Confucian Orientalism and Western Outlook in Martial Arts Film

This paper discusses the martial arts genre with reference to the films of the Japanese master Kurosawa Akira and the Chinese director Zhang Yimou, discussing how both directors converge in their themes and styles through the concept of “Eastern Orientalism.” Such Orientalism is based on Confucian precepts of zhengming (rectification of names), chaos theory, and the defense of the people undertaken by militaristic but heroic individual protagonists (samurai or xia). In raising the issue of Orientalism, the paper probes into the Western perceptions of the genre and the imperative of directors like Kurosawa and Zhang in pandering to Western tastes. However, these same directors seem equally preoccupied with fostering a sense of self and nationalistic expression in their response to and treatment of Orientalized content. The paper concludes with a discussion on The Great Wall (2016) as a comparative review of the Western and Eastern viewpoints at play in the US-China co-production. Here the analysis revolves around the issue of sameness, dramatized as a main theme in the film.

Design amidst Feuds and Fields: The timeliness of the “rectification of names” proposed by Confucius in the contemporary Babel of newlyforged, catchy concepts, terms, and expressions in the field of design

This essay examines whether contemporary design is undergoing a decline in its standards of professional and pedagogic quality, due to an identity crisis which has apparently been affecting the field since the late sixties. In light of Confucius’ “rectification of names” imperative, various linguistic and aesthetic implications associated with the alleged loss of design conceptual benchmarks of the very identity and definition of the design discipline and profession are explored. It analyses concrete situations in which narratives on design seemingly weaken its bonds with objective exterior reality, arguably leading to the deterioration of previously valued and nurtured patterns and canons of excellence in technical, aesthetic, linguistic, methodological, and, above all, moral terms in the discipline of design. Attention is also given to a relatively common trend displayed – often, but not always– by “neo design specialists” of erasing conceptual boundaries around the design field, in order to establish subdomains within the greater discipline of design. These tend to be marked by pleonastic and tautological, but nevertheless impressive terminology, such as “information design”, “interface design”, “interaction design”, “user-centered design”, “user-experience design”, “user-interface design”, “communication design”, “experimental design”, “authorial design”, “handicrafts design”, “modern design”, “contemporary design”, “emotional design”, “meta-design”, “sustainable design”, “design systems”, “design thinking” and more, which then subdivides the territory of design amongst various “neo-design specialists” by suggesting, in some instances, the possibility of isolating conceptual attributes (such as, respectively, “information”, “interface”, “interaction”, “user experience”, “user interface”, “design conceptual models and methodological approaches” and so on) from the very identity of the integral design discipline itself. In this context, Confucius’ message of the “rectification of names” may thus be perceived as an important and timely call.

Vietnamese and Chinese Movies about Royalty

Since 2002, with the enormously successful release of the movie Hero by Zhang Yimou, we have been witnessing the resurrection of the royal theme in contemporary East Asian cinema, and the return of Confucian cosmology as its philosophical foundation. In this paper, I focus on Vietnamese films which represent royal subjects and court life, like Heroes of the Tay Son Dynasty (Tây Sơn hào kiệt; Lý Hùng, Lý Huỳnh, and Phượng Hoàng; 2010), Blood Letter (Thiên mệnh anh hùng, Victor Vũ, 2012), and Tam Cam The Untold Story (Tấm Cám chuyện chưa kể, Ngô Thanh Vân, 2016); and Chinese films, like Hero (英雄, Zhang Yimou, 2002), The Banquet (夜宴, Feng Xiaogang, 2006), and Red Cliff (赤壁, John Woo, 2008). Firstly and most importantly, my essay examines how the cosmic and environmental elements in such movies are manipulated to advocate some particular political discourse as a kind of ecological politics. From this analysis, I analyse and explain the similarities in how the filmmakers in Vietnam and China establish the stereotypes of power and legitimacy of authority utilizing and transforming the Confucian spiritual cosmology. I also try to clarify the difference between the two cinemas in how they express the concepts “the Unity of Heaven and Man” (tianren heyi), “Rectification of Names” (zhengming), and “Virtue of Loving Life” (haosheng) in their political implications. Finally, I will discuss the layers of meaning and visual narratives by analysing the characters and social contexts of the films to reaffirm the varying degrees of influence of Confucian tradition on contemporary forms of cultural and political practices.

CAPTURING THE WORLD IN WORDS: LATER MOHIST HERMENEUTIC THEORIES ON LANGUAGE AND DISPUTATION

This essay examines some key statements in the Later Mohist treatises to gain a sense of their views on language and disputation (bian 辯). I first show that the Later Mohists viewed disputation as an exercise in familiarizing oneself with patterns of language use and the verification of truth-claims in the phenomenal world. I then demonstrate that such an activity helps one attain one of the Mohists’ highest goals: the clarification of ethical imperatives about how to behave, as expressed through Heaven for all people. This claim ultimately links Early and Later Mohist ethical concerns and offers a religious explanation for Later Mohist involvement and interest in disputation. Lastly, I frame these writings from within a culture of debate about language in Early China—a culture which, for example, yielded not only Mohist views concerning the necessary correlation between language and reality, but also Confucian formulations on the rectification of names, and a Zhuangzian insistence on the emptiness of sayings.

Confucianism Before Confucius: The Yijing and the Rectification of Names

A substantial reason behind the Confucian canonization of the Yijing can be located in some underlying patterns of thinking common to both the Yijing and The Analects; especially relevant here is the doctrine of rectification of names (zhengming 正名). In particular, I analyze the fundamental structure of the Yijing by means of the names and symbols standing in unique semantic/semiotic relations to the world, and I go on to suggest that this is what is importantly entailed by the doctrine of the rectification of names when the latter is understood by means of the perlocutionary function of the prescriptive language.

Editorial: The Rectification of Names

Welcome to the new issue of the Canadian Journal of Studies in Discourse and Writing/ Rédactologie. This issue marks several beginnings for the journal: there is a new editorial team; the journal’s archives will soon be fully available online; and the journal has moved to an “issue-in-progress” model fitting the open access, online trend of academic publishing. Due to these shifts, we thought it appropriate to introduce this new issue of the journal, which includes a special section on the future of writing centers in Canada guest-edited by Roger Graves, with a version of Confucius’ “rectification of names”. What do we mean by each of the words or phrases in the journal’s title? How do they express the character of this publication and what we hope it will do in the future?