Week Three Metzger

 

[Han I, 47t-b]. SQ uses the image of Xiang Yu’s (XY) body to juxtapose several different conceptualizations of what social/political order might look like. In his final moments, XY surveys the enemy’s ranks and “spies” an “old friend” (Lü Matong, LM) who might be a worthy recipient of XY’s head/death (47t). In this scheme, XY sees his body as a collection of parts animated and brought together by his will (ORD1). The image of this kind of order is disrupted (XY’s will is thwarted) the second XY’s head leaves his neck as Wang Yi seizes the head before LM can accept XY’s “favour” to him (47t, 2nd full para.). Other leaders in the opposing force try to snatch a piece of XY’s body. However, in their struggle over XY’s body, these body snatchers have made XY’s body difficult to identify, and the body snatchers must again work together to “fit together” XY’s body so that they and others may know that XY is, in fact, dead (47t-47m). Only after the body snatchers have restored XY’s “limbs and head” are we told that they receive their reward (fiefdoms, 47m). While the concerted action required to oppose XY may be a second image of order (ORD2: a group of individuals act in concert for individual reward against a common enemy), the instability of that image of order appears as XY’s dismembered and unrecognizable body. The third image of order appears in the description of XY’s burial where the focus is not on XY’s body as an image for a part-individual/whole-group relation but on the social act (the ritual) required for that body’s proper burial. The King of Han (KH) buries the refitted body (47b), proclaims a period of mourning for XY, gives the Xiang family an imperial name, and rewards those who sided with XY for the right reasons (47b). KH puts XY’s body in its proper place and rectifies his name (not “dictator” but “Duke of Lu,” 47b).  Elsewhere, SQ uses the body as an image of social/political order (Qin16, first full para.), as well as its corollary, the image of the sage ruler as physician (Qin134b). Here, SQ’s stadial depiction of XY’s body may describe and predict the emergence of social order out of social disorder and potential competing conceptions of order ORDS 1 & 2).

 

[Qin 181t]. How does SQ teach us to read the circumstances that lead to the expulsion edict (EE)?  A181t (1^st full para.) tells us that Li Si (LS) has been designated as a “guest minister.” Sentence 2 tells us that ZG has arrived from Hann, at about the same time, under the pretense of supervising the construction of an irrigation canal while the true purpose of ZG’s arrival “came to light” (181t). SQ does not share, here, what that true purpose might have been. Without any explicit connection to sentence 2, sentence 3 indicates (in the voice of “high officials”) that persons from other states should be removed from Qin. The reader is left to make the connection between sentences 2 and 3.  Possible Connection 1: A)ZG had a nefarious motive; B)ZG is a guest from Han; C)So, let’s remove all aliens (EE). But I suspect this hasty proposal (C) cannot be simply about ZG; after all, ZG alone could be removed. Possible Connection 2: A)LS is a “guest [alien] minister”; B)the other ministers cannot  directly oppose LS, but they can oppose “aliens,”; 3)So, EE. Following this train of thought, EE can be described and explained in terms of the Qin’s internal politics (internal understood here as the attempt to make a place for oneself near KQ over and against the places of others). But Q38tm presents a different, more outwardly focused, description of the circumstances of EE. In the words of Mao Jiao (MJ) from Qi, “Qin these days thinks in terms of the empire as a whole” (Q38t, 1^st full para.), and his fear is that the other “feudal rulers” might turn against Qin because KQ has moved his mother “to another location” (ibid). As if in response to MJ’s statement, KQ moves his mother again (Q38t, 2^nd full para.), and “aliens” are found and expelled (ibid).  Reading both Q38 “annals” account and Q181t’s biographical account, SQ has trained me to wonder whether there might be an unexpressed internal struggle related to KQ’s mother’s move as well as an external conflict (the desire for empire, Attack Hann! 38m, 3^rd full para.) that helps to explain the success of LS’s letter (181t) or memorial (38m) against expulsion, as well as the court gossip regarding ZG of Hann.