"I Write, Therefore I am:" Scribes, Literacy, and Identity in Early China

Armin Selbitschka (Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich)
NYU Shanghai Early China Lecture Series

In their article “Literacy and Identity,” Elizabeth Moje and Alan Luke recently stated that “texts and the literate practices that accompany them not only reflect but may also produce the self. Moreover, some have also argued that texts can be used as tools for enacting identities in social settings” (Reading Research Quarterly 44.4 (2009): 415-37, here 416). Considering the multitude of various manuscripts that come to light in quite a few 4th through 1st centuries BCE tombs, such arguments seem pertinent for early Chinese society as well. What does it say about the self-concept of an individual when his – so far, manuscripts are exclusive to male burials – ability to write and / or read assumed a prominent role in funerary rites?

This is the main question I am going to pursue in my talk. It will discuss evidence of literacy and the skill of writing that may be found in transmitted and excavated Chinese literary sources as well as tombs of the late pre-imperial and early imperial period. I will apply concepts such as personal and social identity developed in the social sciences to Chinese funerary data available through published reports. Throughout the paper I am not only going to argue that the actual ability to write is palpable through certain kinds of texts that were associated with writing paraphernalia, but that literacy in particular was a crucial aspect of the self-representation of a very specific group of people: the shǐ 史 (“scribes”).