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- Convenor:
-
Drisana Misra
(Cornell University)
Send message to Convenor
- Discussant:
-
Lisa Onaga
(Max Planck Institute for the History of Science)
- Format:
- Panel
- Section:
- Intellectual History and Philosophy
- Location:
- Lokaal 0.3
- Sessions:
- Saturday 19 August, -
Time zone: Europe/Brussels
Short Abstract:
This panel will deploy Donna Haraway's formulation of the "figure" to make an interdisciplinary inquiry into Sino-Japanese multispecies entanglements during early modern globalization, tracing how the animal body moved through religious texts, folding screens, urban spaces, and chinoiserie.
Long Abstract:
This panel proposes an interdisciplinary inquiry into the inter-species entanglements in Japan and China during early modern globalization. A variety of exotic flora and fauna were brought to the Japanese archipelago, either as living tribute gifts or as animal products. During the Japanese invasions of Korea (1592-1598), a number of tigers and pheasants (and their skins and feathers) were seized as war spoils from the Korean Peninsula. Elephants, civet cats, peacocks, and Arabian horses were imported from South and Southeast Asia by way of the Spanish and Portuguese, who had landed in Tanegashima in 1543. How did these different collisions with these non-native creatures transform ways of knowing and conceiving the world?
The panel will explore this question through the figure of the animal body as it moved through religious texts, folding screens, urban spaces, and chinoiserie. In When Species Meet (2008), Donna Haraway proposes the figure as a "contact zone" between the body and its "mortal world-making entanglements." Haraway characterizes the figure as a polysemic container for the corporeal: "Figures are not representations or didactic illustrations, but rather material-semiotic nodes or knots in which diverse bodies and meanings coshape one another." With this formulation in mind, the panel will explore the ways in which the figure, by shaping the animal body it contains, is, in turn, shaped by external human meaning-making mechanisms to project a multispecies knowing.
In initiating this inquiry, we will trace the epistemic transformations between European and Japanese regimes through translations and transliterations of foreign animal species. We will also explore how the status of the animal transformed in the face of colliding Buddhist and Christian ways of knowing, as well as how animal emotionality was depicted by artists and writers. Establishing the complex status of the animal, we will propose a multispecies urban history of Kyoto, in which animals were not merely spectators but active participants in reconstructing the city. Finally, extending beyond Japanese borders, we will study urban spectacles of elephant processions in Qing China and compare these to their imaginative representation in European chinoiserie, revealing the elephant body as a site for cross-cultural encounters.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Saturday 19 August, 2023, -Drisana Misra (Cornell University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper will examine how the human-animal border was questioned in the face of colliding Buddhist and Christian ways of knowing during the early modern period, as well as how animal emotionality was depicted by artists and writers of the milieu.
Paper long abstract:
“Buddhism sees the fifty-two species as being of the same nature as man, there being no separation between even the smallest insect and us living today. Why then do you speak of man and beast in separate terms?”
Fukansai Habian’s Myōtei mondō (Myotei Dialogues, 1605) features discussions between two women of different faiths, Yūtei, a converted Christian, and Myōshū, a Buddhist. In one episode, the two women discuss whether or not animals should experience the afterlife. Yūtei claims that Buddhism is erroneous for including animals in salvation and perceiving no hierarchy among species. Meanwhile, Myōshū argues for a multispecies "nature-as-principle," a dehierarchized oneness that is shared by all lifeforms. But this is not to say that animals were completely denigrated and dismissed from the Catholic worldview. On the contrary, animals were a central part of Spanish and Portuguese diplomatic and evangelizing activities, as they were powerful symbols of the Iberians’ vast territorial reach. These animals included an elephant named Don Pedro, an Arabian stallion, tigers, civet cats, and peacocks. Many of these appear as emotive subjects on nanban "Southern Barbarian" folding screens painted by the Kano School, indicating Japanese appreciation of these exotic lifeforms. This paper will examine how the status of the animal transformed in the face of colliding Buddhist and Christian ways of knowing, as well as how animal emotion was depicted by artists and writers of the milieu.
Morgan Pitelka (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
Paper short abstract:
This paper will consider the reconstruction of Kyoto (1586-1670) in terms of the activities, agency, and ecology of the animal inhabitants of the city and its surroundings.
