Between 800 and 1200, it became increasingly common for Chinese writers and thinkers to claim it was possible to lose one's Chineseness and become a "barbarian" (Yi-Di or Yi) by practicing the wrong "teaching" or "Way" or by behaving immorally. Past scholarship has tended to interpret this argument as a "culturalist" interpretation of the Chinese-barbarian dichotomy that is firmly rooted in the "Confucian" Classics, especially the Chunqiu and Zuozhuan. The same scholarship often draws a contrast between "culturalism" and other interpretations described as (proto-)nationalist or racialist. This talk will argue that culture, nation, and race are all unsatisfactory conceptual categories for interpreting the discourse of ideological or moral barbarism. In their place, I propose two new concepts that better reflect the concerns of the discourse's users: "ethnicized orthodoxy" and "ethnocentric moralism." I also argue that both concepts involved radical reinterpretations of classical statements about barbarians, barbarism, and barbarization, and were therefore much newer and more unconventional than their Tang and Song users claimed.
Shao-yun Yang is an assistant professor of East Asian history at Denison University. His research interests include ethnocultural identities and the use of ethnic categories and dichotomies in imperial China. His research has previously focused on the Early Medieval, Tang, and Song periods, but is currently expanding to include ethnographic writing and perceptions of Islam in the Yuan and Ming. His most recent publication is a paper on the rhetorical uses of environmental determinism in Han and Tang interpretations of the barbarians, forthcoming in the Routledge Handbook of Identity and The Environment in the Classical and Medieval Worlds (December 2015). Yang received his BA and MA from the National University of Singapore and his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.
Event Details
Public Talk - Cambridge, MA