by Chen Jack W
menclature that was inherited by all successive dynasties in Chinese his-
tory and describing a system of naming that would only be implemented
in the Qin. The passage reads:
The king said, “Remove ‘Great’ and adopt ‘August’; and taking the title of the-
archs from high antiquity, We shall be called ‘August Thearch’ [ huangdi].44 The rest shall be as proposed.” He issued an edict that said, “It is permitted.” Following this, he honored [his late father] King Zhuangxiang by making him ‘Great
Superior [or Former] August’. He issued an edict that said, “We have heard that
in great antiquity there were titles but no posthumous names, and in middle an-
tiquity there were titles, and after death, posthumous names were given according
—————
43. It is not entirely clear who the three huang figures described here are, though the choice of tian 天, di 地, and tai 太 as descriptive modifiers suggest some relationship to the deities Heaven, Earth, and Taiyi 太一. This is the theory put forth in Gu Jiegang and Yang Xiangkui, Sanhuang kao, pp. 17–19. This work has been reprinted in Gu Jiegang gushi lunwenji, vol. 3, pp. 1–253. There is possibly also some correlation to the sanhuang 三
皇, the Three Augusts, who are sometimes named as Fuxi 伏羲, Shennong 神農, and the
Yellow Thearch or Suiren 燧人, depending upon the source.
44. I use the literal translation of “August Thearch” here only to emphasize the theological origins of the term huangdi. In the rest of the monograph I will use the more conventional
“First Emperor,” or simply “Qin Shihuang.”
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On Sovereignty and Representation
67
to one’s comport. If this is so, it would be the son judging the father or subjects
judging their sovereign; it is utterly unspeakable, and We will not adopt it. From
now on, We eliminate the practice of posthumous names. We shall be the First
August Thearch. Later generations will be numbered in order, from second to
third and onwards for ten thousand generations, transmitting it without end.
王曰：“去‘泰’，著‘皇’，采上古‘帝’位號，號曰‘皇帝’。他如議。”制
曰：“可。”追尊莊襄王為太上皇。制曰：“朕聞太古有號毋謚，中
古有號，死而以行為謚。如此，則子議父，臣議君也，甚無謂，朕弗
取焉。自今已來，除謚法。朕為始皇帝。後世以計數，二世三世至于
萬世，傳之無窮。”45
The change of nomenclature and self-reference may seem a cosmetic mat-
ter, merely part of the ideological superstructure, especially in comparison
to the sweeping transformations in the political and economic spheres.
Nevertheless, this was also Qin Shihuang’s first act upon achieving unifi-
cation, which underlines the importance that he placed upon the power
of representation. The nature of the change has to do with the linguistic
ontology of the sovereign. As previous scholars have noted, by assuming
the title huangdi, Qin Shihuang is claiming, through his achievements, to
have attained the status of the sagely god-kings of the ancient past.46 This
claim is then reinforced by the sacralization of the words that describe his
utterances, so that his orders are no longer simply the ming 命 and ling 令
issued by lesser authorities, but the singular zhi 制 and zhao 詔 that only the huangdi, the “August Thearch,” may speak. Most striking here is the
arrogation of the first-person pronoun zhen 朕, which had been used
freely as a pronoun in earlier periods, but is now restricted for imperial
usage.47 By converting the general pronoun zhen into the exclusive impe-
rial pronoun, Qin Shihuang is pointing to the singularity of the sovereign
—————
45. Shi ji, 6.236. For my translation, I have consulted Watson, trans., Records of the Grand Historian: Qin Dynasty, pp. 42–43.
46. See Bodde, “State and Empire of Ch’in,” pp. 53–54; Zhou Liangxiao, Huangdi yu huangquan, pp. 3–5; Puett, Ambivalence of Creation, pp. 142–43; and Lewis, Early Chinese Empires, p. 52.
47. For example, zhen is used as a first-person pronoun in the “Li sao” 離騷 (“Encountering Sorrow”), the poem traditionally attributed to Qu Yuan 屈原 (ca. 340–278 bc). It is worth noting, as a consequence, that there has been at least one theory attributing the authorship of “Li sao” to Qin Shihuang. This was proposed by the classicist Liao Ping 寥平
(1852–1932) in an unpublished work; it is discussed in Xie Wuliang, Chu ci xinlun, pp. 12–
13.