Paper long abstract:
This paper will consider the reconstruction of Kyoto between 1586-1670 in terms of the activities, agency, and ecology of the animal inhabitants of the city and its surroundings, arguing that nonhuman actors were not mere spectators to the glorious renaissance of the imperial capital, but were central to its transformation. Oxen, horses, raptors, and other “vassal animals” labored alongside humans throughout the reconstruction of Kyoto, while monkeys, snakes, deer, foxes, and tanuki pushed back, complicating the attempts of city dwellers to create stability. The lively and diverse culture of early modern Kyoto was jointly generated by its human and nonhuman urban residents, inclusive also of the symbolic inflections of animals real and imagined, ranging from the giant salamanders of the mountain streams north of the city to the world of fish populating the river to the painted cranes and mythical lions that marked Kyoto’s proliferating palaces and temples.
Lianming Wang (City University of Hong Kong)
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the various ways in how South Asian elephants were deployed for conceptualizing China’s imperial spaces. Further, it discusses how the representations of the imperial spaces are imagined as sites for elite and sovereign self-identification with cross-cultural gifts and objects.
Paper long abstract:
South Asian elephants enjoyed a momentous status in early-modern histories as both the subject and object of long-distance commercial interactions and vibrant global encounters. Their transterritorial and indeed global movement shaped imperial projections, ways of practicing power, and their significance even paralleled the history of the state. In Qing China, South Asian elephants were engaged in state-led local festivals and performances and thus established urban spectacles that shaped the public perceptions of imperial spaces and conveyed political messages. This paper explores the various ways in how South Asian elephants (which travelled globally) were deployed for conceptualizing China’s imperial spaces. Further, it discusses how the representations of the imperial spaces are imagined as sites for elite and sovereign self-identification with cross-cultural gifts and objects. Based on these discussions, the paper reflects upon the nature of French chinoiserie, particularly through a cross-cultural comparison between Francois Boucher (1703-1770) and his counterparts in the Qing court, arguing that the European representations of China’s imperial spaces that flooded the early modern visual and decorative arts went far beyond an accurate, ethnographic representation, or a pure desire of the “luxurious Other.” Mediated through the elephants’ global movement, instead, these representations became major sites for crosscultural encounters, entanglements, and self-projections – an aspect that the current interpretive framework of the chinoiserie has largely ignored.
Wenlu Wang (The University of Tokyo)
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the epistemic dialogue of animal species between Europe and Japan by analyzing the translation of animals in Christian writings. It explores what has contributed to the various translating strategies and outcomes, and how a new hybrid of a world of animals has come into shape.
Paper long abstract:
There are rich references to animal species, both mythological and real, in Christian writings co-produced by Jesuit missionaries and local Japanese from the late 16 century. In certain cases, the concept went through a transcultural transformation. For example, dragon and serpent appeared in Christian texts and bilingual dictionaries as daija, which has the connotation of a vicious animal in Japanese literature. In some other cases, it seems that translators could not find equivalents and the species’ names appear as transliterations - coneho (for conejo), ipotamo (for hipopótamo), kamero (for camello) - just to name a few. The process of transcultural rendering of foreign species into Japanese reflects not only the collision of the two epistemic and cultural systems but also the actual possible knowledge exchanges between foreign missionaries and Japanese. Through various translating strategies (or the lack of which), these endeavors of rendering animal species into the Japanese language have also reshaped the idea of local (the translatable) and foreign (the un-translatable) for their intended readers. This paper examines the epistemic dialogue of animal species between Europe and Japan. It strives to answer what may have contributed to the successful transformations or the (intentional) misunderstandings, and how through these translations, the composers have co-created a new hybrid of a world of animals for contemporary Japanese readers. To achieve this goal, this paper analyzes the translations of animal species among three different genres of Christian writings, doctrinal works (Fides no Dǒxi and Fides no Qvio), saint stories (Sanctos no Gosagveono Vchinvqigaqi), and literature (Esopo no fabulas). To get insights into the process of translation, the paper contrasts the translations with their European sources, possible Japanese sources, and when available, corresponding Christian literature in Chinese composed during the same period.