The Human Seriousness of Interality: An East Asian Take

China Media Research, 11(2), 2015 http://www.chinamediaresearch.net

http://www.chinamediaresearch.net 93 [email protected]

The Human Seriousness of Interality: An East Asian Take

Peter Zhang

Grand Valley State University, USA

Abstract: This article examines the Chinese sensibility and, to a lesser extent, the Japanese and South Korean

sensibilities, through the lens of “interality,” and reveals the rich senses of the term while doing so. It makes a case

for an interality-oriented Weltanschauung by marshaling a wide range of textual and praxial evidences.

[Peter Zhang. The Human Seriousness of Interality: An East Asian Take. China Media Research 2015; 11(2):93-103]. 10

Keywords: Interality, interology, I Ching, Confucius, Laozi, Zhuangzi, Chan/Zen Buddhism, ma, McLuhan,

Deleuze

Introduction

“Interology” (间性论) is the study of “interality” (

间性, pronounced as “jianxing”) or betweenness. It sees

the interzone or zone of proximity as the space of

possibilities and transformations and the locus of ethics.

Both terms were coined by Dr. Geling Shang, the

Chinese-American philosopher. The hyphen here

betokens an interological mode of being, which has

served as the existential ground to motivate, inspire

(literally, give breath, energy, and spirit to), inform, and

nourish this line of inquiry. As such, the etymology of

the term “interality” is necessarily interlingual. Its

English origin is “intersubjectivity” (主体间性). For

one well versed in the Chinese philosophical tradition,

“inter” is more essential than “subjectivity.” Logically

and chronologically, it precedes “subjectivity,” rather

than the other way around. As a philosophical concept,

“interality” is much more inclusive than

“intersubjectivity.” It captures the gist of the Chinese

sensibility. The Chinese eye, for example, has a

predilection for what is in between.1

The Chinese origin of “interality” is “ 閒 ”

(pronounced as “jian”), which later on took the form of

“間” and finally got simplified as “间.” The word “閒”

is an ideograph made up of a moon inside a door. The

explanation offered by Xu Kai (徐锴) captures the sense

of the ideograph the best: “The door is closed at night. It

is closed but one can see moonlight. For there is an

interval” (“門夜閉。閉而見月光, 是有閒�也”). “閒”

literally means an interval. The Chinese words for time

(时间) and space (空间) both have “间” in it. Used as a

verb, “閒” means to create a gap in between (as in “间苗,” meaning “thinning out seedlings”), or to alienate

(as in “离间”). When pronounced as “xian,” with a

rising tone, “閒” means leisure, an unoccupied period of

time, or time to play, which is still an interval – a

temporal interval. The simplified form is “闲.”

In Japan, “間” is recognized as the kanji for ma (ま), which is a concept pivotal to almost all realms of

Japanese culture, including architecture, calligraphy,

sumi-e (ink wash painting, or “墨絵”), jūdō, gardening,

flower arrangement, Noh theater, and so on. A good

sense of ma is precisely what distinguishes superior

artists (including martial artists) from mediocre ones.

Ma has been translated variously as interval, space,

spacing, and negative space, etc. For our purposes, ma

is a special permutation of interality. Interestingly, the

kanji for human being is “人間,” which literally means

“in the midst of humans.” The implication is that to be

human is to be with or in the midst of others in the

world, which is to say our being is defined by interality.

In English, there are a long list of words that fall

within the semantic field of interality, such as

betweenness (once I even coined the interlingual hybrid

“zwischenness” to mean the same thing), hiatus, lacuna,

the missing link (which was the greatest discovery of

the nineteenth century), medium, milieu, environment,

mediator (especially as used by Gilles Deleuze),

trickster (e.g., Hermes, Old Man Coyote, as presented

by Lewis Hyde), Sabbath, carnival, play, leeway,

liminality (one of Victor Turner’s signature terms),

hybridity, relationality, guanxi, mutuality, reciprocity,

synergy, resonance, apposition, juxtaposition,

counterpoint (as used by Jakob von Uexküll),

doppelgänger, dilemma, and “and.” Morphologically

speaking, there are entire groups of words that have to

do with interality, including those that start with “inter”

(such as interval, interplay, interface, interstice,

interruption, interregnum, interzone, interdiction,

interlude, intermezzo, intertextuality, interflow,

interanimation, intercourse, interdependence,

intergenerationality, intermediary, Internet), those that

start with “con,” “com,” “co,” “sym” “syn” (such as

configuration, conspire, consonance, concoction,

communion, communication, compassion, com-

promise, commerce, coexistence, co-presence,

cooperation, coincidence, symbiosis, sympathy,

symphony, synchronicity), those that start with “cross,”

http://www.chinamediaresearch.net/


mailto:[email protected]



“trans” (such as cross-fertilization, transformation,

transaction, translation – including the translation of

swordsmanship into calligraphy and the latter into

martial arts), those that start with “re” (such as

repurpose, reiterate), those that have “ar” in it (such as

art, articulation, harmony, arthritis), and a lot more. In

French, there are words like entrepreneur (which

literally means a middleman or intermediary). In

German, there are words like Zusammenschauen (a con-

tuitive view), and Mitsein (Being-with), etc.

Many figures of speech rely on interality to work,

such as metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, pun, parody

(which is a special kind of allusion), oxymoron (e.g.,

trained incapacity, learned ignorance, educated

blindness), paradox, irony (e.g., The Colbert Report:

“My great grandfather did not come here from Ireland

to see his country overrun by immigrants”), hendiadys,

couplet, repetition, parallelism, analogy, alliteration (the

Chinese equivalent being “双声 ”), and rhyme (the

Chinese equivalents being “押韵” and “叠韵”). All is to

suggest that issues of interality have always been

deemed as noteworthy in the English-speaking world,

and, I’d assume, in the West at large.

Western attention to interality, however, has for a

long time presupposed, and therefore, been secondary to

and constrained by, an entity- or object-orientation. The

assumption is that preformed entities and objects – and

subjects, too – precede interality. Marshall McLuhan

would say that this peculiar Western bias is not

ahistorical. Rather, it is a symptom of the ascendance of

the phonetic alphabet as a dominant medium of

communication, the effect of which has been intensified

by the printing press and then gradually eroded and

dispelled by electric, electronic, and digital

technologies. As McLuhan and Zingrone (1995) put it:

“The age-old conflict between the Eastern integrity of

the interval and the Western integrity of the object is

being resolved in oral culture” (p. 208). That is to say,

there has been an Orientalization of Western thinking in

the age of postliteracy or secondary orality. Interality as

an orientation has been rediscovered by prescient

Western thinkers such as Jakob von Uexküll, Martin

Buber, Martin Heidegger, Mikhail Bakhtin, Kenneth

Burke, McLuhan, Edward T. Hall, Alan W. Watts,

Victor Turner, Vilém Flusser, Deleuze, Paul Virilio,

Lewis Hyde, and Bruno Latour, etc. Furthermore,

Gestalt theory, field theory, and modern physics all

display an interological orientation one way or another.

