East Asian History - ANU

60222 "By definition, a written signature impliesthe actual or empirical non-presence of thesigner. But, it will be said, it also marks andretains his having-been present in a pastnow, which will remain a future now, andtherefore in a now in general, in thetranscendental form of nowness (maintenance).This general maintenance issomehow inscribed, stapled to presentpunctuality, always evident and alwayssingular, in the form of the signature."Jacques Derrida "Signature event context,"Margins of philosophy (Chicago, Ill.:Universiry of Chicago Press, 1982), p.328.223 Eliasberg, "Les signatures en formed'oiseau dans les manuscrits chinois deTouen-houang," p.39.LEWIS MAYOAs a 'pure' mark of power-as opposed to a 'living' bird which in somesense exists outside the political field and must be brought within it-the birdsignature seems completely obedient to the demands of authority. But it ispart of a continuum of relationships between birds and the ceremonial andornamental practices which are part and parcel of the relations of control overobjects, lives and spaces which constitute a political geography. Theconstruction of that political geography is inseparable from a transmission ofauthorized writing; signing acts are fundamental to the constitution ofgoverned space.Signature is an act which asserts its own presence, its own "nowness"(maintenance in French) 222 This attempt to create a permanent presence,and an acknowledgement of the absence of the signing power from the dayto-daygoverning acts which it supervises, is essential to the maintenance ofpower. It is a sign that authority is maintained-held in the hand (main tenirin French)-like the pen with which it makes the sign of the bird, or the hawkgrasped in the ruling fist. The supervisory power is a detached presence: itwas not present when the act of disbursement of the firewood was made, andit will not be present when the monk is travelling outside the oasis. Like allsignatures, it implicitly acknowledges its own absence (whether from the actof parcelling out bundles of tamarisk branches recorded in the reportsubmitted for approval-performed in the past-or from the journey acrossland which will occur in the future). But by signing, the authorising powerasserts that it is present, that it has been present and will be present.The right to use an abbreviated sign such as this is a privilege of power,which no longer needs a name, but can display itself with the depiction ofa bird, instantly recognizable.223 The ornamental ceremonial mark of the birdsignature denotes the intersection of symbolic and material power, not onlyin the construction of avian lives by social structures, but in the productionof the forms of spatial domination that constitute political geography. Birdsare historically embedded in the relations that exist between ruling hands andthe territories and lives they rule, especially through the ceremonial relationswhich join spaces and people together. An avian signature may seem to bea bird only in the most abstract and symbolic way. But this mark is not simplyarbitrary: it belongs to a continuum of spatial and political relationshipswhich, taken together, map out a history of Guiyi jun birds and theirengagement with the hand of power.Birds and Imperial Rule in Medieval EurasiaIn the lands surrounding the Guiyi jun, political conflicts continued tounfold around the bodies of birds through the tenth century and beyond. Asnoted, a white falcon was presented in 933 by the Ganzhou Uyghurs to theemperor Mingzong of the Latter Tang, a dynasty founded by Shatuo 19>Wt;Turks. The bird was set free, an action designated with one of the most potent