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68
On Sovereignty and Representation
within the shared realm of discourse. Whereas all other first-person pro-
nouns are the common property, so to speak, of the linguistic community,
no other speaking subject may inhabit the role of the emperor; this is a
subjectivity and a linguistic perspective that is the sole right of the em-
peror.48
What the First Emperor is doing with his rhetorical innovations is
nothing short of reimagining the nature of sovereign authority. If the
Zhou kings were invested with sovereign power as the Sons of Heaven, as
the hieratic intermediaries between the celestial and the human realms,
then the First Emperor is rejecting any external source of authority by
claiming that he is himself a god-king. This is further born out by the Qin
emperor’s attempt to eliminate the posthumous titles ( shi 謚) that evalu-
ated the ruler’s reign, under the guise that this was an unfilial or disloyal
act. What he decrees instead is that he shall be henceforth known as “Qin
Shihuang,” as the “First Emperor” of a dynastic house that will extend to
ten thousand generations. No distinction in character or personality will
be made between emperors; rather, each emperor will only be known by
his place in the line of succession. With this innovation, the First Em-
peror is both claiming that he is the originary source ( shi 始) of imperial
authority and that each successive ruler is simply the most recent avatar of
the founding emperor.
The political theology of the First Emperor follows from the logic of
auxēsis, which I borrow from the classical Western rhetorical tradition.
Auxēsis (or incrementum in Latin) is one of the major tropes of rhetorical amplification and is often used to lend a sense of grandeur to the person
or object being amplified through superlative hyperbole.49 Thus, a gallant
man becomes a “prince” or a virtuous man a “saint.” For the First Em-
peror, of course, the nature of this self-amplifying claim is literal, not
metaphorical, but its tropology is recognizably the same, deriving from an
identically disproportionate leap upwards in scale. It is not surprising that
later in his reign, the First Emperor would seek to further his auxetic
—————
48. It is interesting that first-person pronouns indicate the singular person who is speaking but are themselves devoid of any singularity. See Benveniste, “Nature of Pronouns,” in Problems in General Linguistics, pp. 217–22.
49. In De institutio oratoria, Quintilian refers to auxēsis by the L
atin name of incrementum.
See his discussion in The Institutio Oratoria of Quintilian, VIII.iv.1–9.
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On Sovereignty and Representation
69
claim over the political structure by, in fact, becoming an immortal, leav-
ing behind all the vulnerabilities of mere men. The Shi ji relates a conver-
sation between the First Emperor and a fangshi named Master Lu 盧生,
who was sent to find magical herbs or fungi of immortality. Master Lu re-
ported that something seems to have been impeding the attempt to secure
immortality for the First Emperor, and pointed out that, “In the esoteric
arts, it is said that a ruler of men should always conceal his movements in
order to avoid evil demons. If evil demons are avoided, then the state of a
‘True Man’ can be attained” 方中，人主時為微行以辟惡鬼，惡鬼
辟，真人至.50 The fangshi thus recommended that the emperor conceal
all his activities and movements within the palace, so that the herbs of
immortality could be secured. The account goes on to state:
Thereupon the First Emperor said, “I desire to be a True Man; I will call myself
‘True Man’ and not use the pronoun zhen.” And so he ordered that, within the two hundred li area of the Xianyang region, the two hundred and seventy palaces and towers be connected by two-tiered walkways and walled roads. He filled
the place with curtains, musical instruments, and beautiful women, each assigned
a place and not allowed to move from it. When he was paying a visit to a woman,
if there was someone who spoke of where he was, the penalty would be death.
於是始皇曰：“吾慕真人，自謂‘真人’，不稱‘朕’。”乃令咸陽之旁二
百里內宮觀二百七十復道甬道相連，帷帳鍾鼓美人充之，各案署不移
徙。行所幸，有言其處者，罪死。51
In the Zhuangzi, the figure of the zhenren 真人 is one who has attained perfect naturalness; he is at ease with all things and thereby can be called
zhen 真, meaning “genuine” or “authentic.” Therefore, the True Man does
not draw distinctions or resist the natural course of transformations, and
in particular, does not fear the onset of death, which is simply one trans-
formation among many. This is a strange ideal for the First Emperor,
whose own stated desires had little to do with the discourse of naturalness,
but instead was very much motivated through his fear of death.
—————
50. The earliest surviving appearance of the term zhenren is in the Zhuangzi. See Guo Qingfan, ed. and annot., Zhuangzi jishi, 6.226. Also see Coyle, “On the Zhenren,” pp. 197–
210.
51. Shi ji, 6.257. Also translated in Watson, Records of the Grand Historian: Qin Dynasty, pp. 56–57.
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70
On Sovereignty and Representation
At the same time, however, while the ideal of the zhenren replaces that
of the huangdi in the First Emperor’s desires, the two concepts are linked
by their auxetic logics. One might say that the shift from the imperial
zhen to the immortal zhenren is the completion of a thought, rather than a digression or reversal. To be a zhenren, as the fangshi explains, is to leave no bodily trace of one’s movements, and yet it is to be everywhere at once.
