This essay attempts to sketch a biography for jia 斝, a type of ritual vessel once popular during ... more This essay attempts to sketch a biography for jia 斝, a type of ritual vessel once popular during the Shang 商 (c. 1600-1046 BC) and Zhou 周 (c. 1046-249 BC) periods. While its name, in various written forms, survives, the knowledge of how it looked like was lost after the Qin dynasty. The mismatch between the name and the artifact nonetheless became a fertile ground for conjectural and creative formulations of the idea of authenticity. This essay identifies three key episodes in the “life” of Jia: the Song dynasty cataloging of ancient artifacts, the early 20th century research on the oracle bone script, and the mid-20th century debate on materialism and the hermeneutics of fiction. They correspond to moments of transformation and breakthrough in intellectual history, when scholars attempted to solve the puzzle presented by this vessel through innovative philological, iconographical and literary methods. By investigating these episodes, this essay argues that, although the establishment of historic authenticity relies heavily on object-based evidence, the interpretation of the latter is conditioned by the act of naming and the narrative of provenance. More importantly, the very concept of authenticity is a regime constructed out of the relationship between persons, names, and artifacts, and is itself historicized through the ever-developing episteme.
This essay attempts to sketch a biography for jia 斝, a type of ritual vessel once popular during ... more This essay attempts to sketch a biography for jia 斝, a type of ritual vessel once popular during the Shang 商 (c. 1600-1046 BC) and Zhou 周 (c. 1046-249 BC) periods. While its name, in various written forms, survives, the knowledge of how it looked like was lost after the Qin dynasty. The mismatch between the name and the artifact nonetheless became a fertile ground for conjectural and creative formulations of the idea of authenticity. This essay identifies three key episodes in the “life” of Jia: the Song dynasty cataloging of ancient artifacts, the early 20th century research on the oracle bone script, and the mid-20th century debate on materialism and the hermeneutics of fiction. They correspond to moments of transformation and breakthrough in intellectual history, when scholars attempted to solve the puzzle presented by this vessel through innovative philological, iconographical and literary methods. By investigating these episodes, this essay argues that, although the establishme...
This essay attempts to sketch a biography for jia 斝, a type of ritual vessel once popular during ... more This essay attempts to sketch a biography for jia 斝, a type of ritual vessel once popular during the Shang 商 (c. 1600-1046 BC) and Zhou 周 (c. 1046-249 BC) periods. While its name, in various written forms, survives, the knowledge of how it looked like was lost after the Qin dynasty. The mismatch between the name and the artifact nonetheless became a fertile ground for conjectural and creative formulations of the idea of authenticity. This essay identifies three key episodes in the “life” of Jia: the Song dynasty cataloging of ancient artifacts, the early 20th century research on the oracle bone script, and the mid-20th century debate on materialism and the hermeneutics of fiction. They correspond to moments of transformation and breakthrough in intellectual history, when scholars attempted to solve the puzzle presented by this vessel through innovative philological, iconographical and literary methods. By investigating these episodes, this essay argues that, although the establishment of historic authenticity relies heavily on object-based evidence, the interpretation of the latter is conditioned by the act of naming and the narrative of provenance. More importantly, the very concept of authenticity is a regime constructed out of the relationship between persons, names, and artifacts, and is itself historicized through the ever-developing episteme.
This essay examines the eminent writer Lu Xun’s alternative identity as a collector of ancient te... more This essay examines the eminent writer Lu Xun’s alternative identity as a collector of ancient texts and stone rubbings, and situates this aspect of his life in the context of Beijing’s antique market Liulichang in the early twentieth century.
Arguably the most celebrated writer of modern China, Lu Xun is famous for his fictions that critique the Chinese national character; they position him on the frontline of the crusade against the conservative ideologies of the past. However, his literary achievement and its “revolutionary” outlook overshadows his lifelong obsession with collecting ancient artifacts. Indeed, collector can be defined as the opposite of an author: the author creates, while the collector merely gathers; the author innovates, while the collector focuses on what already exists; the author expresses through language, while the collector mostly operates in the world of objects; the author tells stories that enfold linearly, while the collector places objects in spatial or conceptual juxtapositions. This essay amends such dichotomizations by demonstrating that Lu Xun’s collecting activities are a part of his effort to revisit Chinese literary culture in its myriad materiality and historicity.
