Empire of Signs of Empire: Scale and Statehood in Chinese Culture

摘要

Roland Barthes' 1970 reading of Japan, Empire of Signs, offers a distant perspective. His unfamiliarity with local language and customs generated subtle and visually intense observations-musings on symbolism ranging from the use of chopsticks to calligraphic brushstrokes-of a world so different from his own. In this realm of images, the oriental ideogram, kanji (Chinese characters used in Japan), featured prominently. In his notes on symbolism in Japanese culture, Barthes uncovered a world of scripts that are inescapable in cities of Japan and East Asia at large. Though he wrote of an "emptiness" of meaning, what remains most impressive of Barthes' work is the titular "empire," a dispersion of visual signs and scripts, an image that has captured so well some key features of the kanji characters. Two comments should be made here: since the characters have shared roots in China, Japan, and other countries in East Asia, along with a whole realm of similar practices, Barthes' work has a broader relevance when thinking of the differences between East Asia and the West. Further, Barthes focused on culture, not relations between culture and politics. He did not explore an underlying relationship between an empire of signs and signs of empire-that is, the role a system of signs play in the construction of the state. Such a relationship is important in understanding East Asia, where the use of the characters is related to a holistic worldview and a comprehensive statehood. This essay aims to explicate this relationship in the case of China.