That is, the First Emperor’s precise location as he circulates through the
capital cannot be determined as he is concealed by the curtains and musi-
cal performances, and if no one knows where he is precisely, his presence
thus permeates the entire architectural edifice of the capital—effectively
becoming the animating spirit of the capital itself. Though the ultimate
goal of the First Emperor may have been to transcend his political identity
as emperor and to assume the role of immortal, what actually takes place
is a more interesting grafting of the discourse of immortality onto that of
imperial power. The First Emperor does transcend his mortal frame, but
not through an elixir or herbal concoction. What he becomes, following
the prescription of self-concealment, is the negation of all that is fallible in
the emperor’s personal body. Having rendered undetectable the body
natural, the First Emperor has become an absolute body politic, which, as
a metaphor for the institution of sovereignty, is immortal.
The failure of the First Emperor to maintain this absolute body is well
known, and the desire to win immortality would lead the emperor to his
own death. The Shi ji goes on to relate:
The master of esoteric arts Xu Fu and others went to sea to seek out the divine
herbs, but after several years they had not gotten any and their expenses had been
great. Fearing execution, they lied, saying, “The herbs of Penglai could have been
gotten except for the constant harrying of a great leviathan-fish; it was for this
reason that we have not succeeded. We would like to request a skilled archer to
accompany us, so when we meet it, he will be able to shoot it with his arbalest.”
The First Emperor dreamt that he was battling with the sea-god, who had a per-
son’s appearance. He asked an oneiromancer, who said, “The water-god cannot
be seen; it will manifest itself as a great fish or hornless dragon. At present Your Highness performs sacrifices with zeal and diligence, and yet there are these evil
spirits. You have to dispel them so that the good spirits may arrive.” And so he
ordered those going out to sea to take implements for catching enormous fish.
He himself took an arbalest to wait for the great fish to emerge so he could shoot
it. He went north from Langye, reaching Mt. Rongcheng, but did not see any-
thing. Arriving at Zhifu, he saw some enormous fish; he shot and killed one of
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On Sovereignty and Representation
71
them. He followed the sea westward, and reaching Pingyuan Ford, he became
sick.
方士徐市等入海求神藥，數歲不得，費多，恐譴，乃詐曰：“蓬萊藥
可得，然常為大鮫魚所苦，故不得至。願請善射與俱，見則以連弩射
之。”始皇夢與海神戰，如人狀。問占夢，博士曰：“水神不可見，
以大魚蛟龍為候。今上禱祠備謹，而有此惡神，當除去，而善神可
致。”乃令入海者齎捕巨魚具，而自以連弩候大魚出射之。自琅邪北
至榮成山，弗見。至之罘，見巨魚，射殺一魚。遂並海西，至平原津
而病。52
In what follows, the First Emperor sickens and dies, and to prevent word
of his death from leaking out prematurely, his returning corpse is covered
with dried fish to mask the scent of its decay. The First Emperor’s dream
of battle with the sea-god seems to seep into his waking life, so that his fi-
nal days are pervaded by a dream-logic. The killing of the leviathan, which
the First Emperor takes as the physical form of the sea-god, leads to the
emperor’s own sickening and death, as if the leviatha
n had been the dou-
ble of the emperor. Emperor and leviathan are then reunited in the dried
fish that conceal the smell of the rotting corpse. While this strange con-
clusion to the First Emperor’s reign has traditionally been taken as evi-
dence of his utter folly in seeking divinization, it is also possible to read
his death as confirming his potential divinity, as the inadvertent suicide of
the zhenren who fails to recognize his spiritual double and alterior body.53
An interest in imperial self-divinization would return with the reign of
Han Wudi, whose fascination with achieving immortality was further
abetted by the rhapsodic works of Sima Xiangru 司馬相如 (179–117 bc).
Of particular importance in this regard is “Rhapsody on the Great Man”
大人賦, which takes the shamanic journey of cosmological mastery the-
matized in the Chu ci 楚辭 ( Lyrics of Chu) and transforms it into a paean to the divine power of the sovereign.54 When Sima Xiangru presented the
work, “the Son of Heaven was greatly delighted and had the giddy sensa-
tion of soaring among the clouds, as if filled with the intention to go
roaming between Heaven and Earth” 天子大說，飄飄有凌雲之氣，
—————
52. Shi ji, 6.263–64. Also see Watson, Records of the Grand Historian: Qin Dynasty, pp.
61–62.
53. On this, see Dean and Massumi, First and Last Emperors, p. 62.
54. For a detailed discussion of this work, see Hervouet, Un Poète du cour sous les Han, pp.
288–302. Also see Puett, To Become a God, pp. 241–42.
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72
On Sovereignty and Representation
似游天地之閒意.55 Wudi saw himself much as the First Emperor had,
and he accordingly surrounded himself with practitioners of esoteric arts,
who promised to realize his fantasies of corporeal immortality and so be-
come a god upon the earth. As with the First Emperor, the form of im-
mortality that interested Wudi was not the transformation of the mate-
rial body into spirit, but rather the eternal perpetuation of the body’s