The Craft of Oblivion: Forgetting and Memory in Ancient China (SUNY series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture)

Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
	Part I: Historiographical and Political Narratives
	Part II: Philosophical Writings
	Part III: Ritual and Literary Texts
	Notes
Part I. Historiographical and Political Narratives
	Chapter 1 Cultural Amnesia and Commentarial Retrofitting: Interpreting the Spring and Autumn
		Linguistic Change: The Case of ji 及
		Interpretive Change: The Case of ren 人
		Conclusions
		Notes
	Chapter 2 Elision and Narration: Remembering and Forgetting in Some Recently Unearthed Historiographical Manuscripts
		The Rongchengshi
		*Xinian
		Discussion
		Conclusion
		Notes
	Chapter 3 Shaping the Historian’s Project: Language of Forgetting and Obliteration in the Shiji
		Forgetting: Salient and Undesired
		Obliteration and Creative Construction
		Transmission and “Silent” Forgetting
		Notes
	Chapter 4 The Ice of Memory and the Fires of Forgetfulness: Traumatic Recollections in the Wu Yue chunqiu
		Narrative Structures in the Wu Yue chunqiu
		King Fuchai of Wu
		King Goujian of Yue
		Conclusion
		Notes
Part II. Philosophical Writings
	Chapter 5 The Daode jing’s Forgotten Forebear: The Ancestral Cult
		I. Ritualized Forgetting and the Ancestral Cult
			A. The Orderly Sacrificing Descendants
			B. The Ancestors from Near to Far
			C. The Always-Remembered Progenitor
		II. Philosophical Forgetting and the Daode jing
		III. Establishing the Daode jing’s Paternity
			The Dead as Remembered Spirits: Daode Jing 33
			The Potential for Spirits to Fade Away: Daode Jing 39
			Moving Upward from Living Sages to Spirits to Ghosts: Chapter 60
			The Unforgotten Progenitor at the Top of the Lineage: Chapter 21
			Boring stew and the Bland Dao: Chapter 35
			The Dao and the De: Chapter 1
		Conclusion
		Notes
	Chapter 6 So Comfortable You’ll Forget You’re Wearing Them: Attention and Forgetting in the Zhuangzi and Huainanzi
		Not Remembering and Not Attending
		Attention and Forgetting in the Huainanzi
		Awareness without Forgetting
		Selective Oblivion in the Zhuangzi
		Skillfulness and Oblivion in the Zhuangzi
		Notes
	Chapter 7 The Practice of Erasing Traces in the Huainanzi
		The Trace as a Characteristic of the Myriad Beings
		Traces as Leftovers of Actions in Early China
		Traces and Their Relationship with Words and Writings
		Memory, Traces, and the Preservation of the Teachings from the Past
		The Discourse on the Tracelessness of the Way in the Zhuangzi
		The Discourse on Erasing, Covering, and Hiding Traces in the Huainanzi
		Conclusion
		Notes
	Chapter 8 The Oblivious against the Doctor: Pathologies of Remembering and Virtues of Forgetting in the Liezi
		From Forgetting the Liezi to Forgetting in the Liezi
		The Dreadful Misleadings of Memory
			Amnesia, Memory, and Longing: The Difficult Remedy of Forgetting about Forgetting
		Notes
	Chapter 9 Wang Bi and the Hermeneutics of Actualization
		A Theory on Understanding
		Hermeneutics of Actualization
		The Fishnet Allegory
		Wang Bi’s Sampling
		The Two Aspects of the Media: Enabling and Trapping
		Forgetting for Getting
		Relational Codependency
		Forget, Actualize, Remember
		Notes
Part III. Ritual and Literary Texts
	Chapter 10 Embodied Memory and Natural Forgetting in Early Chinese Ritual Theory
		The Liji as a Source on Forgetting
		The Basics of “Forgetting” (wang 忘): Destruction or Distraction?
		Embodied Memory and Physical Forgetting
		Forgetting One’s Parents
		Forgetting Origins
		Ritual as (Failed) Memory: The Threat of Forgetting the Rites
		Conclusion: The Phenomenology of Forgetting in Early Chinese Ritual Theory
		Notes
	Chapter 11 Exile and Return: Oblivion, Memory, and Nontragic Death in Tomb-Quelling Texts from the Eastern Han Dynasty
		Oblivion Materialized, Oblivion Textualized: Sources for Understanding Chinese Death Events
		Writings of Oblivion: From Erasing to Recalling
		The Spatial Layer of Oblivion: Marginalizing, Partitioning, and Revitalizing
			Marginalizing
			Partitioning
			Revitalizing
		Oblivion in Ritual Practices: Emptying and Refilling
		Conclusion
		Notes
	Chapter 12 Lost in Where We Are: Tao Yuanming on the Joys of Forgetting and the Worries of Being Forgotten
		The Tyranny of Time
		The Ecstasy of Ale and the Intoxication of Friendship
		A Place to Forget
		Conclusion
		Notes
Contributors
Index