Please join us for a lecture by Professor Kenneth E. Brashier of Reed College:
Title
“Wen, Wu and me, too: A hypothesis on public memory construction in early China” Kenneth E. Brashier
Abstract
Without the tools that structure today’s public memory such as a pervasive written record and a continuous year count, how did the stars of early imperial China ever hope to secure historical remembrance? This presentation will argue that the classics-oriented, memorization-based education of the Han dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE) provided constellations of old heroes – specifically groups of usually two to five personages who shared a common trait – and public memory was mapped by drawing lines from the new stars to these old constellations. A Han astronomer would form a triumvirate with the two great astronomers listed in the Shangshu; a Han general would be added to the list of five tireless pre-imperial supporters of the court; and many Han literati would find themselves numbered among Confucius’s seventy-two disciples. Given this practice of coattail immortality, they (and we) are left with the question: Legitimate mnemonic or cheeky hyperbole?
Image caption
The ranks of Confucius’s disciples (partial), as depicted in an Eastern Han stone relief from a tomb in Zoucheng, Shandong (Source: Zhongguo huaxiangshi quanji bianji weiyuanhui, Zhongguo huaxiangshi quanji 2: Shandong huaxiangshi, 58 [pl. 67]).