This article treats of interality as a polysemous

term, explores its rich permutations, and articulates their

ethical implications. The argument is that a

thoroughgoing interological orientation is more

serviceable and “ethical” (i.e., life enhancing) than an

entity or object orientation. Since there is a polyphony

of voices to orchestrate in this exploration, the article

adopts a nomadic, rhapsodic, rhizomatic textual

strategy, which more or less enacts the interological

orientation. As such, “He who walks with me shall walk

from crest to crest: You will need very long legs,” to

borrow Nietzsche’s formulation. Due to space

limitations, the article will be no more than a fast-paced

montage, a catalyst for further explorations. It will focus

on manifestations of interality in East Asian cultures

(especially Chinese culture), touching upon Western

permutations of the concept only where the flow of

textual energy makes such digressions seem natural.

Interality as a Default Emphasis in East Asian

Cultures

The Chinese mind has always been preoccupied

with the interplay between “things.” It’s the interplay

that makes things what they are. When the interplay

changes, things are no longer the same. From the very

beginning, “thingness” has been grasped as an effect of

positionality, relationality, or simply interality. The

game of Go (围棋) makes a perfect example. The pieces

are not coded. The meaning of a particular piece is

nothing but its relative position vis-à-vis other pieces at

any given moment. Players call a newly placed piece

this or that (e.g., “关”, “跳”, “飞”) but it is not the

interiority or essence of the new piece that is being

named but its positionality vis-à-vis the existing

configuration. That is to say, each name designates a

particular type of interality. The aim of the game is to

maximize the interality (i.e., intervals, empty spaces) on

one’s own side while squeezing the “air” out of the

other side. So the game of Go is interological in a

double sense – it is about using interplays and bonds

between pieces (筋) to create intervals (i.e., room for

play) while playing with the other side.

This mindset is reflected in Chinese ideograms, i.e.,

characters formed through logical combinations (会意,

one of the six methods of constructing Chinese

characters), “in which each part of the character

contributes to the meaning of the whole” (Chiang, 1973,

p. 25). Small on top of big implies that something is

“pointed” (尖 ). Broom in hand betokens the act of

“sweeping” (掃 ). A female holding a broom to do

housework symbolizes a married woman ( 婦 ). A

woman accompanied by her son suggests a “good” (好)

state of affairs. A man holding a lance or spear implies

to invade or attack (伐). Using both hands to divide

means to “break” (掰). A person in an enclosed space

stands for a “prisoner” (囚). One person behind another

indicates to “follow” (从). The meaning comes from the

interplay between two or more constituent elements.

Interality is also the essence of the art of

calligraphy. When it comes to the composition of

Chinese characters, the first element to be considered is






“the plotting out of the parts in relation to one another

and to the spaces left blank” (Chiang, 1973, p. 167).

There is interality or interplay not only within individual

characters but also between them. Within whole pieces

of calligraphic work, characters are supposed to set off

one another. On the other hand, the arrangement of

spaces (布白) is as important as the arrangement of

strokes, radicals, and characters in relation to one

another. This principle applies to Chinese painting as

well. In his book on Chinese calligraphy, Chiang Yee

illustrates a number of rules regarding how to arrange

the elements within a character in relation to one

another. These rules are all statements about interality.

Examples include: arranging and piling up ( 排叠 ),

avoiding and approaching (避就), facing inwards and

outwards (向背), mutual concession (相让), covering

over (覆盖), implied connexion (意连), lower prop (撑拄), salutation (朝揖), and embracing and wrapping up

(回抱, 包裹) (Chiang, 1973, pp. 172-185). To practice

Chinese calligraphy is to rehearse proxemics on paper

and to cultivate in oneself a good sense of interality,

which will translate into decorous social postures.

McLuhan and Powers (1989), by the way, associate

calligraphy with cubism (p. 64). Even though they have

English calligraphy in mind, the idea applies to Chinese

calligraphy as well. What calligraphy and cubism have

in common is spatial discontinuity, which is a kind of

interality.

The immemorial I Ching (《易经》), also known

as The Book of Changes, which is the oldest of the

Chinese classics and lies at the root of Chinese culture,

is entirely based on interality (i.e., the interplay between

yang and yin, line and line, line and position, lower and

upper trigrams, hexagram and situation, question and

text, text and interpreter, and the intertransformation

between hexagrams). The 31st hexagram (咸, translated

variously as “Influence,” “Mutual Influence,” or

“Reciprocity”) contains the metamessage of I Ching,

which is interality. “Hui-yuan, an eminent monk of the

Eastern Jin Dynasty ... says the root of the I Ching is

mutual influence” (“殷荆州曾问远公, 易以何为体? 答曰: 易以感为体。殷曰: 铜山西崩, 灵钟东应, 便是易耶? 远公笑而不答。”), which is synonymous with

resonance or the Deleuzian notion of affecting and

being affected (Huang, 1998, p. 268).2 A broad-stroke

discussion of I Ching and interality can be found in

“McLuhan and I Ching: An Interological Inquiry”

(Zhang, 2014, pp. 449-468). Suffice it to say here that

each hexagram does not name a thing, but a particular

configuration of interplays, or a particular type of

relational field, which calls for a particular social

posture, a particular mode of action or inaction. The

interological-minded I Ching has “radically” (i.e., at a

root level) shaped the Chinese sensibility.

In The Book of Odes (《诗经》), there is a peculiar

type of poetic leap called “兴,” which is aptly translated

as “evocative association.” It is a matter of using one

thing as a starting point or a springboard to get to

another. There is a resonant interval (i.e., interality) in

between. The first thing is the way-in, the preparation,

which paves the way for the second. When the mind has

reached the second thing, the first does not fade away,

but serves as the supporting ground, the accompaniment,

the shadow – somewhat like the way the double plot

functions in Shakespeare’s works. The very first lines of

The Book of Odes (translated by Legge) make a good

example:

关关雎鸠，在河之洲。

窈窕淑女，君子好逑。

Guan-guan go the ospreys,

On the islet in the river.

