The Poetics of Sovereignty
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much detail, and then quoted Confucius, saying, “I follow the Zhou” 吾
從周. Following this, Taizong spent the night reading the Zhou li 周禮
( Rites of Zhou) and in the morning, he summoned the three officials:
The emperor said, “Yesterday evening We read the Rites of Zhou—it is truly the work of sages! The opening chapter says, ‘As for the king establishing the king-
—————
27. Tang huiyao, 46.824–27. Shorter versions of this discussion are found in Jiu Tang shu, 63.2401; and Xin Tang shu, 101.3950–51.
28. In the initial period of the Western Zhou founding, the king allowed his kinsmen to colonize the surrounding regions, which led to the creation of the fengjian system. See Shaughnessy, “Western Zhou History,” pp. 311–13.
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On Sovereignty and Representation
61
dom, he must delineate his territory and rectify his position, govern the royal
domain and manage the outlying regions, set forth offices and divide responsibili-
ties, and by this, provide for the people.’29 How truly profound!” After a while, he said to Wei Zheng, “We have given thought to it: We desire to implement the
way of the Duke of Zhou, but if We do not employ the well-field plan, or the
feudal system, or corporal punishments, then there would be no way to bring this
about.30 The meaning of the great Changes is to be in accord with the seasons and the people. There was a saying of Zhou Ren, ‘If you can display your powers, then
you may enter the ranks.’31 If We were able to implement these one by one, it
would indeed be what We desire. If this is something you cannot attain, then you
will be forcibly seeking after the great Way; ‘if you draw a tiger unsuccessfully,’
then you will be laughed at by future generations.32 May you and the others fully
consider this.”
上曰：“朕昨夜讀《周禮》，真聖作也！首篇云：‘惟王建國，辨方
正位，體國經野，設官分職，以為人極。’誠哉深乎！”良久，謂徵
曰：“朕思之，不井田，不封建，不肉刑，而欲行周公之道，不可得
也。大《易》之義，隨時順人。周任有言，‘陳力就列，’若能一一
—————
29. Note that the anecdote follows the taboo on Li Shimin’s name and uses ren 人 instead of min 民. See Zhou li zhushu, 1.1a–1c, in Shisanjing zhushu, p. 639.
30. The well-field system is described in the Guliang zhuan 穀梁傳 ( Guliang Tradition) and often serves as rhetorical shorthand for the ideal Confucian society, one that understands the fundamental importance of agriculture. See Chunqiu Guliang zhuan zhushu 春
秋穀梁傳注疏, 12.51a, in Shisanjing zhushu, p. 2415. The mention of corporal punishments probably comes from the discussion of rouxing 肉刑 versus xiangxing 象刑 (“symbolic punishments”) in the “Discourse of Rectification” 正論篇 chapter of the Xunzi 荀子.
See Wang Xianqian 王先謙 (1842–1917), Xunzi jijie, 12.18.326–28. Note that neither term is mentioned in the Rites of Zhou itself.
31. Zhou Ren was a wise minister of the Zhou dynasty. These words are quoted by Confucius in chastising Ran You 冉有 and Jilu 季路, who were serving as ministers but could
not persuade their lord not to attack a neighboring state without just cause. The entire quotation reads: “If you can display your powers, then you may enter the ranks; if you cannot, then you should refrain” 陳力就列，不能者止. See Lunyu 16.1 / Lunyu jishi, 33.1134.
32. The allusion to drawing a tiger unsuccessfully is an abbreviation of the saying, “drawing a tiger unsuccessfully, so instead it resembles a dog” 畫虎不成，反類狗. The implication
is that one has not only failed, but failed in such a way as to draw ridicule upon oneself.
The saying is attributed to the Eastern Han general Ma Yuan 馬援 (13 bc–ad 49); see his biography in Fan Ye 范瞱 (398–445), comp., Hou Han shu, 24.845. It is also quoted by Yan Zhitui 顏之推 (531–91) in Yanshi jiaxun jijie, 7.19.575.
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On Sovereignty and Representation
行之，誠朕所願。如或不及，強希大道。畫虎不成，為將來所笑。公
等可盡慮之。”33
The Rites of Zhou was an imaginary representation of the Zhou govern-
mental structure, one that described the various offices of government as
consisting of ritualistic divisions corresponding to Heaven, Earth, and the
four seasons. To be sure, Taizong was probably not advocating that the
Tang government be restructured according to an idealized ritual logic.
The more important point was that the Tang should model itself on the
Zhou and thus abandon the imperial system that was the legacy of the
Qin and Han.
Taizong was not the first emperor to seek to emulate the Zhou way of
government (or how the way of the Zhou was reimagined in the post-
Han period); in fact, he did not even go as far as the Western Wei em-
peror Gongdi 恭帝 (r. 554–56; Yuan Kuo 元廓, 537–56), who actually
put the Rites of Zhou into practice.34 What is perhaps most significant
about Taizong’s interest in the Rites of Zhou is how it, coupled with the
deliberation over feudalism, points to a deep ambivalence or anxiety over
the Qin creation of empire.