Through reading his diaries and miscellaneous textual scholarship, this essay provides detailed analyses of key episodes in Lu Xun’s collecting life. They include his career at the Ministry of Education administering the Ming and Qing imperial archives, which provided him insights into the treachery relationship between power, knowledge and history; his rescue from Liulichang of “escaped” (yi) fragments of Wei-Jin period texts, which served for him as proof of the contingency of historical memory; and last but not least, his long-term engagement with the third-century philosopher Ji Kang’s oeuvre, whose textual instability allowed Lu Xun a glimpse into the open-endedness of literary creativity.
By investigating Lu Xun as a collector, this essay bridges the two ostensibly antagonistic aspects of his intellectual life. It argues that the collector bears uncanny similarity with its opposite, the revolutionary, because both tend to challenge smooth narratives and defy coherent value systems. As a dual process of innovation and “regression,” the collecting of antiquity disrupts the neat division between tradition and modernity that dominates discourses on Chinese literature in the May-Fourth period.
This essay attempts to sketch a biography for jia 斝, a type of ritual vessel once popular during ... more This essay attempts to sketch a biography for jia 斝, a type of ritual vessel once popular during the Shang 商 (c. 1600-1046 BC) and Zhou 周 (c. 1046-249 BC) periods. While its name, in various written forms, survives, the knowledge of how it looked like was lost after the Qin dynasty. The mismatch between the name and the artifact nonetheless became a fertile ground for conjectural and creative formulations of the idea of authenticity. This essay identifies three key episodes in the “life” of Jia: the Song dynasty cataloging of ancient artifacts, the early 20th century research on the oracle bone script, and the mid-20th century debate on materialism and the hermeneutics of fiction. They correspond to moments of transformation and breakthrough in intellectual history, when scholars attempted to solve the puzzle presented by this vessel through innovative philological, iconographical and literary methods. By investigating these episodes, this essay argues that, although the establishment of historic authenticity relies heavily on object-based evidence, the interpretation of the latter is conditioned by the act of naming and the narrative of provenance. More importantly, the very concept of authenticity is a regime constructed out of the relationship between persons, names, and artifacts, and is itself historicized through the ever-developing episteme.
Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews, 2019
This paper analyzes chao gubei 抄古碑 (transcribing ancient steles) as a significant obsession of Lu... more This paper analyzes chao gubei 抄古碑 (transcribing ancient steles) as a significant obsession of Lu Xun’s prior to his becoming a famous writer in the May Fourth period. Striking moments in his literary works stemmed from this personal obsession. Even though Lu Xun’s transcription can be considered a means to anesthetize himself, this paper argues that this act of transcription also serves to circumvent thinking and speech against the grain of the period, when revolutionaries sought to facilitate the flow of thinking and speech in Chinese society by replacing the Chinese script with phonetic ones. After looking at Lu Xun’s transcription, this paper examines how the purposelessness and materiality of this practice appears in Lu Xun’s fictional works, such as “A Madman’s Diary,” “Epitaph,” and “Kong Yiji.”
This dialogue took place over the course of several months in early 2015 and was published in Chi... more This dialogue took place over the course of several months in early 2015 and was published in Chinese by the Beijing-based magazine, Painting, Calligraphy, Poetry (詩書畫) that same year. In formulating this conversation on the poetics of the Late-Tang poet Li Shangyin we circled around this question for months before finally agreeing that the best entrance to the dense ephemeral landscape of his work was through the substance of the poetry itself. We decided to pick an as-yet-untranslated poem that I would translate simultaneous to our discussion and dissection of his unique aesthetic. In this way we believed, we might be able to leave behind a trail of our own discoveries in this surreal poetic inscape as well as mark a path for other readers to follow in their own readings of the work.