The modest, retiring, virtuous, young lady:

For our prince a good mate she.

Another good example is: “青青子衿, 悠悠我心.” To

illustrate the point, we need a translation that retains the

original syntax: “Blue, blue your collar; blue, blue my

heart.” Over the ages, evocative association has become

a staple feature of Chinese poetics and a collective

mental posture of the Chinese people. Numerous

examples can be found in folk songs, couplets, as well

as poetry. Li Ji’s revolutionary poem, “Wang Gui and

Li Xiangxiang,” which was published in 1946, has

multiple examples in it. Reading the poem against the

present-day Chinese ethical ground creates an interality

loaded with incongruity, making the poem oddly

interesting.

Interality is a recurring motif in The Analects (《论语》). Take this line from Simon Leys’s translation:

“The master said: ‘A gentleman brings out the good that

is in people, he does not bring out the bad. A vulgar

man does the opposite’” (Leys, 1997, p. 58). For our

purposes here, a gentleman creates a positive field of

influence or zone of proximity, which activates good

potentials in people. This is where Confucian ethics and

Spinozan-Deleuzian ethics (which is all about good

encounters vs. bad ones) coincide with one another

(Deleuze, 1988, p. 103). When asked by Zigong, one of

his disciples, whether there is any single word that could

guide one’s entire life, Confucius replied, “Should it not

be reciprocity?” ( 其恕乎 ?) (Leys, 1997, p. 77).

Interality is central to Confucian ethics, so to speak,

although not all interalities are good. As Confucius

remarks, “With those who follow a different Way, to

exchange views is pointless” (Leys, 1997, p. 79).

Another example: “Master Zeng said: ‘A gentleman

gathers friends through his culture; and with these

friends, he develops his humanity” (Leys, 1997, p. 59).

“With his friends” says it all – one’s humanity is to be






developed interologically. This line can be read as a

footnote to a line from I Ching: “The action of Heaven

is strong and dynamic. In the same manner, the noble

man never ceases to strengthen himself” (Lynn, 1994, p.

130). To couch it in Deleuze’s vocabulary, a gentleman

is a machinic assemblage with material, symbolic, and

social dimensions – the symbolic mediates and

catalyzes the social. A gentleman’s virtue lies in his

interalities. Overall, Confucianism is invested in

harmonious social relations. It is preoccupied with

relationality.

In Tao Te Ching (《道德经》 ), there are two

chapters that are particularly interesting for the

interological-minded. Chapter Two touches upon the

interality between Being and Nonbeing, which “grow

out of one another” (“有无相生,” translated by Waley).

This interality is both both Being and Nonbeing and

neither Being nor Nonbeing.3 Part of the point is that

Being and Nonbeing are not mutually exclusive but

interdependent and mutually generative. This is

precisely what Alan Watts means by “polarity.” The

interality here is analogous to that between nonblank

and blank spaces in Chinese calligraphy and painting.

The following lines from McLuhan’s DEW-Line deck,

which was published in 1969, indicate that he is

appreciative of this sense of interality: “learning creates

ignorance,” “white creates black,” “the public creates

privacy,” “affluence creates poverty.” A quote attributed

to Albert Einstein is also in order here: “Once you can

accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing

that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes

easy.”

Chapter Eleven articulates the dialectical unity

between Being (i.e., what is) and Nonbeing (i.e., what is

not) and is worth quoting in toto (note that the version

below is cited by McLuhan and Fiore in The Medium Is

the Massage):

Thirty spokes are made one by holes in a hub,

By vacancies joining them for a wheel’s use;

The use of clay in molding pitchers

Comes from the hollow of its absence;

Doors, windows, in a house,

Are used for their emptiness;

Thus we are helped by what is not,

To use what is. (McLuhan and Fiore, 1967, p. 145)

For our purposes here, not only is there interality

between “what is” and “what is not,” the latter (known

as “wu” or “無” in Chinese, typically translated as

“nothingness,” the simplified form being “ 无 ”)

constitutes a kind of interality in and of itself. It belongs

with yin (which is the emphasis of Lao Tzu’s

philosophy and Taoism in general) and the Buddhist

notion of sunyata (i.e., emptiness, known as “kong” or

“空” in Chinese).

Lao Tzu’s reasoning here has been intuitively

grasped or directly taken up by thinkers East and West,

such as Deleuze, Lewis Hyde, McLuhan, and Okakura-

Kakuzo (岡倉覚三 ). In his short essay on Gérard

Fromanger’s paintings entitled “Hot and Cool,” Deleuze

(2004) points out: “when the medium is hot, nothing

circulates or communicates except through the cool,

which controls every active interaction...” (p. 250). “The

cool” is synonymous with yin, interality (as against so-

called entities and objects), emptiness, and “what is

not.” Nurturing one’s emptiness (养空) is the Taoist’s

lifetime pursuit. The Deleuze quote more or less

captures the spirit of Taoism. In his works, Deleuze

repeatedly emphasizes the ethical significance of

receptivity and affectability (i.e., the capacity to be

affected, which is “yin” in nature) and sees passion as a

species of human power (i.e., passive power) that is as

important as action. Take this quote: “Potential is pathos,

that is, passivity, receptivity. But receptivity is first of

all the potential to give and receive blows – a strange

endurance” (Deleuze & Parnet, 2007, p. 155).

Hyde is another Western author who celebrates the

Taoist ethos without naming it as such. He dedicates an

entire chapter of his book, The Gift, to creativity. Yet,

instead of emphasizing “the Creative” (the first

hexagram of the I Ching, made up entirely of yang

lines), he puts emphasis on “the Receptive” (the second

hexagram of the I Ching, made up entirely of yin lines),

as betokened by the begging bowl image below, which

resonates strongly with the pitcher image in Tao Te

Ching:

An essential portion of any artist’s labor is not

creation so much as invocation. Part of the work

cannot be made, it must be received; and we cannot

have this gift except, perhaps, by supplication, by

courting, by creating within ourselves that ‘begging

bowl’ to which the gift is drawn.” (Hyde, 1983, p.

143)

To paraphrase Hyde’s point, in order to be creative, one

has to be receptive in the first place. To privilege the

latter is to privilege interality, in the double sense of

relationality and emptiness. The ethos here is shared by

Osho (the Indian mystic, guru, and spiritual teacher),

who points out: “The creative person is one… who

becomes a hollow bamboo and allows God to flow

through him” (Osho, 1999, p. 146). Heidegger’s notion

of “clearing” resonates strongly with the Buddhist

notion of sunyata and the Taoist notion of wu. As such,

it belongs with the notion of interality.

