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Wenhua as ornamentalization: transgressing methodological Eurocentrism

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Abstract

The present study aims to introduce a metaphor of “ornamentalization” in regard to a methodology of cross-cultural philosophical exchange derived from Confucian cultural practices. The term is closely related to the original semantics of the Chinese notion of wenhua 文化, which is conventionally translated as “culture” but far more embracive than that. The model of ornamentalization demonstrates that a certain narrative—or ornament—that is unable to inform a given set of actual socio-cultural practices, is inscribed upon these practices, on their periphery. One can look through the lens of ornamentalization theory vis-à-vis contemporary Confucianism, which appeared after the rapid Westernization of China in the early 20th century and has called for the coexistence between Confucianism and Western philosophical traditions. Its represenatives use classical Confucian patterns to ornamentalize the existing “Westernized China” image. Ornamentalization—concerning cross-cultural philosophical exchange—is therefore associated with meaningful decoration, or with the inscription on a material that effects no substantial change in the material but, at the same time, makes it open for interpretations. The idea of ornamentalization is helpful in avoiding the trap of Eurocentric representation and could further advance the task of transcultural (post)comparative philosophy.

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Notes

  1. The concepts of “the third space” (Bhabha 2004) and “cultural asymmetry” (Wagner 2019) from the postcolonial and transcultural discourses work perfectly here.

  2. Ibid., http://www.shuowen.org/view/5192. Accessed December 5, 2023.

  3. Liu Xiang, n.d. Garden of Stories. https://ctext.org/shuo-yuan/zhi-wu/zhs. Accessed on December 5, 2023.

  4. I refer to the English translation of Wilhelm’s work by Cary F. Baynes sourced from this website: http://www2.unipr.it/~deyoung/I_Ching_Wilhelm_Translation.html. Accessed on December 17, 2023. Though I am aware of the possible constraints it is placing on my research, the Yijing is one of the primary sources of the present study.

  5. Wilhelm, Richard. Translation of the Yijing. Accessed on December 17, 2024. http://www2.unipr.it/~deyoung/I_Ching_Wilhelm_Translation.html. Accessed on December 17, 2023.

  6. Ibid.

  7. For the more detailed analysis one can see my article “Cultural and Philosophical Reflection on Spengler’s Decline of the West in Chinese Thought in the 1920s–1940s”; the English translation can be sourced via the link: https://en.nbpublish.com/library_read_article.php?id=36977. Accessed December 12, 2023.

  8. For more approaches in transcultural (post)comparative philosophy, please check Asian Studies. Special Issue: Transcultural (Post)Comparative Philosophy, Part 1: Methods and Approaches (2022), 10 (3).

  9. There is a good account of what to consider a “benign” cultural appropriation and what—a “wrongful” one in James Young and Conrad Brunk’s introduction to their edited volume The Ethics of Cultural Appropriation. To define a “benign appropriation,” they write: “Sometimes items are freely transferred from one culture to another. An American tourist who purchases a sculpture from a properly authorized dealer in Australian Aboriginal art has, in a sense, engaged in cultural appropriation, but does nothing objectionable” (Young and Brunk 2012, p. 4). It could become a matter of a separate research to compare ornamentalization with the benign cultural appropriation.

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    Victoria Sukhomlinova

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Sukhomlinova, V. Wenhua as ornamentalization: transgressing methodological Eurocentrism. Int. Commun. Chin. Cult 11, 97–114 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40636-024-00287-x

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