This essay attempts to sketch a biography for jia 斝, a type of ritual vessel once popular during ... more This essay attempts to sketch a biography for jia 斝, a type of ritual vessel once popular during the Shang 商 (c. 1600-1046 BC) and Zhou 周 (c. 1046-249 BC) periods. While its name, in various written forms, survives, the knowledge of how it looked like was lost after the Qin dynasty. The mismatch between the name and the artifact nonetheless became a fertile ground for conjectural and creative formulations of the idea of authenticity. This essay identifies three key episodes in the “life” of Jia: the Song dynasty cataloging of ancient artifacts, the early 20th century research on the oracle bone script, and the mid-20th century debate on materialism and the hermeneutics of fiction. They correspond to moments of transformation and breakthrough in intellectual history, when scholars attempted to solve the puzzle presented by this vessel through innovative philological, iconographical and literary methods. By investigating these episodes, this essay argues that, although the establishment of historic authenticity relies heavily on object-based evidence, the interpretation of the latter is conditioned by the act of naming and the narrative of provenance. More importantly, the very concept of authenticity is a regime constructed out of the relationship between persons, names, and artifacts, and is itself historicized through the ever-developing episteme.
This essay attempts to sketch a biography for jia 斝, a type of ritual vessel once popular during ... more This essay attempts to sketch a biography for jia 斝, a type of ritual vessel once popular during the Shang 商 (c. 1600-1046 BC) and Zhou 周 (c. 1046-249 BC) periods. While its name, in various written forms, survives, the knowledge of how it looked like was lost after the Qin dynasty. The mismatch between the name and the artifact nonetheless became a fertile ground for conjectural and creative formulations of the idea of authenticity. This essay identifies three key episodes in the “life” of Jia: the Song dynasty cataloging of ancient artifacts, the early 20th century research on the oracle bone script, and the mid-20th century debate on materialism and the hermeneutics of fiction. They correspond to moments of transformation and breakthrough in intellectual history, when scholars attempted to solve the puzzle presented by this vessel through innovative philological, iconographical and literary methods. By investigating these episodes, this essay argues that, although the establishme...
This essay attempts to sketch a biography for jia 斝, a type of ritual vessel once popular during ... more This essay attempts to sketch a biography for jia 斝, a type of ritual vessel once popular during the Shang 商 (c. 1600-1046 BC) and Zhou 周 (c. 1046-249 BC) periods. While its name, in various written forms, survives, the knowledge of how it looked like was lost after the Qin dynasty. The mismatch between the name and the artifact nonetheless became a fertile ground for conjectural and creative formulations of the idea of authenticity. This essay identifies three key episodes in the “life” of Jia: the Song dynasty cataloging of ancient artifacts, the early 20th century research on the oracle bone script, and the mid-20th century debate on materialism and the hermeneutics of fiction. They correspond to moments of transformation and breakthrough in intellectual history, when scholars attempted to solve the puzzle presented by this vessel through innovative philological, iconographical and literary methods. By investigating these episodes, this essay argues that, although the establishment of historic authenticity relies heavily on object-based evidence, the interpretation of the latter is conditioned by the act of naming and the narrative of provenance. More importantly, the very concept of authenticity is a regime constructed out of the relationship between persons, names, and artifacts, and is itself historicized through the ever-developing episteme.
This essay examines the eminent writer Lu Xun’s alternative identity as a collector of ancient te... more This essay examines the eminent writer Lu Xun’s alternative identity as a collector of ancient texts and stone rubbings, and situates this aspect of his life in the context of Beijing’s antique market Liulichang in the early twentieth century.
Arguably the most celebrated writer of modern China, Lu Xun is famous for his fictions that critique the Chinese national character; they position him on the frontline of the crusade against the conservative ideologies of the past. However, his literary achievement and its “revolutionary” outlook overshadows his lifelong obsession with collecting ancient artifacts. Indeed, collector can be defined as the opposite of an author: the author creates, while the collector merely gathers; the author innovates, while the collector focuses on what already exists; the author expresses through language, while the collector mostly operates in the world of objects; the author tells stories that enfold linearly, while the collector places objects in spatial or conceptual juxtapositions. This essay amends such dichotomizations by demonstrating that Lu Xun’s collecting activities are a part of his effort to revisit Chinese literary culture in its myriad materiality and historicity.