As a heuristic, the wheel image in Tao Te Ching

has had a profound impact on McLuhan’s thinking. The

second chapter of The Global Village, a book

coauthored by McLuhan and Powers, is tellingly

entitled “The Wheel and the Axle.” Their emphasis is

neither on the wheel, nor the axle, but the interval in






between (i.e., interality), which is what “play” means

and precisely what Lao Tzu means by wu or “what is

not.” The point is best summarized in the following

passage from another chapter of the book:

We have long been accustomed to using the

interval between the wheel and the axle as an

example not only of touch, but also of play.

Without play, without that figure-ground interval,

there is neither wheel nor axle. The space between

the wheel and the axle, which defines both, is

“where the action is”; and this space is both audile

and tactile. The Chinese… use the interval between

things as a primary means of getting in touch with

situations. (McLuhan & Powers, 1989, p. 64)

McLuhan and Powers argue explicitly that it is not

entities that define interality, but the other way around

(“The space between the wheel and the axle… defines

both”). They are less interested in figure-to-figure

relations (which are a kind of interality) than the

interval, interface and interplay between figure and

ground, which is also the emphasis of this project.

Blank spaces in Chinese painting, for example, have a

philosophical significance – they embody the Taoist

notion of wu (i.e., nothingness), which is seen as the

constitutive ground of things and entities. In accordance

with this philosophy or sensibility, interality is primary,

whereas things and entities are secondary or derivative.

It should not come off as a stretch to say that McLuhan

has or has retrieved a Taoist sensibility. The last

sentence in the quote above indicates that when we say

somebody is out of touch, what we really mean is that

this person needs to work on his or her interalities.

McLuhan’s notion of probing is precisely based on this

Chinese way of knowing. To probe is to artificially

create an interval or interality to generate insight, and to

move on to another interval if the original one turns out

to be unfruitful. Among Western thinkers, McLuhan is a

hardcore interologist.

In The Book of Tea, Okakura (1906) offers a useful

paraphrase of and commentary on the same passage in

Tao Te Ching, referring to wu as “the Vacuum”:

[Laotse] claimed that only in vacuum lay the truly

essential. The reality of a room, for instance, was

to be found in the vacant space enclosed by the roof

and walls, not in the roof and walls themselves. The

usefulness of a water pitcher dwelt in the emptiness

where water might be put, not in the form of the

pitcher or the material of which it was made.

Vacuum is all potent because all containing. In

vacuum alone motion becomes possible. One who

could make of himself a vacuum into which others

might freely enter would become master of all

situations. The whole can always dominate the part.

(pp. 59-60)

“In vacuum alone motion becomes possible” sounds

very similar to Deleuze’s point (mentioned earlier)

about the cool controlling every active interaction, and

to the following line by McLuhan: “The natural interval

between the wheel and axle is where action and ‘play’

are one. The aware executive is the one who ‘steps

down’ when the action begins to ‘seize up’. He

maintains his autonomy and his flexibility” (McLuhan

& Zingrone, 1995, p. 358). “The whole can always

dominate the part” can be read as a statement about the

medium (i.e., milieu, environment) “having” the user,

which is to say, “the medium is the massage,” whereas

“the user is the content,” to use McLuhan’s

formulations.

The immediate next paragraph in The Book of Tea

applies the Taoist idea of wu to jiu-jitsu (柔術). It also

illuminates McLuhan’s notion of “cool” media

(examples include mosaics, low definition TV,

pointillist painting, collage, montage, cubist painting,

William Burroughs’s cut-up method and fold-in

method, etc.) and his style of writing. As Okakura

(1906) puts it:

These Taoists’ ideas have greatly influenced all our

theories of action, even… those of fencing and

wrestling. Jiu-jitsu, the Japanese art of self-defence,

owes its name to a passage in the Taoteiking. In

Jiu-jitsu one seeks to draw out and exhaust the

enemy’s strength by non-resistance, vacuum, while

conserving one’s own strength for victory in the

final struggle. In art the importance of the same

principle is illustrated by the value of suggestion. In

leaving something unsaid the beholder is given a

chance to complete the idea and thus a great

masterpiece irresistibly rivets your attention until

you seem to become actually a part of it. A vacuum

is there for you to enter and fill up to the full

measure of your aesthetic emotion. (pp. 60-61)

The Japanese notion of ma (間 ) is synonymous

with Lao Tzu’s notion of wu and our notion of interality.

The following passage from Yoshida Kenkō’s (吉田兼好) Tsurezuregusa (Essays in Idleness, or 《徒然草》)

illustrates the centrality of ma or interality in Japanese

aesthetics without explicitly using either term:

Things which seem in poor taste: too many

personal effects cluttering up the place where one is

sitting; too many brushes in an ink-box; too many

Buddhas in a family temple; too many stones and

plants in a garden; too many children in a house;

too many words on meeting someone; too many

meritorious deeds recorded in a petition. (Keene,

1998, p. 64)

If anything, the Japanese aesthete would rather err on

the side of ma or “coolness.” Yoshida’s book itself was

written in the cool zuihitsu (“follow-the-brush,” or “随笔”) style, which is not unlike Nietzsche’s aphorisms in

form. Whoever finds the concept of ma hard to grasp






will get it immediately by visiting a dry landscape (枯山水) garden at one of the Zen temples (such as Nanzen-ji

or 南禅寺 ) in Kyoto. For one thing, the rocks are

“related to the surrounding space or to the area of sand

in the same way as figure to background in Sung

paintings” (Watts, 1989, p. 194). François Berthier

(2000) points out, “the temple gardens are paintings

painted without brushes, sutras written without

[Chinese] characters” (pp. 9-10).

