Fate, Agency, and the Economy of Desire in Chinese Ritual and Society

Abstract

For many Western observers, Chinese religion and cosmology appear rife with contradictions, among them the recurrent motif in literature and myth of preordination or fate, on the one hand, and a relentless attempt, through ritual means, to discern, control, or change fate, on the other. This article argues that the obsession with fate and luck is best comprehended with reference to desire understood as a human universal. Underlying one's hope to control the future lies a psychologically more fundamental wish to claim ownership of one's being. I argue that fate and luck are operators in a symbolic economy that implicitly posits what Freud terms the 'omnipotence of thoughts'. Moreover, if the underlying principle of Chinese notions of fate and luck can be termed an 'economy of desire', it is a principle that also coordinates and encompasses Chinese patriliny, family dynamics, and wider collective institutions.

Reframing and Reconceptualising Gambling tourism in Macau as a Chinese Pilgrimage

“…More broadly, the study draws us away from euro-centric studies that point to gamblers distain of rituals (Shalin, 2016) and its characterisation as sterile and unproductive. While Huizinga (1955, p. 13) argues that gambling was dispensable to culture, given it is 'connected with no material interest, and no profit can be gained by it', the study argues that this is not true within Chinese society where fate and fate control is manifest in liminal conditions (Langer, 1975;Leung & Bond, 2004;Presson & Benassi, 1996;Sangren, 2012) and where gamblers are not seen in pejorative terms. Future research should explore other pilgrimages in China at the centre of (geopolitical) conflict (Zhang, 2017) and as they manifest as more controlled political pilgrimages (Li & Hu, 2008).…”

Chinese Eight Signs Prediction

“…3. The issue of determinism in the Chinese conception of fate has been much debated (Harrell 1987;Sangren 2012). Although various theoretical schools have developed over time, the general opinion is that fate can be slightly changed through a combination of moral efforts and adaptation based on knowledge derived from fate-calculation.…”

The Demon Child and His Modern Fate: Reconstructing the Nezha Myth in Animated Fabulation

“…This existential act of choosing to either resist or bow to the immutability of fate (ming), a recurrent motif in Chinese folk ideology (Harrell, 1987;Hatfield, 2002;Lupke, 2005), cuts to the core of the Chinese Nezha myth. Sangren (2012) shares Richard J Smith's (1991: 14) observation that 'a profound ambivalence regarding human destiny' appears in the Chinese view of life with persistent tensions between 'what is predestined and what was subject to human control', and further outlines it as 'the apparent contradiction between fate as predetermination and agency' (Sangren, 2012: 123). Such ambivalence, accumulated around the Chinese acceptance of fate as well as their strong anti-fatalist endeavour, is noted as 'a constitutive element in the imagination of cultural and national identity' (Lupke, 2005: 323).…”