Reexperiencing Chinese "Body Thinking" Through Western Detour: Foucault's Govern-mentality and Confucius's Body-Experience 身體

• In Event: Roundtable Session 52
  In Roundtable Session: On Learning, Thinking, and Being: Asian Wisdoms and Western Philosophies

Abstract

This paper story-tells the author’s (re)-understanding of China’s recent controversial school kneeling-body events by encountering two cross-cultural and historical perspectives: Foucault’s govern-mentality and Confucius’ body-experience 身體 as depicted in the Yijing guan-觀 hexagram. It argues that even though (classical) Chinese thinking is often claimed to be a holistic body/concrete thinking as against the planetary Western mind/abstract thinking, the former has already been subjugated to the latter. Re-turning to the Chinese body thinking calls for a paradigm shift from a discursive reasoning toward a somatic experiencing as well as a new language of observing body with body. This paper shows how to better understand China’s educational body, and its modern transfigurations, through a cross-cultural and historical perspective.

Author

• Weili Zhao, The Chinese University of Hong Kong