In Chinese painting and Japanese sumi-e, the

concept of wu, ma, or interality is “embodied” by empty

spaces, which “are not, in the truest sense, ‘blank’ at all,

but constitute unstated expressions of sky, land or water”

(Chiang, 1973, p. 169). Watts (1960) points out:

… the Chinese artists understood better than any

others the value of empty spaces, and in a certain

sense what they left out was more important than

what they put in; it was a tantalizing reticence, a

vacuum which drew out curiosity; they lifted just a

corner of the veil to excite people to find out for

themselves what lay beyond. This was the Taoist

principle of wu-wei, of arriving at action through

non-action. (pp. 108-109)

Another important source for the study of interality

is “The Secret of Caring for Life” (《养生主》), which

is the third chapter of The Complete Works of Chuang

Tzu. The chapter tells the story of Cook Ting who cuts

up oxen by running his knife through intervals, without

touching ligaments, tendons, or joints, thereby keeping

the knife intact after nineteen years of use, which is a

parable about how to care for life. In Ting’s words:

What I care about is the Way, which goes beyond

skill…. I go along with the natural makeup, strike

in the big hollows, guide the knife through the big

openings, and follow things as they are…. There

are spaces between the joints, and the blade of the

knife has really no thickness. If you insert what has

no thickness into such spaces, then there’s plenty of

room – more than enough for the blade to play

about it. (Watson, 1968, pp. 50-51)

The idea of “interval” (间) takes multiple guises in this

passage (the Chinese words used include: “郤,” “窾,” “

閒,” “余地”). The passage presents the “interval” as

indispensable for, or at one with, play, freedom, and the

Way (i.e., Tao). The spirit it espouses is one of “free

and easy wandering” (“逍遥游,” title of the first chapter

of the book), which is a matter of transforming tricky

situations into “smooth spaces” by virtue of a subtle

sense of interality, to use a term from Deleuze and

Guattari.4 Sun Tzu (2003) has a like-spirited line in The

Art of War: “So in war, the way is to avoid what is

strong and to strike at what is weak” (“兵之形, 避实而击虚”) (p. 114). “What is weak” (“虚”) is the equivalent

of “spaces between the joints” (“间”) in Chuang Tzu.

“Go along with the natural makeup” and “follow things

as they are” imply another philosophical concept, li (理),

which is beyond the scope of this article. Suffice it to

say that li, interality, Tao, and tong (throughness, 通)

belong together. They all connote the realm of freedom,

although there can be such a thing called “dead li” (死理), which is a hindrance.

“Xu” (“虚”) is another word in Chuang Tzu that is

closely related to our notion of interality. Watson

translates it as “emptiness.” In the following passage, xu

is equated with “the fasting of the mind” (“心斋”):

Confucius said, “Make your will one! Don’t listen

with your ears, listen with your mind. No, don’t

listen with your mind, but listen with your spirit.

Listening stops with the ears, the mind stops with

recognition, but spirit is empty and waits on all

things. The Way gathers in emptiness alone.

Emptiness is the fasting of the mind.” (Watson,

1968, p. 58)

Here, Watson translates “Qi” (“气”) as “spirit,” which,

although not the only possibility, is nevertheless a

thoughtful choice. Like “inspiration,” “spirit” has

“breath” in it. For our purposes, this passage reiterates

the indispensability of interality (which takes the guise

of “emptiness” in this context) for Tao (“the Way”). To

couch it in the language of Buddhism, what the fasting

of the mind creates is a state of sunyata in the mind

(Chuang Tzu is an important source for Chan Buddhism,

which has flourished in the resonant interval between

Taoism and Mahayana Buddhism). In this age of

busyness, the therapeutic value of the fasting of the

mind is not to be underestimated. What we gain from

the fasting of the mind is precisely interality, or a kind

of useful uselessness (无用之用). A less hasty treatment

of the motif can be found in “A Note on Photography in

a Zen Key” (Zhang, 2013, pp. 20-27).

In a later chapter called “The Mountain Tree” (《山

木》), Chuang Tzu points to the life-preserving nature

of xu through the mouth of the Master from the south of

the Market. The gist of it can be grasped through this

short excerpt:

The Master from the south of the Market said, “…

If a man, having lashed two hulls together, is

crossing a river, and an empty boat happens along

and bumps into him, no matter how hot-tempered

the man may be, he will not get angry. But if there

should be someone in the other boat, then he will

shout out to haul this way or veer that…. Earlier he

faced emptiness, now he faces occupancy. If a man

could succeed in making himself empty, and in that

way wander through the world, then who could do

him harm?” (Watson, 1968, p. 212)

The moral is in the last sentence. The Chinese original

is: “人能虚己以游世, 其孰能害之?” Like Lao Tzu’s






notion of wu, the wisdom here seems to have found its

way into the Japanese art of ju-jutsu. As Watts (1960)

puts it: “The essence of ju-jutsu is that there should

never be anything which can be fought against; the

expert must be as elusive as the truth of Zen; he must

make himself into a Koan – a puzzle which slips away

the more one tries to solve it…” (p. 117). Deleuze’s

notion of “becoming imperceptible” captures the same

ethos (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987, p. 232).

Interality is also the soul of Buddhism, especially

Chan (known as “Zen” in Japan, “dhyana” being the

original Sanskrit form) Buddhism. For the sake of

convenience, let’s start with Japanese Zendō (禅道).

The acme every Zen practitioner aspires to reach is ma

(間), which is a special permutation of interality. Ma

literally means an aperture (photographers, by the way,

literally have ma to thank for their art because they can’t

“write with light” without ma or the aperture) or an

interval but its meaning has evolved over the ages.

“Free time” and “tranquility of mind” are among the

derivative meanings of the word. As a state of mind, ma

is synonymous with mushin (無心, spelt as “wuxin” in

Chinese pinyin, meaning “no mind”), which implies,

paradoxically, a cultivated spontaneity. The “dō” (道) in

practices such as jūdō (柔道, meaning “gentle way”),

shodō (書道, Japanese calligraphy), and kadō (華道,

flower arrangement, also known as ikebana) entails that

practitioners reach ultimate mushin (vacancy of mind,

mental ma). The Zen-spirited tea ceremony, conducted

in the Tea House (chaseki), the “Abode of Emptiness,”

is essentially “a temporary escape from all cares and

distractions – a period of rest and contemplation” (Watts,

1960, p. 111). Its ultimate good is precisely ma, or

mushin.

In a state of mushin, one is not hindered by

preconceptions and learned incapacities, and therefore is

open to infinite possibilities in any given situation and

capable of genuine perception when facing an “object”;

for the first time, one can encounter being (e.g., a

flower) for what it is. In this sense, ma or mushin

augments one’s responsive virtuosity and enhances

one’s life. It is more or less synonymous with Chuang

Tzu’s notion of the fasting of the mind. That’s why

Chuang Tzu and Chan (i.e., Zen) are often mentioned

side by side, as in “庄禅之学.” Takuan Sōhō’s (泽庵宗

彭) words about “immovable wisdom” (不动智) belong

here:

What is most important is to acquire a certain

mental attitude known as ‘immovable wisdom.’…

‘Immovable’ means the highest degree of mobility

with a centre which remains immovable. The mind

then reaches the highest point of alacrity ready to

direct its attention anywhere it is needed…. There

is something immovable within, which, however,

moves along spontaneously with things presenting

themselves before it. The mirror of wisdom reflects

them instantaneously one after another, keeping

itself intact and undisturbed. (Watts, 1960, p. 105)

Mushin is best explained in the words of a Zenlin (禅林)

poem, “The wild geese do not intend to cast their

reflection; The water has no mind to receive their image”

(雁无留踪之意, 水无取影之心) (Watts, 1989, p. 181).

