and illustrates the patterns of some of the genres he’s discussing, such as the 詔 (zhao) edicts (p. 55) and answers to court exam questions (p. 64). These patterns, or moves, help to make the genres identifiable as text types, but at the same time, You shows how they are embedded in and vary with the sociopolitical situations where they're used. For instance, he describes the general form and tone of the commentaries submitted to the emperor, but then he points out how a particular text both conformed to and flouted the rules (or common understandings) regarding commentaries. The author, Gu Yong (You writes his name as 穀永, but I believe it's 谷永), follows the "rules" by couching his criticisms of the current ruler in "historical anecdotes and the Confucian classics" (p. 65), but he then "offers scathing criticisms" of the emperor with a "candidness [that] was almost unmatched among his peers" (p. 66). Then, like his peers, Gu concludes with a typified (indirect) plea: "I said what I am not supposed to say in my counsel, so I should be put to death ten thousand times" (p. 66)--in this case, however, Gu's use of this set phrase was much closer to the truth: You notes that Gu was demoted and barely avoided execution for his candidness (pp. 66-7).

He also examines the rhetorics of gender and the gendered rhetorics of the period, particularly in the Inner Court, which is where "the imperial consorts and their support staff" lived (p. 76). (For an interesting discussion of what becoming an imperial consort was like, see this article from the South China Morning Post--it's more focused on the Qing Dynasty, though, so not everything applies to earlier dynasties.) As You writes, men tried to control women in the Inner Court with a two-pronged approach: by "framing gender relations with the yin-yang theory" and by blaming women in the royal family for "natural anomalies, disasters, and social woes" (p. 75). Because court histories of the period were written by men, women's perspectives are underrepresented, but You is able to point out how elite women like Empress Dowagers Ma (馬皇太后) and Deng (登皇太后) used their literacy to rule the Inner Court and govern relations between the royal family and the state. He also shows how Ban Zhao (班昭) finished the Han Shu (漢書) after the death of her brother, Ban Gu (班固), and wrote Lessons for Women (女戒). You argues that although she seemed to conform "to elite men's expectations of women, Ban was subversive. She argued for women's education, took the instruction of women from the hands of men, and conceptualized a rhetorically savvy woman" (p. 93). 

The time period he has chosen to study also allows You to look into the early years of how Confucianism (the word is arguably anachronistic) was being used and taking shape in the court, along with other belief systems. The Han dynasty came after the Qin, which had been led by Qin Shihuang, famous for burning books and executing scholars, so Confucianism wasn't the rigid doctrine that many people (at least Westerners) imagine today. You points out, for instance, that while disputations and counsel often relied on the Four Books (along with other sources, including recently translated Buddhist texts), the literati used the texts to argue to make varying points. This led me to wonder if perhaps You’s observations about the malleability of the Confucian (and other) classics during debates and discussions in the Han court had to do with the fact that the meanings of the classics hadn’t been subjected to the kinds of commentary and interpretation that came later with, for instance, Zhu Xi’s (朱熹) commentaries that I understand became authoritative (or orthodoxy) in later centuries. (Wikipedia says that Zhu Xi’s commentaries were considered unorthodox in his time, but that later they became “the basis of civil service examinations up until 1905.”). I guess that would be something to explore (I'm sure it has been explored already).

You's conclusions about the limitations of decolonizing comparative rhetorics based on his study represent an attempt to show how his study speaks to current concerns in the field that I've been reading about as part of the seminar I attended a couple of weeks ago, so it's good to see another perspective on concepts like epistemic delinking. As You argues, it's important not to ignore the fact that decentering Western epistemologies by exploring "indigenous modes of representation" needs to take into consideration the possibility that "these ways may have been employed to establish ethnic, racial, gendered, colonial, and aesthetic hierarchies in a specific society or culture" (p. 172). Further, You argues,

a full epistemic delinking is not only impossible but also unproductive for actuating a more equal and just academic and social future. Complete delinking is impossible because of the interlocking nature of cultures, of rhetorical traditions, and of academic discourses, which developed historically by engaging and learning from one another. It is unproductive because an aggressive version of epistemic delinking could encourage nationalism, isolationism, racism, and xenophobia, as seen in the foreign policy debates in the Han dynasty, during the Cold War era, and now in the struggles of de-Westernization. (p. 172)

I think this is going to be a controversial conclusion (though I agree with it to an extent), and I wish You had said a bit more about it since it seems to be an important point. His book seems to me to be doing some delinking work by taking ancient Chinese thought systems and rhetorical practices largely on their terms, though at times he does make brief comparisons to Western thought and rhetoric, and his discussion of "genre networks" is clearly hybridizing Chinese and Western theories about genre. Is this perhaps a model for balancing epistemic delinking with some kind of engagement?

And on that I will end... for now...

Another new book in the former native speaker's library

I don't have enough time to read the books I've got, but I bought two more recently. One has come already, and the other is supposed to come on Friday. The one I have now is Scott Simon's new book, Truly Human: Indigeneity and Indigenous Resurgence on Formosa (University of Toronto Press, 2023). I haven't gotten into it yet beyond the preface, but I'm already thinking about moving it up on my list. 

Professor Simon also did a talk at the University of Washington a couple of months ago about the book. Here's a video of his talk:

Poem by Chen Li 陳黎: 〈蔥〉

I was at a Zoom panel discussion with Shawna Yang Ryan (author of Green Island) and two other speakers. One of them, Professor Sujane Wu from Smith College, mentioned this poem by Taiwanese poet Chen Li (陳黎):

I thought it was an interesting (and moving) piece of writing describing translingualism and the experience of growing up in Taiwan under Nationalist colonialism.

