Субъект, пространство, время: как читать древнекитайский текст

Abstract

The epoch-making discovery of the phenomenon of non-linear organization of the ancient Chinese text by the remarkable Leningrad sinologist-philosopher V.S. Spirin (1929–2002) radically expanded the horizons of our perception of the written heritage of Ancient China, outlining the way to overcome the prejudice about linear reading of the ancient Chinese classics as supposedly the only acceptable. At the same time, Spirin’s discovery of the multidimensionality of the ancient Chinese text seriously challenges the concept of the subject in the context of ancient Chinese discourse. After all, a break with the linear ordering of the text is tantamount to destroying the unity of the speech intention and the subjectivity of the speaker corresponding to it, constituted by his speaking. Accordingly, the figure of a storyteller telling a story should either disappear, leaving behind a void of subjectlessness, or give way to a completely different subjectivity. The proposed article raises the question of the nature and character of this subjectivity, which is fundamentally different from the narrator’s figure. It is shown that the synchronous integrity of the multidimensional image (Xiang 象), which distinguishes the Chinese hieroglyphic writing, has its own temporality, which allows it to be an alternative to the diachronic unity of the narrative. It is argued that the temporality of the image-xiang extends to gestaltic multidimensionality of hexagram graphics, endowing the latter with the corresponding multidimensional temporal structure. It is the hexagram time (guashi 卦時) that assumes the functions of a narrative for the temporal unification of the past and the future, thereby providing the necessary prerequisites for the emergence of a special kind of subjectivity. The guashi-hexagram time is determined by the graphic structure of the hexagram. This is the most general characteristic of the meaning of a particular hexagram as an era, providing space for the game between the era and the individual. As a result, we have a two-person game, constituting a game subjectivity, consisting of the game interaction of an individual and a hexagram time. It is argued that it is precisely the subordination of the line of discourse to the course of the game that sometimes makes it loop, and then the text lining up along this line requires its reader to read it backward, so to speak.