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165 C H A P T E R E IGH T Conclusion I once presented a paper to the Columbia Seminar on Traditional China to get some feedback on some of the ideas developed in this book, especially the idea that the fourth line of the poem gives the date of the descent of a spirit rather than the birth of Qu Yuan. Afterward a member of the seminar, a scholar from China, asked in disbelief, “Who taught you classical Chinese ?” He went on to tell me that the word jiang means to be born in the Li sao, not to descend. I had in fact just spent about half of my talk attempting to disprove this very traditional reading; his tone indicated that he felt that I had simply made a mistake and that he was doing me a favor by correcting it. He was in effect asking me, someone clearly educated outside the Chinese tradition, on what authority was I making my claims. Zhang Longxi, in his excellent Allegoresis, adduced a famous event from Chinese history that I take as a parable to illustrate how certain interpretations of canonical works become perpetuated. It concerns Zhao Gao 趙高, a Qin dynasty eunuch famous for having been made prime minister after engineering the execution of his predecessor Li Si 李斯 and for dominating the Second Emperor of the Qin to such a degree that he began to doubt his own senses. On an occasion when many of the most important people at court were gathered in audience before the emperor, the eunuch decided to test the extent of his power. He led in a stag and presented it to the emperor, but instead of calling it a deer he called it a horse. The young emperor corrected the eunuch and looked to those gathered before him for support. When the gaze of the powerful eunuch fell on those to whom the emperor appealed, some in fear supported the eunuch in calling the stag a horse. Others remained silent. The few who had the courage, or foolhardiness , to support the emperor were eventually ousted or executed. Once he had thus assured himself of his power, Zhao Gao proceeded to arrange the death of the emperor. He also installed another young member of the 166 The Shaman and the Heresiarch royal family on the throne. In a little over a month, the Qin dynasty was overthrown by rebellion.1 Zhang Longxi warns some of his academic readers not to take the story merely as another illustration of “the arbitrary nature of linguistic signs.” That is taken for granted. Sima Qian (145?‒90? BCE) who tells the story in his Shiji (Historical Records) has another purpose—to demonstrate the political significance of Zhao Gao’s breach of the social agreement wherein the relation between the word and its referent is “relatively stable and fixed.” The literal sense of stag as distinct from horse is the basis to see through and condemn Zhao Gao’s willful misinterpretation and evil scheme, the basis for a sense of right and wrong, for moral judgment and political stance. Without a basis for the literal sense of words, there can be no ground for appropriate moral response and thus effective political action. . . . The stability of meaning, the proper sense of words as agreed upon by all speakers of the same language, constitute the linguistic normality to which Sima Qian appeals in exposing Zhao Gao’s abuse of language as symptomatic of his abuse of political power.2 In the same way that abuse of political power presupposes a political order, the abuse of language presupposes semantic norms, and semantic norms constitute an aspect of political order. Zhang Longxi reminds us that Sima Qian was able to return to linguistic normality and condemn Zhao Gao’s misnaming because he was writing in a different time, under the rule of a different dynasty, for which the fate of the previous dynasty, the rise and fall of the empire of Qin, served as a mirror and warning. . . . That is to say,a misinterpretation,even an obviously absurd one like calling a stag a horse, stands or falls with the power that sustains its perpetuation.3 The political circumstances that required that Wang Yi interpret the Li sao the way he did were very specific. Empress Deng Sui wanted to reassure the imperial house and its authoritarian supporters among the scholars that in preventing the rightful heir from taking the throne, she had the...

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