There is no question that the Qin standardizations, and in particular,
its deterritorialization of the feudatories and the reterritorialization of
commanderies and prefectures, allowed the central government to admin-
ister a vast empire in an efficient manner. 35 This was an act of rationaliza-
tion, one that transformed the ritual authority of the sovereign into more
direct control over the empire’s subjects. At the same time, however,
when the Qin abolished the feudal system, it did away with a political
—————
33. This anecdote was recorded by Wang Fuzhi 王福畤 (fl. 7th century), the son of the
Confucian scholar Wang Tong 王通 (584–617), and preserved in Quan Tang wen,
161.1646b–47b. A number of early Tang scholars, including the three officials in the anecdote, were students of Wang Tong. For a summary of this episode, see Wechsler, Offerings of Jade and Silk, pp. 42–43. Wechsler believes this to be an apocryphal story; certainly, the fact that Du Yan died in 628, well before the presentation of the Zhenguan ritual code in 633, raises some questions. For a related study of the political uses of the Rites of Zhou, see Pearce, “Form and Matter,” in Pearce, Spiro, and Ebrey, eds., Culture and Power, pp. 149–
78.
34. This is discussed in Gu Jiegang, “‘Zhou gong zhi li’ de chuanshuo,” Wen shi, p. 39.
35. I am borrowing here from the discussion of political space in Lefebvre, Production of Space, pp. 105–110. Also see the discussions of territorialization in Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, pp. 192–200; and Sack, Human Territoriality.
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On Sovereignty and Representation
63
ideology that had its basis in the bonds of royal kinship and kinship mo-
rality, replacing it instead with an amoral technics of power. The creation
of empire would remain a traumatic historical rupture, one that, despite
its necessity, could never be fully j
ustified.36 Even as late as the Qing schol-
ar Huang Zongxi 黃宗羲 (1610–95), we find the argument that the Qin
abolishment of the feudal system marked the precise moment when le-
gitimate political authority was lost.37
Qin Shihuang: Empire and Body
For Taizong, the problem of the Qin was perhaps felt most in the way in
which the First Emperor had conceived of the sovereign role—which is to
say, in regard to the First Emperor’s understanding of the imperial person.
Whereas Taizong was at pains to demonstrate his willingness to heed
court criticism, and even seriously considered decentralizing the state by
enfeoffing his kinsmen, the First Emperor sought to monopolize power
and resources within his single body, arrogating for private use what be-
longed to the greater public of the empire. The example and influence of
the First Emperor could not simply be ignored by Taizong, as it was the
First Emperor whose institution of imperial sovereignty defined all em-
perors that came after him.
The First Emperor was heavily influenced by the Han Feizi 韓非子, a
text that synthesized much of the earlier Daoist and Legalist traditions.
Han Fei (ca. 280–ca. 233 bc), to whom the book is attributed, follows ear-
lier writers like Shang Yang 商鞅 (ca. 385–338 bc), Shen Dao 慎到 (ca.
350–ca. 275 bc), and Shen Buhai 申不害 (b. ca. 400 bc), in arguing that
the power of the sovereign derives not from personal virtue or religious
tradition, but from the creation of impersonal technologies such as law
and bureaucracy. As Léon Vandermeersch has written, “Pour Han Fei zi,
le prince est consubstanciel à l’Etat, sa personne même est devenue une in-
stitution, abstraction faite de son comportement moral bon ou mauvais”
[For Han Feizi, the prince is consubstantial with the State, his very person
turned into an institution without regard to his moral comportment,
—————
36. See Puett, Ambivalence of Creation, pp. 185–212.
37. This is discussed in the section “Yuan fa” 原法 in Huang Zongxi’s Mingyi daifang lu 明夷待訪錄. See Huang Zongxi quanji, vol. 1, p. 6. For a translation of the passage, see de Bary, trans., Waiting for the Dawn, p. 98.
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On Sovereignty and Representation
good or bad]. This Vandermeersch contrasts with Mencius, who takes the
position that “l’institution de la royauté s’incarne dans la personne royale”
[the institution of royalty incarnates itself in the royal person].38
Vandermeersch has seized upon an essential point here. For Mencius,
sovereignty is made incarnate within the person of the king, which means
that the king bears responsibility for his domain on his very body. By con-
trast, not only does Han Fei treat rulership without reference to questions
of personal behavior or morality, but he conceives of the ruler as having
no body other than that of the state. The state becomes the technological
extension of the Legalist ruler’s body, a prosthesis that allows the ruler to
rule without the vulnerability of his human failings. In the chapter enti-
tled, “The Way of the Ruler” 主道, Han Fei writes,
The Way is the beginning of the myriad things, and the regulator of right and
wrong. Therefore, the enlightened sovereign holds to the beginning in order to
recognize the source of the myriad things; he keeps to the mainstays in order to
recognize the cause of success and failure. Thus, in emptiness and stillness he
awaits [the carrying out of his] orders, letting names establish themselves and af-
fairs settle themselves. He is empty and thus knows the nature of fullness; he is
still and thus knows the proper state of what moves. Those [charged] with speech
will on their own produce names; those [charged] with actions will on their own
produce forms.39 When forms and names are compared and matched, then the
sovereign need do nothing about it, and it will return to its natural state.
