Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Language as Bodily Practice in Early China: A Chinese Grammatology

Language as Bodily Practice in Early China: A Chinese Grammatology

Geaney, Jane

Paperback

Series: Suny Chinese Philosophy and Culture

PhilosophyChinese HistoryGeneral Eastern Religions

ISBN10: 1438468601
ISBN13: 9781438468600
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: Jan 2 2019
Pages: 350
Weight: 1.40
Height: 0.90 Width: 6.90 Depth: 9.90
Language: English

Challenges the idea held by many prominent twentieth-century Sinologists that early China experienced a language crisis.

Jane Geaney argues that early Chinese conceptions of speech and naming cannot be properly understood if viewed through the dominant Western philosophical tradition in which language is framed through dualisms that are based on hierarchies of speech and writing, such as reality/appearance and one/many. Instead, early Chinese texts repeatedly create pairings of sounds and various visible things. This aural/visual polarity suggests that texts from early China treat speech as a bodily practice that is not detachable from its use in everyday experience. Firmly grounded in ideas about bodies from the early texts themselves, Geaney's interpretation offers new insights into three key themes in these texts: the notion of speakers' intentions (yi), the physical process of emulating exemplary people, and Confucius's proposal to rectify names (zhengming).

Also in

General Eastern Religions

View All