OK, this might be a stretch, but I see a connection….

    For those of you following the Oscar’s (and that does not really include me), you know already that the "best song" award went to a hip-hop tune named, "It’s hard out here for a pimp."  I have never heard this song before but I can understand, from what I have read, the paradox of its popularity: it has an infectious beat but a lyric that seems to celebrate a social ill (prostitution in this case).  It reminds me of the unsettling effect of the Suzanne Vega tune, Luka, from the 80’s.  But I digress.

    I mention the pimp song because Philip Kennicott had a great piece in today’s Washington Post about the ways in which elements of African-American culture get picked up and assimilated into White-American culture.  This is not news, of course: just ask the black precursors of Elvis Presley.  But Kennnicott does a great job demonstrating how the term "pimp" has come to mean something more than the man who manages prostitutes ("pimp my ride") as well as how the use of the term in the context of the song is designed as a spoof on unjustified complaint (rather like "it’s not easy being beautiful"):

Perhaps the line has resonance because so much of American political
discourse is about determining who is allowed to feel properly
aggrieved. Is it Muslims offended about sacrilegious cartoons, or
defenders of free speech seeing their high holy delimited? Daytime talk
radio has essentially evolved into a vast trading floor for the
commodity of complaint. And slowly we drift to a new understanding of
the basic social contract: Your liberty ends where my outrage begins.

A
pimp complaining that "It’s hard out here" has, in a single outrageous
leap, passed by the issue of whether he has any right to grievance, and
is demanding — so shamelessly that it’s funny — all the perks and
merits of someone who legitimately feels wronged.

     I raise this here because what Kennicott is talking about is a problem of translation: how to take an image or idea from one context, which provides it with specific meaning and resonance, and transfer it to another context, in which contextual referents are lost.  I see a similar problem with the modernist, and post-modernist, Confucian project.

     Please remember: I do not consider myself a modernizing, or even post-modernizing, Confucian.  I am simply sympathetic to the project of adapting Confucian ideas, some of which are compelling and beautiful, to these different cultural contexts.  Just like moving the term "pimp" from an African-American to a White-American setting, how can we move concepts from an ancient Chinese to a contemporary American milieu?

    I think Kennicott’s piece is helpful.  In a sense, he is telling us not to get hung up on the literal meaning of "pimp," but think about its penumbral connotations.  It’s hard out here trying to complain about something I have no right to complain about so get off my back… The sentiment is captured so neatly and crisply in the term "pimp." 

   To carry over this sensibility to the adaptation of Confucian ideas to modern (postmodern) America (or China, for that matter), we should not get too caught up in the literal, classical, ancient meanings of terms like "ritual."  That term carried with it, for Confucius himself, a very specific set of understandings about proper behavior, albeit with a certain flexibility to adapt to particular circumstances.  When Confucius and Mencius said that a son was supposed to maintain a three year mourning period, they meant three years, not two, not two and a half.  And that is simply impossible to do these days.  Which could lead us to conclude that it is just impossible to be, in any meaningful way, a Confucian now.

    I think this is wrong.  The broader meaning, or spirit, of "ritual" is the daily performance of meaningful actions that express and embody our commitment and love to those closest to us, and which then cascade outward to our respectful relations with others we encounter.  A careful reader of the Analects, like Finagrette, can find Confucian ritual in an good, old American hand-shake: it is a specific act which represents respect of others.  We could add to the list of ritual performances our daily duties to our families, our co-workers, our friends.  And what matters most is out thoughtful attention to these relationships.  Ritual is not an end in itself, it is means of building and reproducing the web or social relations that allows us to create humaneness in the world. 

    Of course, when you say "ritual" in a contemporary American, you are almost certainly going to elicit a blank stare, a sense of rigid, meaningless formality.  That is not what Confucius had in mind, but it is the reality of the linguistic connotations of the term.

   What is the moral of this story?  Don’t be literal.  When you hear the men singing about "pimps," it is about more than just pimps.  And when you hear modern-day Confucians talking about "ritual," it does not necessarily mean what you think it does…