道者，萬物之始，是非之紀也。是以明君守始以知萬物之源，治紀以
知善敗之端。故虛靜以待令，令名自命也，令事自定也。虛則知實之
情，靜則知動者正。有言者自為名，有事者自為形，形名參同，君乃
無事焉，歸之其情。
The role of the sovereign is not to engage in overt actions, but to observe
the actions of the officials around him. The machinery of the state is what
actually carries through the act of governance; it is the sovereign’s role to
ensure that human weakness does not interfere with the efficient running
of things. In a sense, then, the operations of the state have nothing di-
rectly to do with the person who occupies the central position of the state,
—————
38. Vandermeersch, La formation de légisme, p. 179.
39. I understand this line in the following way: those tasked with giving reports will provide their reports, while those tasked with carrying out actions will implement these actions.
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On Sovereignty and Representation
65
who is, if the state is truly efficient and well-managed, an empty place-
holder that defines the center.
At the same time, there is a mystical element to the Legalist conception
of sovereignty, one that emerges out of the idea of wuwei or “non-action.”
In the same chapter, the Han Feizi describes the sovereign in the follow-
ing way: “So still that he resides nowhere; so empty that none can discover
his place. The enlightened sovereign dwells in non-action above, and his
host of officials exist in fear below” 寂乎其無位而處，漻乎莫得其
所。明君無為於上，群臣竦懼乎下.40 The abstraction of the sover-
eign from his bodily desires and frailties creates a mystery of the sover-
eign’s authority; he exists nowhere but his presence is felt everywhere.
What the First Emperor does, in the course of his reign, is to suture to-
gether these two aspects of the Legalist theory of sovereignty, both the
technological and the mystical understandings of power. The Shi ji 史記
( Records of the Historian) records an exchange between the newly victorious
King Zheng 政王 of Qin (as the First Emperor was still titled at that
moment) and his ministers that took place following the conquest of Qi,
the last independent state.41 The king, having defended his actions in uni-
fying the former Zhou lands, called upon his ministers to deliberate on his
new title as ruler of the empire. The court officials responded to King
Zheng’s request by first pointing out how the size of the First Emperor’s
empire utterly eclipsed the modest territories that had been ruled by the
Five Thearchs ( wudi 五帝) in high antiquity.42 Moreover, the wudi had only nominal authority over the feudal lords and non-Chinese peoples,
who did not always heed summons to court. The ministers then note that
by getting rid of the feudal system and centralizing political, economic,
a
nd legal authority, the Qin was able to control its comparatively greater
territory with much more efficiency. This is an argument about territori-
alization, about the comprehensive encoding of heteronomous or contra-
—————
40. Chen Qitian, ed. and annot., Zengding Han Feizi jiaoshi, 7.686.
41. It is always worth keeping in mind how representations of the Qin are filtered through Han dynastic interests. See Durrant, “Ssu-ma Ch’ien’s Portrayal of the First Ch’in Emperor,” pp. 28–50.
42. I follow previous scholars in translating di 帝 as “thearch” rather than “emperor” in this context to emphasize the godly aspects of these figures. The exact makeup of the Five Thearchs grouping differs according to the source, but it is commonly said to include the Yellow Thearch 黃帝, Zhuanxu 顓頊, Di Ku 帝嚳, Yao, and Shun.
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On Sovereignty and Representation
dictory space by a central political authority. They conclude with the
statement:
From high antiquity onwards this has never occurred; it is what the Five The-
archs could not attain. We have carefully discussed this with the court erudites,
who say, “In antiquity there was the Heavenly August and there was the Earthly
August, but the Great August was most exalted.”43 Risking death, we submit that
for Your honored title, “king” be changed to “Great August,” and that Your
“commands” be changed to “edicts” and Your “orders” be changed to “decrees,”
and that the Son of Heaven refer to himself as zhen.
自上古以來未嘗有，五帝所不及。臣等謹與博士議曰：“古有天皇，
有地皇，有泰皇，泰皇最貴。”臣等昧死上尊號，王為“泰皇”，命
為“制”，令為“詔”，天子自稱曰“朕”。
Given the scope of King Zheng’s achievements, a rectification of names is
in order. Thus, the officials propose to identify the Qin king with the su-
preme deity Taihuang 太皇, “Great August,” and to change the imperial
pronoun to zhen 朕.
King Zheng’s response to this proposal is remarkable, because it exem-
plifies Qin exceptionalism, both inaugurating a tradition of imperial no-