myth or ritual - the question of hu

In my last entry, I wondered why the Communist texts attacking the scholar and May Fourth intellectual Hu Shi were so boring to read. Jokingly (and also perhaps because I was watching part III of "The Lord of the Rings" while writing the last post), I asked myself why the authors of these essays didn't resort to universal mythological themes in (mis)treating Hu Shi - why did they not contrive the story of the lost son, the fallen one who turned his back on the country that nurtured him, the ungrateful offspring, whose downfall (and possible redemption) is sure to come? Well, I think I may have stumbled across an answer as to why that was not the case.

Andrew Plaks, in his impressive Archetype and Allegory in the Dream of the Red Chamber (Princeton Univ. Press, 1976), devotes his first chapter to a brief treatment of mythology and Chinese literature. According to Plaks there is a fundamental difference between myths as they are known and recur in narrative structures in the West, and myths or mythological personae and themes in China. Whereas the former are actually and literally made up of narratives with exactly the kind of level of linear progression I was looking for (consciousness, downfall, redemption of an individual), the latter are more systematic and conceptual, even ritualistic, rather than based on a narrative of individual action:

"Turning back to the Chinese literary tradition, we will suggest that the apparently non-narrative character of its most abiding forms may be explained by the fact that its archetypical structures are displacements of ritual relations rather than of mythical actions." (p. 24)

The two keywords I would like to point out that seem to present a kind of opposition are "ritual" and "narrative". In my understanding, ritual - whether originally deriving its impetus from some kind of narrative or not - is an adaptation of a mythological concept into a formalized structure that is designed to engage the mind into active recollection and preservation of the essence of that concept. Ritual may well have been preceded by an embellishing and explanatory narrative, but in any case the story leading to the concept at stake is no longer of much relevance. Ritual, as opposed to narrative, emphasizes the static quality of a given concept, rather than the action necessary to reach the epitome of the myth. Synthesizing his argument, Plaks further states:

"It has been proposed here that this emphasis on qualities, relations, and states of being as opposed to motivation, action, and consequences is directly related to the varying roles of myth and ritual in the Chinese and Western traditions. In this sense, when we speak of the archetypes of Chinese literature we must look beyond patterns of narrative action to what are essentially
detemporalized forms of vision. By the same token, the apparent lack of logical development or dialectical progression must be reinterpreted with reference to an aesthetic system within which the poles of temporal opposition are contained as complementary possibilites rather than antithetical forces." (pp. 25 f.)

If we take the concept of ritual as definitive for the literary tradition of an entire culture, and if we further bear this in mind when looking at prose texts that sell an ideological concept/myth, the reason for denouncing a counterideological figure like Hu Shi in a more than prosaic, ritualistic way, becomes rather clear. In a tradition that prefers ritual and non-narrative myth to the progressive narrative structures of Western literary heritage, it would be close to impossible to conceive of Hu Shi taking on the role of a "lost son" of biblical dimensions. Hu Shi is rather a disruptive entity within a conceptual framework of balance, classified and sought to be removed by way of ritual, not mythologization.

In my last entry, I spoke of the Communist texts of the Anti-Hu Shi-campaign as "destroying the myth before it could reach its destined receiver". Now I realize that it may not have been the destruction of a myth, but rather the abidance by and preference of a ritualistic concept that caused the texts to be written as they were. After all, ideology clearly breeds ritual rather than explanatory and embellishing narrative that focusses on individual trials and tribulations. Though this is a rather decontextualized application of Prof. Plaks' theory, I think it may be worth further consideration.

Myth versus ritual, the individual versus the system. Hu Shi may just not have been as individually significant as the texts denouncing him seem to suggest.