Chen has an English translation of the poem on his website.

Notes on Sue Hum, Arabella Lyon, "Recent Advances in Comparative Rhetoric"

Hum, Sue, and Arabella Lyon. “Recent Advances in Comparative Rhetoric,” The SAGE Handbook of Rhetorical Studies, Sage, 2008, pp. 153-165.

I've read through some of the supplemental readings from the RSA Institute seminar that I attended the end of May, but I've decided not to write notes here on every one of them. I'm writing about this article, though, because it discusses some key ideas and concepts about comparative rhetoric and because it focuses on "Eastern and Chinese rhetoric" (154). 

Hum and Lyon start out by discussing how "rhetoric" should be defined. We know from the Lyon article that I previously discussed that she finds (found?) the use of the term "rhetoric" to be problematic, but that she is willing to use it as a "placeholder" (presumably until something better comes along?). As in "Tricky Words" (which was written after this article), here Hum and Lyon identify rhetoric with "political discourse." I had questions about that in response to Lyon's article, but here I would add the concern that such a definition might itself be too narrow, depending on what is meant by "political." Later on, though, they give what is perhaps a more specific (and at the same time, broader) idea of what they mean by "political" when they write, 

The work of comparative rhetoric ... is not simply transcendence of universals and affirmation of the prevailing "tradition" but also an attempt to define the cultural bases of discursive power and the ways it privileges some statements and strategies in the production of knowledge and reproduction of power (Foucault, 1972). (154)

This suggests that their concept of "political" is Foucauldian, concerned with what can be said and what cannot be said, with the discourses that produce knowledge and govern what can count as knowledge in a society. This is at least more general than the term "political discourse" might appear at first glance. 

Part of their argument for focusing on "political communication" seems to be pragmatic, however; as they put it, "Pretending that a discipline can study all of writing, speech, movement, music, image, and film diminishes its ability to engage with the other without 'stereotypes, cultural appropriations, exclusion, ignorance, irrelevance, rhetorical imperialism' ([Scott] Lyons, 2000, p. 462)" (154). Furthermore, they argue, broader definitions of rhetoric threaten to include "poetry, literature, and song to the diminishment of politics, the connection that makes rhetoric vital to the understanding of power" (154). 

One trap that this seems (to me) to fall into is an equation of genres (in a reductive sense of text types) with audiences and purposes, ignoring that the very notion of what "political discourse" is might vary depending on the culture. I'm currently reading Xiaoye You's Genre Networks and Empire: Rhetoric in Early Imperial China, and in that book, You points out how poetry, specifically the Book of Odes (詩經) was used in rhetorical education and when advising the emperor regarding policy decisions. This suggests that it's important not to have a definition of "political discourse" (if you want to use that as a definition of "rhetoric") that automatically excludes genres before considering their uses in different cultures. As Hum and Lyon themselves recognize, "prior understandings of what is rhetoric may focus us on the wrong aspects of Chinese culture and filter out what is significant" (155).

Hum and Lyon go on to describe four approaches to comparative rhetoric that they suggest represent how it is being done: 1) applying western rhetorical concepts and theories to non-Western texts (seemingly with a belief in the universality of western concepts); 2) bringing in western methods, but applying them more gingerly, acknowledging the limits of those perspectives; 3) working within the framework of the non-Western culture; and 4) using non-Western rhetorical concepts to analyze western texts (157-8). An important concern, they argue, is that comparatists recognize and confront their own positionality and avoid universalizing tendencies. Scholars must be aware of and acknowledge their own standpoints. 

Comparatists must also be aware of and recognize their ethical responsibilities, particularly if they are studying the rhetoric of another society. Here Hum and Lyon remind us of Linda Alcoff's advice regarding "speaking for others" (I mentioned this in an earlier post). In defense of speaking for others, they write, "A retreat from speaking for others supports the individualistic, autonomous ideology of the West and sets the desire to avoid criticism and error before the needs of dialogue" (160). Again, they stress the need for understanding one's own standpoint--one's "motive and assumptions" as an outsider--in relation to the other culture (161). "Revisionist or speculative readings without consideration of standpoint, accountability, and effect are less than scholarship," they write (161). That said, there needs to be dialogue between the standpoints of the cultures involved. 

In the conclusion, they describe a broader goal or purpose for comparative rhetoric, one that I want to quote at length because I think it might be useful for the course I'm trying to develop:

We compare rhetorics so that we may understand the limits of the term and our own conceptual frame for it. As we denationalize and denormalize our notions of rhetoric, we search for understanding of the power of communication in an era defined by new communication technologies, increased mobility, displacements of people, and cultural clashes. To that end, comparative rhetoric is a vital enterprise, but it can only be such if it offers more than a repeat of colonial tendencies. A comparative historical approach, focused on moments, texts, and political situations within cultures, would allow us to develop the "shared, interlocutionary dialogic modes of thought and language" that Swearingen (1991) proposes (p, 18). In looking at particular texts in particular moments, scholars show the interplay of diverse factions within a culture as well as across cultures. Openness to new definitions, methods, and understandings of ourselves and our cultures, critical awareness of the ethics of speaking, and dialogic engagement with other rhetorics will make rhetorical studies a more powerful speculative instrument in the 21st century. (162)

Here they're beginning to get at the notion of transnationality in comparative rhetoric that Bo Wang discusses in her call for a more geopolitical approach to the study of rhetorics.