A line by Te-shan Hsüan-chien (德山宣鑑) is also in

order here: “Only when you have no thing in your mind

and no mind in things are you vacant and spiritual,

empty and marvelous” (“汝但无事于心, 无心于事, 则虚而灵, 空而妙”) (Watts, 1989, p. 131). It is worth

pointing out that ma is a polysemous concept. A useful

summary of the different shades of meaning of the term

can be found in Edward T. Hall’s book, The Dance of

Life: The Other Dimension of Time.

The Surangama Sutra (《楞嚴經》) has a line in it

that is directly about interality: “譬如琴瑟, 箜篌, 虽有妙音, 若无妙指终不能发.” The English is something

like this: “Marvelous as the sounds of qin, se, and

konghou (three ancient Chinese musical instruments)

are, they cannot go forth without marvelous fingers.” At

a surface level, the music comes from the interality (i.e.,

interplay) between the musical instrument and capable

fingers. But this line needs to be read as an allegory

about the impermanence (i.e., anicca, 无常) or ultimate

emptiness (空 ) of all conditioned existence, just as

music inevitably fades away in time. The line also

implies three Buddhist concepts: cause (hetu, 因 ),

external conditions (pratyaya, 缘), and effect (果). The

same cause can lead to numerous effects, depending on

what external conditions the cause encounters in the

moment. The interval between cause and effect is where

possibilities arise and transformations happen. What

Deleuze means by “mediators” is simply positive

external conditions (善缘) or good encounters, which

may catalyze creativity or trigger awakening (the

Buddhist term is upāya, meaning “expedient means”;

Deleuze’s point is that anything can serve as upāya

when one is ready, when the time is ripe) (Deleuze,

1995, pp. 121-134). Good external conditions are

indissociable from the opportune moment ( 机 ).

Therefore the two are often lumped together as “机缘”

(the right conditions at the right time). As an idiomatic

expression, it bespeaks a sense of kairos, which is

typically imagined as a favorable but fleeting temporal

interval, as indicated by the expression, “a window of

opportunity.” Inspired by the line from The Surangama

Sutra, Su Shi (苏轼) wrote a Chan poem about qin

(rendered as “the lute” below):

若言琴上有琴声, 放在匣中何不鸣?

若言声在指头上, 何不于君指上听?

If the music comes from the lute，

Why, when put in its case, does it not sound?






If the music comes from the fingertips，

Why not listen to your fingers? (Translated by

Curtis Smith, the Su Shi scholar)

The following passage by Watts (1989) on

Nagarjuna’s (龍樹) Sunyavada (“Doctrine of the Void,”

or “性空论”) sheds further light on the line from The

Surangama Sutra cited above:

… the Sunyavada is best called a doctrine of

relativity. For Nagarjuna’s method is simply to

show that all things are without “self-nature”

(svabhava) or independent reality since they exist

only in relation to other things. Nothing in the

universe can stand by itself – no thing, no fact, no

being, no event – and for this reason it is absurd to

single anything out as the ideal to be grasped. (p. 63)

The sound of music, for example, not only relies on the

interplay between the musical instrument and capable

fingers, but also on there being air (the medium), and on

the interplay between the vibes and the ear, without

which there is no sound. If we look more closely, nerves

and the brain are also indispensable. The brain, in turn,

cannot be dissociated from the rest of the body, which

cannot be dissociated from the rest of the universe.

There is relationality (which is a particular sense of

interality) all the way through. Music is a system of

interalities in the service of a spiritual impulse, to

rephrase George Crumb’s formulation (the original

wording is “a system of proportions”). The Buddhist

term in order here is “dependent origination” or

“dependent arising” (缘起 ). Buddhism teaches us to

privilege relationality over identity, interology and

ecology over ontology, interbeing and becoming over

being. The negation of fixed identities is precisely the

affirmation of life, whereas the affirmation of fixed

identities is precisely the blocking of life, insofar as we

understand life to be all about flux, flow, fluidity, and

flight. Behind the seemingly nihilistic notion of

emptiness (sunyata), lies a thoroughgoing vitalism,

according to which the universe is deconstructing and

reconstructing itself moment by moment. This

understanding is found in Heraclitus (“You could not

step twice into the same river”), I Ching (which is all

about change), Confucius (“The Master stood by a river

and said: ‘Everything flows like this, without ceasing,

day and night,’” the Chinese original being: “子在川上曰: 逝者如斯夫, 不舍昼夜”), and Derrida (e.g., his

notion of differance).

Ancient Chinese strategists understood full well the

importance of interality. Sun Tzu dedicated the last

chapter of his book, The Art of War, to the use of “间”

(pronounced with a dropping tone, meaning “spies”).

The version edited by Dallas Galvin has the following

introduction before the chapter:

The evolution of the meaning “spy” is worth

considering for a moment…. [It is defined

elsewhere] as “a crack” or “chink,” and on the

whole we may accept Hsü Ch’ieh’s analysis as not

unduly fanciful: “At night, a door is shut; if, when

it is shut, the light of the moon is visible, it must

come through a chink.” From this it is an easy step

to the meaning “space between,” or simply

“between,” as for example in the phrase “to act as a

secret spy between enemies.”… Another possible

theory is that the word may first have come to mean

“to peep,” which would naturally be suggested by

“crack” or “crevice,” and afterwards the man who

peeps, or spy. (Sun Tzu, 2003, p. 199)

This passage is interesting in that it makes a connection

between “interval” (translated as “chink” here) and the

act of spying or the one who spies. The last sentence of

the chapter is relevant to this discussion: “Spies are a

most important element in war, because on them

depends an army’s ability to move” (Sun Tzu, 2003, p.

211). It shows Sun Tzu’s privileging of software over

hardware, yin over yang, interality over materiality.

Many centuries later, McLuhan reached the same

insight, as shown in Take Today: The Executive as

Dropout.

