Rhetoric

The Warring States and the Hundred Schools of Thought The core of classical Chinese philosophical tradition emerged during a tumultuous period of ancient Chinese history, during which the civilization transitioned from a decentralized feudal system into a unified empire. We begin this section with a brief and high-altitude overview of the historical background for those who are not familiar with ancient Chinese history. The time frame would be the Chunqiu-Zhanguo era (lit., “Periods of Spring and Autumn and the Warring States”) which lasted from c.770 to 221 BCE The Spring and Autumn period of Classical Chinese history, from approximately 771 to 476 BCE. The nominal seat of dynastic power, Zhou Tianzi (lit “Son of Heaven”) had rapidly declined, and in Confucious’ own words, that the “ancient feudal rite and hymns have crumbled （禮樂崩壞）.” It was a time when former Zhou feudal domains became de-facto independent sovereign states. Larger states swallow smaller ones. Rapid land reforms and power restructurings took place across major Chinese states in order to claim economic and military supremacy over their peers. Various great powers rose and fell throughout this period, constantly at war against one other for achieving hegemony over Tianxia. The Warring States period is also when the coin-based cash economy rapidly took off throughout China-proper. Of course this did not happen overnight, but based on ample material evidence, the cash economy did intensify within a relatively short period, as major states began to implement similar types of sweeping bureaucratic governance reforms and centrally managed crop buy-out policies to remain competitive. By the time of the late Warring States era, your “average” peasant say in the state of Wei or Zhao or any major power, not only was paid by the central government, in cash, to purchase his grains for strategic reserve, he is also likely to be drafted every so often, for a fixed term, to perform infrastructure labor or serve in the military, and paid a stipend at least in part in the form of cash coins. Consequently, old feudal aristocratic powers were displaced by an emerging class of scholar-officials, many of whom came from humble, non-noble backgrounds including Confucious and his disciples. Members of this new literati class often traveled throughout China and offered their knowledge and service to the most promising state sponsor. Because of the intense interstate competition and the increasing demand for scholar-officials, philosophies flourished throughout the Chunqiu-Zhanguo era. Early Han historian Sima Qian used the term zhūzǐ bǎijiā (諸子百家), or “Hundred Schools of Thought” to describe this unprecedented expansion and diversification of Chinese intellectual outputs. Many philosophical texts from this historical moment – such as the Analects, Tao Te Ching, and Sun Tzu’s Art of War have become widely known outside of China. See the timeline in figure 2 below for a partial list of key figures from the Hundred Schools of Thought (top row). The timeline also includes contemporaneous Indo-European thinkers at the bottom row for clearer time reference: ...

Persuasion and Propaganda Ancient China （chapter draft, part 1） by Keren Wang, kwang35@gsu.edu There are increasing calls to give rhetorics that are historically overlooked within Western academia their overdue consideration.[1] Despite growing interest in comparative and alternative rhetorics, insufficient attention has been paid to one category of crucial contribution to the intellectual history of persuasion and propaganda: the study of nonwestern ancient rhetorical traditions.[2] This chapter provides a sneak preview of the intellectual history of persuasion and propaganda in Ancient China, where a rich and distinct rhetorical tradition flourished for more than three millennia. We begin this chapter by addressing the question of why it is necessary to examine comparative perspectives, followed by looking briefly into the historical origin of Chinese characters – the oldest writing system still in use. Our discussion then proceeds to a high-altitude overview of the hundred schools of thought that emerged during a pivotal moment of Chinese intellectual history and profoundly shaped the arc of Sinic civilizational development. ...

Happy to announce the publication of my co-authored article with Dr. Tomonori Teraoka - “The Legitimation Crisis of the Japanese Constitution: Reflections on Japan’s Judicial Rhetoric and Its Post-WWII Constitutionalization Process” - on the latest issue of Communication Law Review. Our article presents an interdisciplinary, multilingual collaborative effort to critically examine Japanese constitutional discourse at both domestic and transnational levels. Abstract: Our article examines the issue of constitutional legitimacy in the post-WWII Japanese legal system. Our analysis proceeds from the judicial rhetoric of postwar Japan, focusing primarily on the state of judicial review and executive legislative practices throughout the Japanese postwar constitutionalization process. The aim of our rhetorical analysis is to identify the main points of discursive tensions as manifested in Japanese judiciary and legislative norms. Although the postwar Japanese constitution provides a judicial review process and separation of powers like its American counterpart, their implementation is constrained by the legislative usurpation of the executive branch and judicial passivity of the Japanese Supreme Court. Whereas the written language in the postwar Japanese constitution adheres to the prevailing transnational dóxa for a democratic rule-of-law society, we find many key constitutional elements are not internationalized within the operational modality of Japanese judicial rhetoric.

