In Memoriam: Joël Thoraval (1950-2016)

Abstract

On 7 March 2016, Joel Thoraval left us, struck down in a few weeks by a devastating cancer that was unfortunately discovered too late. In him sinology has lost an outstanding researcher whose brilliant insights, boundless intellectual curiosity, and encyclopaedic knowledge of a wide range of cultural universes sustained his profoundly original thinking. He will also be remembered by his colleagues and friends as a subtle mind with a ready wit and as a fundamentally modest man.Joel Thoraval was born in Brest in 1950. After his undergraduate days marked by the militant atmosphere of 1968, he enrolled at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, where he was particularly keen to attend the lectures by Maurice Godelier, to whom he always remained close, while at the same time he continued his studies in philosophy and history. His attraction to Central Asia led him to train himself in archaeology and the languages of that region (Sogdian, Pehlevi, but also Russian), and for his doctorate he left to work as an archaeologist on the Hellenistic site of Ai-Khanoum in Afghanistan. He was to spend several years there, as a researcher at the French Archaeological Delegation. His stay was interrupted in 1980 by the Soviet invasion, which put a brutal end to his first scientific project. A combination of circumstances then gave him the chance to leave for China, where he began by pursuing his studies in Shanghai before taking up various posts: as Cultural Attache in Beijing (1981-1984), as a research fellow at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (1984-1991), and then as Cultural Councillor in Hong Kong. In this last position he played a major role in helping Michel Bonnin to set up the CEFC and Perspectives chinoises/China Perspectives. In 1994 he left Asia to join the EHESS China Centre in Paris.Joel Thoraval's research on China developed through several main stages. first of these was devoted to ethnological work in the northwest of Hainan Island, among a population officially classified as Han but offering nonetheless several striking features. This gave rise to a series of studies on the problem of nationality and on relationships of ethnicity within the Chinese world. He analysed these by approaching them through a range of diverse cultural practices, whether based on kinship (lineages), on religion, or on gender relations (with his study on the phenomenon of amorous nocturnal visits). Some of these studies have become classics for generations of students, such as 'Ethnicity' as Applied to the Chinese Cultural World, first published in Perspectives chinoises in 1999.His long stay in Hong Kong, at the Chinese University's New Asia (Xinya) College, allowed him to gain acute insights into the Chinese intellectual world, and especially into the academic communities rethinking Confucian traditions in the light of modern Western philosophy. This gave rise to his twofold interest in the modern Chinese reception of Western ideas and in the ways in which traditional Confucian teachings are currently categorised, theorised, and put into practice. A stay in Japan between 2000 and 2002 enabled him to bring a comparative perspective to bear on his reflections.In addition to his incisive articles on the intellectual debates in mainland China (such as The politics of memory, The dreamt tradition, and Historical consciousness and social imaginary), which demonstrate his gift for perceiving and closely analysing the spirit of an age, his work also focused on Confucian thought in the twentieth century with particular attention to the philosopher Mou Zongsan (1909-1995). He was the first to introduce this thinker to the French public (see especially his Ideal of the sage and strategy: An introduction to the thought of Mou Zongsan). Mou Zongsan was of special interest to him as the ideal embodiment of a type of philosophical fate of contemporary Confucianism while also being an indispensable thinker for understanding the reception of Kant in China. …