Today in discussion class, Liu Ping’s paper, which he will be presenting next week, came up. He wants to write on “wilderness and flesh,” attempting an environmental-philosophical reading of Merleau-Ponty’s later philosophy. It sounds very interesting.
This important concept in Merleau-Ponty’s later philosophy is usually translated as “flesh,” but Liu Ping said this translation is not good, because it misses a great deal of meaning. But don’t be like Liu Zhe: since we are using Chinese to do phenomenological thinking, rather than working as mere scholars of texts—and foreign scholars of texts at that—to do philological research, of course we should still ultimately translate these concepts. Even if some meaning is lost, that is unavoidable.
At the time I said, just translate it as “fresh meat.” But now that I think about it, perhaps “blood and flesh” would be better. Of course, if the point is not to elaborate but simply to introduce Merleau-Ponty, then “flesh” should be enough. But if it were up to me to coin a term, “raw meat” would probably be better.
I have not read much Merleau-Ponty, nor do I intend to expound Merleau-Ponty; what follows is just the wordplay I am indulging in myself.
In English, flesh is distinguished from meat, the latter referring specifically to meat that can be eaten—meat in the kitchen or on the table—whereas flesh mainly refers to the meat on a living organism. Meat stands in contrast to vegetables, flesh to bones. In Chinese these two things are both simply the character rou, and indeed that is hard to translate. But Chinese, in a certain sense, is more fine-grained: blood and flesh, muscle, raw meat, fresh meat, cooked meat, smoked meat, and so on—“meat” has many more forms.
So then, if “nature” is “meat,” what kind of meat is it? In my view, from Greece onward, “nature” in the classical world was a piece of “raw meat,” whereas from Francis Bacon onward, “nature” became a piece of “bacon” (smoked meat).
When we speak of “raw meat,” we generally mean raw meat rather than flesh. Indeed, raw meat is opposed to cooked meat, and in general refers to meat that has not been processed but can be eaten after processing. But the “blood and flesh” moving within the body, not yet severed from the living organism, is generally not yet called “raw meat.” Yet should not what is called “nature” be that living blood and flesh? Not necessarily. In fact, when the ancient Greek concept of “nature” emerged, it was understood as the opposite of “artifice”; “nature” in fact referred to what was “unprocessed,” rich in potential, and grows of itself.
The Chinese character sheng contains at least three layers of meaning: first, it refers to things that are unprocessed and original; second, it refers to things that grow and are alive; third, it refers to things that are unfamiliar, strange, not well known or not skillfully mastered. These three layers also happen to be contained within “nature.” First, nature stands opposed to artificial cultivation, and is original and wild; second, nature is endlessly self-renewing and full of life; finally, nature is untamed, not familiar to human grasp or skillfully brought under control.
By the modern period, however, these three original connotations of nature as raw meat were broken apart one by one, and that raw meat did not merely become cooked meat, but became bacon.
First, the boundary between nature and artifice was broken down. Nature entered the laboratory, raw meat entered the kitchen, and after layer upon layer of carefully controlled artificial processing, after being seasoned with all kinds of spices, we still point to bacon and say: this is a piece of fresh meat.
Second, although classical nature may already have been severed from the living body, it probably still retained traces of blood and gave off the breath of life. But after repeated transformations such as curing and smoking, bacon—especially bacon in a can—becomes merely a matter of weight and texture, and no longer reveals even a hint of vitality.
Finally, raw meat possesses rich possibilities, while at the same time being difficult to control and easily spoiled. Smoked meat, by contrast, has had its moisture squeezed out, its flavor regulated, and it is easy to store and ready at any time; you need not worry that it tastes odd, and even less that it will spoil quickly, but when you eat it, there will be no surprise either.
But in what sense, exactly, does this revolutionized new view of nature still refer to “nature,” rather than something entirely different? On the one hand, we can trace it back to its sources and examine the continuous historical process from raw meat to bacon; on the other hand, we will find that even bacon that has been deeply processed cannot completely eliminate its connection to “raw meat.” Bacon is still “meat.” Even if modern children may mistakenly think that bacon comes from the supermarket or the factory, at bottom it still ultimately comes from living, kicking pigs; those dirty little pigs are hidden from view in the modern metropolis, but if we are willing to trace things back to their source, we can still find them—although their situation has become more tightly controlled, they are still alive. Now, although we are far removed from nature as raw meat, even through the laboratory-polished “bacon-nature” that has been altered beyond recognition, if we trace things back to their source, they ultimately still derive from the same nature as life.
And our mission is not to restore fully cooked bacon back into raw meat; that is utterly impossible. Nor do we need to throw away bacon, let alone live on raw flesh and drink blood. We simply cannot be satisfied with merely having bacon to eat; and even less can we naively believe that bacon comes from the supermarket.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
Leave a Reply