During the Warring States Period, Su Qin (苏秦)

and Zhang Yi (张仪), two disciples of the Master of the

Ghost Valley (鬼谷子), reshaped the balance of power

among the warring states by working on the interalities

among them. Su played a leadership role in establishing

vertical alliances (“合纵”) between the six less powerful

states to contain the more powerful Qin on the west,

keeping Qin from venturing beyond the Hangu Pass for

fifteen years. Zhang, who was serving the more

powerful Qin, came up with the counterstrategy of

establishing horizontal alliances (连横) with the weaker

states, thereby defusing and overriding their vertical

alliances and breaking their joint front against Qin.

During the Three Kingdoms Period, the weaker Shu and

Wu kingdoms were able to hold up against the stronger

Wei on the north by forming a strategic alliance with

each other. Speaking from the vantage point of Shu,

Zhuge Liang (诸葛亮) articulated the strategy clearly

with a mere eight words: “东联孙权, 北拒曹操” (On

the east, treat Sun Quan as an ally; on the north, defend

against Cao Cao). In a sense, the history of the Warring

States Period was a history of interality. So was the

history of the Three Kingdoms Period. Interestingly,

while the English speaker sees a dilemma in the image

of two horns (as evidenced by the expression, “on the

horns of a dilemma”), the Chinese strategist finds in it

the most advisable way to station his troops, since

camping in two sites creates a sense of play and the two

camps can come to each other’s rescue when the one or






the other is under attack (互为犄角之势). If language

speaks us, then the English speaker seems to be

somewhat interality-averse, whereas the Chinese

speaker seems to see interality as a desirable resource.

Interality is a recurring motif in Louis Cha’s (金庸)

incredibly imaginative martial arts novels. In The

Legend of the Condor Heroes (《射雕英雄传》 ),

Wang Chongyang’s seven disciples could only match

the prowess of Huang Yaoshi by forming a Big Dipper

configuration. The increase in their fighting power came

from the interality the configuration created. Zhou

Botong, another character in the novel, was kept on an

island all by himself for fifteen years. In order to create

“play” (i.e., interality), he figured out how to use his

right hand to fight his left one, each hand employing a

different kind of kung fu. As a result, his fighting power

was more than doubled, since one plus one is greater

than two. That Cha’s works are fictional in nature does

not keep them from shaping the sensibilities of people

in the Greater China area, given their popularity.

Interality is a built-in feature in all couplets (对联),

which are a miniaturized literary form. Here is a good

example: “In drunkenness Heaven and Earth are big. In

the wine bottle the days and months are long” (醉里乾坤大, 壶中日月长). The first or upper line is about

space, whereas the second or lower line is about time.

The two lines resonate and work in concert with each

other to celebrate inebriation. As a figure of speech (对偶 or 对仗 ), couplets appear frequently in ancient

poems, chapter titles of ancient novels, and many other

places. The Chinese fondness of couplets is beyond

question. Wang Wei’s (王维) imagistic lines, “大漠孤烟直, 长河落日圆,” make a perfect couplet. An attempt

to put it into English reveals something peculiar about

the Chinese language, or at least about ancient Chinese,

especially as it is appropriated by poets. What the

couplet presents is a scene without syntax. Here is a

word-for-word rendition: “Big desert solitary smoke

straight, long river setting sun round.” The expression

“long time no see” has been strung together with a

similar linguistic consciousness. McLuhan would call

this style of writing Symbolist, meaning the visual

connections are pulled out, making the writing “cool.”

Besides the resonant interval between the two lines,

there are also resonant intervals between the words

within each line, making the couplet doubly

interological. There is another interality, though – that

between desert as ground and smoke as figure, or

between river as ground and sun as figure. The overall

image is simple and Zen-spirited, in the sense that the

big desert effects the fasting of the mind, thereby

allowing the solitary column of smoke to leave a deep

impression upon the mind. The same can be said about

river and sun.

It should come off as no surprise that people from

South Korea also have an interological Weltanschauung.

For one thing, the national flag of South Korea is made

up of the double-fish taiji image (standing for the

interplay between yin and yang) in the middle

surrounded by four of the eight trigrams (standing for

heaven, earth, fire, and water) from I Ching against a

white background. As can be expected, the trigrams for

heaven and earth face each other diagonally. So do the

trigrams for fire and water. The flag is about interality

all the way through. When asked how important the

word “間” (pronounced as “kan” in Korean) is for South

Korean culture, Dr. Jae-Yin Kim (金在寅), a Deleuze

scholar from Seoul National University, said: “It's a

very important concept. Everybody is affected by

others, and is careful not to be seen as wrong by others.

As is common in most East Asian cultures, human being

is itself regarded as between-humans (人間). It is the

case in Korea now and before.” Indeed, it is in the zone

of proximity with other humans (and other creatures,

and our own cultural artifacts) that we find our ethical

gyroscope. Interality is our dwelling – where we are

thrown, where our individuality is shaped and reshaped,

where our humanity is realized, where we experience

the sensation of freedom. Its human seriousness cannot

be overemphasized.

Closing Remarks

If people automatically associate guanxi with

Chinese culture, then maybe that says something about

the interological predisposition of the Chinese mind.

Yet, as the above exploration indicates, interality is a lot

more polysemous than guanxi. This article alone covers

a number of senses, including interplay, relationality,

reciprocity, resonance, interzone, interval, wiggle room,

blank space, nothingness, emptiness, unfinishedness,

coolness, betweenness, and alliance. But this list by no

means exhausts all the possible permutations of the

concept. As a matter of fact, interality is so ubiquitous

and taken for granted in East Asian cultures that all this

article can do is scatter a few pebbles out there to imply

their constitutive outsides, to use an interological image.

Another profitable place to dig would be the work done

by the Kyoto School of thinkers. But an article on

interality works better if it creates a plurality of intervals

and interzones instead of trying to cover every-thing

because in the final analysis there is no-thing to cover.5

Put in very broad strokes, Confucianism

emphasizes the constitutive function of relationality or

interality, coaches investment in the wellbeing of

society, and promotes a harmonious social order based

on decorum, which is a relational or interological matter

through and through. Per its logic, human freedom

resides in inhabiting and navigating the social field in a






smooth mode. At an individual level, Confucianism

implies an art of autopoiesis that centers on the question

of what zone of proximity to inhabit, or with whom to

create an interzone.

