英文摘要 |
Unlike the majority of recent studies on fengshui, I argue in this paper that it should not be treated simply as a textual phenomenon. Fengshui is foremost a spatial practice with an intention to produce a dwelling site for the living or the deceased. It employs complicated symbols and schemes from classical Chinese cosmological thought, but itself is not a Chinese cosmology or conception of nature. Its operations include setting boundaries and centering subjectivities, and thus it is subjected to political maneuvering and involves the personal psychological dynamics of the parties involved. The debate within Chinese anthropology over whether the treatment of ancestral bodies in fengshui is mechanical or personal has confused fengshui practice with fengshui theory. Fengshui theory deals only with the world of ’nature,’ but a fengshui master needs to operate with a multi-dimensional view of the world in practice. Fengshui practices are often fragmentary, dispersed and self-centered, and thus potentially subversive. However, they should not be interpreted as an alternative tradition of knowledge parallel to state rationalism or monolithic moralism. I use the example of the city building of Kavalan in nineteenth century Taiwan to illustrate how both local government and local people deployed fengshui to organize and re-organize colonial space. The dualistic dynamic between domination and subversion in the fengshui practices was manifest at the level of consciousness and visual orientation, not at the level of social and political structure. Using fengshui practices from three contemporary fengshui masters in urban Taiwan as examples, I demonstrate how the forms of fengshui continue to adapt and transform in a fast-growing and land-scarce environment. As new spatial arrangements and diversified subjectivities emerge within the household, fengshui has become more personalized and more abstract. Finally, I offer some reflections on the continuous popularity of fengshui and its emergence as a cross-cultural phenomenon. |