The ritual taking of things that are of human value, including the ritual killing of humans, has been continuously practiced for as long as human civilization itself has existed. In my presentation for the upcoming virtual 2020 National Communication Association's Annual Convention, I will highlight key findings from one of my ongoing historical archival projects, focusing on the rhetoric of human sacrifice as represented in Early Bronze Age China oracle bone scripts (c.1250 BC - 1046 BC). It will be delivered at the virtual paper session, "GPS: Changing Routes in Rhetoric's History" sponsored by the American Society for the History of Rhetoric on November 1st, 2020. ...

"Reexamining Ritual Sacrifice in Late-Capitalism" Presentation at the 48th Annual Conference of the Society of Australasian Social Psychologists (SASP) at the University of New South Wales, Sydney Building on my doctoral dissertation, I have been exploring the rhetorical inventions of "sacrifice" in the construction and ordering of societal institutions. The rhetoric of sacrifice, and its public rituals, form a core practice of all social orders. Though the practices have become substantially more subtle and even more deeply embedded in everyday social practices and expectations, this research project explores the underlying local and trans-cultural reflexes inherent in the performance of social, political, and economic sacrifices, and their connections to the organization of public institutions. Indeed, the fundamental presumption of sacrifice - the bargaining between unequal powers for the purchase of objectives by the offering of items precious to the giver - has often become so embedded to tacit social norms as to become effectively invisible. Though this project focuses on its connection to the organization of what is termed "late capitalism," its insinuation in all social orderings is hard to ignore. "Civilized" societies and economic relations are ordered through the rituals of sacrifice - propitiation for whatever totems and taboos are set above the governance orders around which collectives coalesce. ...

I am happy to report that my recent article, “The Rhetorical Invention of Laws of Sacrifice: Kelo v. New London,” has just been published and appears in Communication Law Review, Volume 18, Issue 2 (2018): 58-94. My thanks to Dr. Pat Arneson (Chief Editor) for her valuable editorial contribution towards this publication. The article continues my broader work exploring the concept of sacrifice as a useful concept for thinking about how violent transactions are rhetorically justified. The abstract follows. An online version of the article may be accessed HERE. ...

This presentation highlights a few key excerpts from my doctoral dissertation research: “The ritual taking of things that are of human value, including the ritual killing of humans, has been continuously practiced for as long as human civilization itself has existed. Sacrifices in the form of state-organized rituals have been observed in many societies throughout history. Existing scholarship also observed an interdependent relationship between ritual sacrifice and the maintenance of political power in a broad set of historical cases, ranging from Shang dynasty China in 10th century BCE to the witch-hunts in early modern Europe. Sacrificial rituals of the past should not be considered fundamentally divorced from our modern world: whereas the formal elements of sacrifice of the past may no longer be recognizable, their substantive political functions do remain, with rhetorical overtones that carry into the politics of the present time. The goal for this project is to give due consideration to the politics of sacrificial rites across a broad set of political-theological traditions, hopefully paving the way to a new unifying understanding of sacrificial rhetorics. This research goal revolves around two primary research tasks that are intimately connected. The first is to provide a working interpretative framework for understanding the politics of ritual sacrifice – one that not only accommodates multidisciplinary, intersectional knowledge of ritual practices, but that can also be usefully employed in the integrated analysis of sacrificial rituals as political rhetoric under divergent historical and societal contexts. The second conducts a series of case studies that cuts across the wide variability of ritual public takings in late-capitalism.” ...

“Ritualism and the Ethos of Chinese Legal Order,” presented at International Conference: New International Trade and Investment Rules between Globalization and Anti-­Globalization, Penn State University, University Park, PA (April 22, 2017) 倬彼雲漢 昭回于天 王曰於乎 何辜今之人 天降喪亂 饑饉薦臻 靡神不舉 靡愛斯牲 圭璧既卒 寧莫我聽 Majestic is that Milky Way, brightly afloat in the firmament of the heaven. The King said, O! What crime is chargeable on us now? That Heaven thus sends down death and disorder, unrelenting famine and hunger grapple us! ...

Fig. 1: Floor mosaic in Beit Alfa Synagogue (c.5th century CE, Israel) depicting the Binding of Issac (public domain art available via Wikimedia Commons) Human sacrifice refers to the practice of ritual killing of human beings as offerings to divine patrons, ancestors, or other superhuman forces. Early comparative studies on human sacrifice were heavily influenced by theories of historical relativism and social evolutionism. [1] Such theory approach is exemplified by the works of nineteenth century cultural-anthropologists Edward Tylor and Marcel Mauss, both of whom framed practices of human sacrifice as specific iteration of a general social feature, developed relative to various stages of human historical development. [2] ...