Confucius the untouchable: on the semiotics of historization

Abstract

Abstract The present paper focuses on the semiotics of historization, that is, of “narration as history” and provides a meta-analysis of the semiotic modeling of Confucius as a case in point. I argue that the personage who has come to be known as Confucius has existed and can only exist, without exception, in multiple forms of sociocultural representation and interpretation that are natural results of distinct modeling processes. These forms compose the immediate realities of Confucius for us and the very foundation upon which any further discussions about Confucius, his disciples, and their thoughts and lives are even possible in the first place. This treatment reminds us of how easily we can fall victim to the objective illusion and the confusion of understanding and axiology that Mieke Bal has rightly cautioned against. Moreover, the paper is by no means intended to be a revisionist or nihilistic denial of the historicity of Confucius, but rather an attempt to underscore the central and fundamental role that modeling systems about historical figures play in historization as human sociocultural and cognitive practice. In this sense, the case of Confucius serves as an instance, a specimen, a sign, which is extensible to any other historical figures.