The iconic performativity of Chinese mantic diagrams

Abstract

The article traces and discusses the philosophically significant consequences of the rootedness of the ancient Chinese thought in the original iconicity of Chinese hieroglyphic writing. The phenomenon of performativity is investigated on the Chinese material. In the course of the study, a fundamental methodological difference between performative statements and performative declarations is introduced. In light of the proposed difference, a pronounced performative declarativeness of the famous Confucian concept of zhengming (“correcting of names”) is revealed. This rarely studied aspect of the “correcting of names” should not be confused with the currently well-known performative naming implied by the setting to zhengming. The main result of the proposed methodological distinctions and exegetical analysis is the identification of the non-verbal prototype of the concept of zhengming (the hexagram “Family”). The paradigmatic nature of the prototype of the hexagram graphics in relation to the verbal formulation, which endows the performative status of the original visual image with the verbal explication of this image, allows the author to generalize this particular observation to the fundamental final hypothesis according to which the performative effectiveness of the word is secondary in comparison with the initial performativity of the mantic diagrammatism.