Through reading his diaries and miscellaneous textual scholarship, this essay provides detailed analyses of key episodes in Lu Xun’s collecting life. They include his career at the Ministry of Education administering the Ming and Qing imperial archives, which provided him insights into the treachery relationship between power, knowledge and history; his rescue from Liulichang of “escaped” (yi) fragments of Wei-Jin period texts, which served for him as proof of the contingency of historical memory; and last but not least, his long-term engagement with the third-century philosopher Ji Kang’s oeuvre, whose textual instability allowed Lu Xun a glimpse into the open-endedness of literary creativity.
By investigating Lu Xun as a collector, this essay bridges the two ostensibly antagonistic aspects of his intellectual life. It argues that the collector bears uncanny similarity with its opposite, the revolutionary, because both tend to challenge smooth narratives and defy coherent value systems. As a dual process of innovation and “regression,” the collecting of antiquity disrupts the neat division between tradition and modernity that dominates discourses on Chinese literature in the May-Fourth period.
This essay attempts to sketch a biography for jia 斝, a type of ritual vessel once popular during ... more This essay attempts to sketch a biography for jia 斝, a type of ritual vessel once popular during the Shang 商 (c. 1600-1046 BC) and Zhou 周 (c. 1046-249 BC) periods. While its name, in various written forms, survives, the knowledge of how it looked like was lost after the Qin dynasty. The mismatch between the name and the artifact nonetheless became a fertile ground for conjectural and creative formulations of the idea of authenticity. This essay identifies three key episodes in the “life” of Jia: the Song dynasty cataloging of ancient artifacts, the early 20th century research on the oracle bone script, and the mid-20th century debate on materialism and the hermeneutics of fiction. They correspond to moments of transformation and breakthrough in intellectual history, when scholars attempted to solve the puzzle presented by this vessel through innovative philological, iconographical and literary methods. By investigating these episodes, this essay argues that, although the establishment of historic authenticity relies heavily on object-based evidence, the interpretation of the latter is conditioned by the act of naming and the narrative of provenance. More importantly, the very concept of authenticity is a regime constructed out of the relationship between persons, names, and artifacts, and is itself historicized through the ever-developing episteme.
Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews, 2019
This paper analyzes chao gubei 抄古碑 (transcribing ancient steles) as a significant obsession of Lu... more This paper analyzes chao gubei 抄古碑 (transcribing ancient steles) as a significant obsession of Lu Xun’s prior to his becoming a famous writer in the May Fourth period. Striking moments in his literary works stemmed from this personal obsession. Even though Lu Xun’s transcription can be considered a means to anesthetize himself, this paper argues that this act of transcription also serves to circumvent thinking and speech against the grain of the period, when revolutionaries sought to facilitate the flow of thinking and speech in Chinese society by replacing the Chinese script with phonetic ones. After looking at Lu Xun’s transcription, this paper examines how the purposelessness and materiality of this practice appears in Lu Xun’s fictional works, such as “A Madman’s Diary,” “Epitaph,” and “Kong Yiji.”
This dialogue took place over the course of several months in early 2015 and was published in Chi... more This dialogue took place over the course of several months in early 2015 and was published in Chinese by the Beijing-based magazine, Painting, Calligraphy, Poetry (詩書畫) that same year. In formulating this conversation on the poetics of the Late-Tang poet Li Shangyin we circled around this question for months before finally agreeing that the best entrance to the dense ephemeral landscape of his work was through the substance of the poetry itself. We decided to pick an as-yet-untranslated poem that I would translate simultaneous to our discussion and dissection of his unique aesthetic. In this way we believed, we might be able to leave behind a trail of our own discoveries in this surreal poetic inscape as well as mark a path for other readers to follow in their own readings of the work.
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Papers by Guangchen Chen
Arguably the most celebrated writer of modern China, Lu Xun is famous for his fictions that critique the Chinese national character; they position him on the frontline of the crusade against the conservative ideologies of the past. However, his literary achievement and its “revolutionary” outlook overshadows his lifelong obsession with collecting ancient artifacts. Indeed, collector can be defined as the opposite of an author: the author creates, while the collector merely gathers; the author innovates, while the collector focuses on what already exists; the author expresses through language, while the collector mostly operates in the world of objects; the author tells stories that enfold linearly, while the collector places objects in spatial or conceptual juxtapositions. This essay amends such dichotomizations by demonstrating that Lu Xun’s collecting activities are a part of his effort to revisit Chinese literary culture in its myriad materiality and historicity.
