Abstract

BLITSTEIN, Pablo Ariel. The figured father: Critique of typological and micro-analytical approaches in the study of political language in Medieval China. Prismas [online]. 2013, vol.17, n.1. ISSN 1852-0499.

How "patriarchal" or "patrimonial" was the power of the emperor in medieval China? Based on a critique of exclusively typological and macroanalytical approaches in social sciences, we intend to show that the discourses about imperial authority in medieval China do not admit the typological reduction to a "patriarchal culture". A situated study of two controversies will show us a struggle of discourses around the representation of the emperor as a "father": on the one hand, a controversy that opposes the patriarchal representation of imperial authority to the duties of the Buddhist monk towards the sangha; on the other hand, a controversy that, at the heart of imperial power, opposes two ideas on the way patriarchal analogies should be transmitted. This study will allow us to rediscover the conflictive aspects in the discursive production of patriarchal analogies and so to call into question the idea of a "Chinese patriarchy".

Keywords : Patrimonialism; Typology; Micro-analysis; Confucianism; Buddhism.

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