Unblocking the Blockage Between Earth and Heaven: Shamanic Space for Cultural Intimacy in China

Abstract

The legend of “Blockage Between Earth and Heaven” in the Chinese classical Shang Shu and Guo Yu foretells metaphorically the social origin of social and natural disasters in modern times due to ruthless development driven by the dominant ideology that embraces a binary, conceptual division between nature and culture on the one hand, and nature and humankind on the other. Daily activities in China, however, evade the analogical divide between shamanic practice and official ideology in the realm of “cultural intimacy” (“Cultural intimacy is the recognition of those aspects of an officially shared identity that are considered a source of external embarrassment but that nevertheless provide insiders with their assurance of common sociality” [Herzfeld in Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics and the Real Life of States, Societies, and Institutions. Routledge, New York, 2016, 7]), where shamanism is redefined as “folk culture,” not “religion.” Shamanism can also serve as a fertile source of ecological thinking that helps revisit the causes of disasters. The real cause of both environmental and social disasters is the disconnection between materiality and mentality.