Through reading his diaries and miscellaneous textual scholarship, this essay provides detailed analyses of key episodes in Lu Xun’s collecting life. They include his career at the Ministry of Education administering the Ming and Qing imperial archives, which provided him insights into the treachery relationship between power, knowledge and history; his rescue from Liulichang of “escaped” (yi) fragments of Wei-Jin period texts, which served for him as proof of the contingency of historical memory; and last but not least, his long-term engagement with the third-century philosopher Ji Kang’s oeuvre, whose textual instability allowed Lu Xun a glimpse into the open-endedness of literary creativity.
By investigating Lu Xun as a collector, this essay bridges the two ostensibly antagonistic aspects of his intellectual life. It argues that the collector bears uncanny similarity with its opposite, the revolutionary, because both tend to challenge smooth narratives and defy coherent value systems. As a dual process of innovation and “regression,” the collecting of antiquity disrupts the neat division between tradition and modernity that dominates discourses on Chinese literature in the May-Fourth period.
This essay identifies three key episodes in the “life” of Jia: the Song dynasty cataloging of ancient artifacts, the early 20th century research on the oracle bone script, and the mid-20th century debate on materialism and the hermeneutics of fiction. They correspond to moments of transformation and breakthrough in intellectual history, when scholars attempted to solve the puzzle presented by this vessel through innovative philological, iconographical and literary methods. By investigating these episodes, this essay argues that, although the establishment of historic authenticity relies heavily on object-based evidence, the interpretation of the latter is conditioned by the act of naming and the narrative of provenance. More importantly, the very concept of authenticity is a regime constructed out of the relationship between persons, names, and artifacts, and is itself historicized through the ever-developing episteme.
—Chloe Garcia Roberts & Guangchen Chen
Arguably the most celebrated writer of modern China, Lu Xun is famous for his fictions that critique the Chinese national character; they position him on the frontline of the crusade against the conservative ideologies of the past. However, his literary achievement and its “revolutionary” outlook overshadows his lifelong obsession with collecting ancient artifacts. Indeed, collector can be defined as the opposite of an author: the author creates, while the collector merely gathers; the author innovates, while the collector focuses on what already exists; the author expresses through language, while the collector mostly operates in the world of objects; the author tells stories that enfold linearly, while the collector places objects in spatial or conceptual juxtapositions. This essay amends such dichotomizations by demonstrating that Lu Xun’s collecting activities are a part of his effort to revisit Chinese literary culture in its myriad materiality and historicity.
Through reading his diaries and miscellaneous textual scholarship, this essay provides detailed analyses of key episodes in Lu Xun’s collecting life. They include his career at the Ministry of Education administering the Ming and Qing imperial archives, which provided him insights into the treachery relationship between power, knowledge and history; his rescue from Liulichang of “escaped” (yi) fragments of Wei-Jin period texts, which served for him as proof of the contingency of historical memory; and last but not least, his long-term engagement with the third-century philosopher Ji Kang’s oeuvre, whose textual instability allowed Lu Xun a glimpse into the open-endedness of literary creativity.
By investigating Lu Xun as a collector, this essay bridges the two ostensibly antagonistic aspects of his intellectual life. It argues that the collector bears uncanny similarity with its opposite, the revolutionary, because both tend to challenge smooth narratives and defy coherent value systems. As a dual process of innovation and “regression,” the collecting of antiquity disrupts the neat division between tradition and modernity that dominates discourses on Chinese literature in the May-Fourth period.
This essay identifies three key episodes in the “life” of Jia: the Song dynasty cataloging of ancient artifacts, the early 20th century research on the oracle bone script, and the mid-20th century debate on materialism and the hermeneutics of fiction. They correspond to moments of transformation and breakthrough in intellectual history, when scholars attempted to solve the puzzle presented by this vessel through innovative philological, iconographical and literary methods. By investigating these episodes, this essay argues that, although the establishment of historic authenticity relies heavily on object-based evidence, the interpretation of the latter is conditioned by the act of naming and the narrative of provenance. More importantly, the very concept of authenticity is a regime constructed out of the relationship between persons, names, and artifacts, and is itself historicized through the ever-developing episteme.
—Chloe Garcia Roberts & Guangchen Chen