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Reviewed by:
  • The Construction of Space in Early China
  • Michael Thomas (bio)
Mark Edward Lewis . The Construction of Space in Early China. SUNY series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture, edited by Roger T. Ames. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006. vii, 498 pp. Hardcover $75.00, ISBN 0-7914-6607-8.

The Construction of Space in Early China is Mark Lewis' third and most ambitious book. The central concern of each of his three books so far is the issue of the formation of the Chinese empire. His first book, Sanctioned Violence in Early China (State University of New York Press, 1990), examined early Chinese theories and practices of violence, and his second, Writing and Authority in Early China (State University of New York Press, 1999), examined the evolving position and cultural understandings of writing. In this new volume, Lewis directs his gaze to a much more fluid topic, space itself and the cultural construction of it:

[E]arly Chinese discussions of the construction of space revolved around the theme of part and whole, a theme that justified the emergence of ever larger states and finally world empire. In this process of state formation, the body, family, city, and region were reinterpreted in light of their roles in the new order. In the discussions of families, cities, and regions this new analysis of spatial units facilitated the rejection and dismantling of the old Zhou order based on a hereditary nobility originally organized in city-states. The idea that these spatial units were all internally divided fragments of a greater whole also led to the celebration of ever larger political units as essential to peace, order, and even humanity. This reconstruction of space in search of ever larger units of order forms the subject of this book.

(pp. 5-6)

The basic mechanism pointed out by Lewis that is at play in the early Chinese construction of space is the relation of part and whole, or microcosm and macrocosm, in which smaller units (of the body, the family, the city, etc.) are ordered and harmonized by larger and more encompassing units in a hierarchical ladder of authority and influence. Thus, each chapter examines one aspect of space, beginning with smaller entities and ending with greater ones; he moves from the body (chapter 1), to the household (chapter 2), to cities (chapter 3), to regions (chapter 4), to the world (chapter 5).

The writing is very dense, and this allows Lewis to showcase his remarkable mastery of a huge number of early Chinese writings; one of the best features of the book is that it smoothly brings a disparate number of different texts into direct conversation with each other, seamlessly moving between, for example, discussions of the Zuozhuan, the Mencius, and the Huangdi neijing. The Endnotes and Bibliography are as thorough and comprehensive as any I have ever seen. But this ability demonstrated by Lewis also has its dark side because, in his determination to focus solely on this mechanism of part and whole, he moves too quickly [End Page 202] from one text to another and at times demands too much from the texts, as if what they have to say is self-explanatory within the framework that he provides. He only rarely pursues the many opportunities to deepen the theoretical lines of inquiry opened up by his juxtapositions of texts and his organization of chapters. For example, in a discussion of the early Chinese ideas of the body that looks at the ordering of the senses, he writes, "Texts in the Daoist tradition sometimes proposed the more radical alternative of renouncing the senses entirely" (p. 41). This remark is followed by a quotation from the Huainanzi, which depicts a sage as one who forgets the separate bodily senses. Lewis then provides a single sentence in which he briefly compares these ideas to the idea of perfecting the senses through ritual or music. The next paragraph immediately moves on to a discussion of an entirely different early Chinese model for understanding the body in the image of a state. In this instance, Lewis does not further explore the problem of renouncing the senses, what it might mean to a...

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