1. Special Issue: Asian Ritual Systems: Syncretisms and Ruptures
2. Eric Reinders, Emory University
摘要
This paper discusses the refusal to bow (to the emperor, parents, or ancestors) in China, and explores how we might theorize obeisance and this "dis-obeisance." I treat obeisance as the performance of vertical distinction, which is the primary metaphor of power relations. I focus on two particular cases of foreigners or their converts rejecting the orthodox ritual of China: (a) the Medieval debates over Buddhist monks reftising to bow down to the Emperor or parents, with a focus on the Buddhist use of an analogous case of a foreign body not bowing from Classical imperial ritual; and (b) British Protestants and Chinese Christians refusing to bow to the emperor, to ancestors or to non-Christian icons, with a discussion of the anti-Catholic aspects of their refusal. I argue that of all the ways in which foreign and native are negotiated, obeisance is the crucial debate in China, in part because of the distinctive Chinese concept of li (usually translated "ritual"), and in part because bowing is the most direct and obvious embodiment of subject positions. In reviewing these two historical cases, I make some comparative remarks, and argue that these debates about what a bow means lead to the limits of our ability to say what any bodily movement means.
目次
Abstract 55 Introduction 55 Case 1. Buddhist monks do not bow ti laity 56 Case 2. Protestants do not prostrate themselves 59 Disobeisance and embodied identity 63 Endnotes 64 References 64 Biographical Sketch 65