Taoism Lao Tzu style emphasizes the generative

function of a metaphysicized, mysticized sense of

interval called wu or nothingness. It is privy to the

usefulness of wu or “what is not” (以无为用) and prizes

it practically, philosophically, and ethically. The good

life is intuited as a matter of subtraction, of hacking

away the inessentials (为道日损). Taoism Chuang Tzu

style sees the interval as the realm of freedom and

advocates a life of free and easy wandering in a world

that is never in lack of smooth spaces that afford such

wandering. This sensibility has nothing in common with

the fascist take on Lebensraum, which is about making

the world empty for one’s own life. Rather, it is more

interested in making the self empty, so it gains “a

rigorous innocence without merit or culpability” (to use

a Taoist-minded phrase from Deleuze), so it is ready for

a life of free and easy wandering (Deleuze, 1988, p. 4).

If Cook Ting runs a knife that has no thickness, Chuang

Tzu wants the Taoist to be a knife that is empty or zero-

dimensional, for which the world is necessarily a

hindrance-free interval, a smooth space.

The ultimate good of Chan Buddhism is a mind that

is no mind, that casts no shadow upon itself, that is

infinitely receptive to Reality and open to possibilities,

that is a locus of prajñā when called upon but returns to

a state of “intervalness” or tranquility immediately

afterwards. Such a mind ultimately rises above or

transcends the duality between objects (forms, “色”)

and interality (void), negation and affirmation, nihilism

and vitalism, since impermanence is the only constant in

the cosmos, just as I Ching, the Confucian-Taoist-

Buddhist classic, teaches. All is to say, the taiji image

has it right, after all: the ultimate interality is that

between Being and Nothingness, which are aspects of

one another.

To sum it all up: The kettle says xu (虚). The drum

says tong (通).6 The Chan Master says pei (呸)!

7 The

cow says mu (无).8 The cat says miao (妙). The cuckoo

bird says wu-wu (无吾).9 And the owl echoes wu-wu-

wu-wu (吾悟吾悟).10

The mountain says nothing.11

In

between all the sounds and soundlessness, we hear the

same message – the human seriousness of interality.

Acknowledgements

The author thanks Dr. Geling Shang and Dr. Stephen

Rowe for the engaged conversations about interality and

relationality that have motivated the writing of this

article, which literally has emerged in the interzones

thus created. He also thanks Dr. Robert L. Ivie, Dr.

Kenneth Surin, Dr. Stephen Rowe, Dr. Geling Shang,

Dr. Joff Bradley, Blake Seidenshaw, Bill Guschwan,

and Barry and Minetta Groendyk for reading and

commenting on the first draft. His thanks also go to Dr.

Richard John Lynn (林理彰, translator of Wang Bi’s

interpretation of I Ching), who shared his understanding

of xing (兴, evocative association), Su Yi, with whom

he has had ongoing conversations about interality and

Buddhism, Shintaro Suzuki (铃木慎太郎 ), a World

History student from Osaka University, who shared his

insights on the Japanese concept of ma, and Dr. Jae-Yin

Kim (金在寅), a Deleuze scholar based in Seoul, for

assessing the significance of the word jian (间 ) for

South Korean culture.

Notes

1. This is an allusion to Chiang Yee’s book, The

Chinese Eye: An Interpretation of Chinese Painting.

2. The Chinese line comes from a different book: 李幸玲, 《庐山慧远研究》 (台北市: 万卷楼, 2007), pp.

361-362.

3. This line is a partial exemplification of tetralemma.

4. Contemplate this line from Deleuze and Guattari

(1987): “[T]he Orient… only exists in the

construction of a smooth space” (p. 379).

5. Originally, a section called “The West’s Repression

and Recuperation of Interality” was also planned for

this article but the section above has taken more space

than expected, and rightfully so. Regretfully, the

interality or resonance between the two sections will

have to be sacrificed. Please expect some follow-up

articles, though.

6. “Tong” means throughness or smoothness.

7. “Pei” is a shout (喝) used by Chan Master Victor

Chiang ( 强梵畅 ) when he oversees meditation

sessions. It negates the ego.

8. “Mu” is the Japanese equivalent of “wu.”

9. “无吾” refers to ego-loss (literally, “no me”).

10. “吾悟吾悟” means “I’m awakened, I’m awakened.”

11. Silence is not only an interval in speech that serves

as the constitutive ground of speech, it also implies

the overcoming of the limitations of speech, or the

forgetting of language (忘言).

Correspondence to: Dr. Peter Zhang

School of Communications

Grand Valley State University

Allendale, MI 49401

Email: [email protected]

References

Berthier, F. (2000). Reading Zen in the rocks: The

Japanese dry landscape garden. Chicago: The

University of Chicago Press.







Chiang, Y. (1971). The Chinese eye: An interpretation

of Chinese painting. Bloomington: Indiana

University Press.

Chiang, Y. (1973). Chinese calligraphy: An

introduction to its aesthetic and technique.

Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University

Press.

Deleuze, G. (1995). Negotiations. New York: Columbia

University Press.

Deleuze, G. (1988). Spinoza: Practical philosophy. San

Francisco, CA: City Lights Books.

Deleuze, G. (2004). Desert islands and other texts,

1953-1974 (D. Lapoujade, Ed., M. Taormina,

Trans.). New York: Semiotext(e).

Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand

plateaus. Minneapolis, MN: University of

Minnesota Press.

Deleuze, G., & Parnet, C. (1987). Dialogues. New

York: Columbia University Press.

Deleuze, G., & Parnet, C. (2007). Dialogues II. New

York: Columbia University Press.

Flusser, V. (1986-1987). On Edmund Husserl. Review

of the Society for the History of Czechoslovak Jews,

1, 91-100.

Flusser, V. (2011). Does writing have a future?

Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Hall, E. T. (1984). The dance of life: The other

dimension of time. Garden City, New York: Anchor

Press/Doubleday.

Hoffer, E. (1973). Reflections on the human condition.

New York: Harper & Row.

Hyde, L. (1983). The gift: Imagination and the erotic

life of property. New York: Vintage Books.

Keene, D. (1998). Essays in idleness. New York:

Columbia University Press.

Leys, S. (1997). The analects of Confucius. New York:

W. W. Norton & Company.

Lynn, R. J. (1994). The classic of changes: A new

translation of the I Ching as interpreted by Wang

Bi. New York: Columbia University Press.

McLuhan, E., & Zingrone, F. (1995). Essential

McLuhan. New York: BasicBooks.

McLuhan, M., & Fiore, Q. (1967). The medium is the

massage. New York: Simon & Schuster.

McLuhan, M., & Powers, B. (1989). The global village:

Transformations in world life and media in the 21st

century. New York: Oxford University Press.

Sun, T. (2003). The art of war. New York: Barnes and

Noble Classics.

Watson, B. (1968). The complete works of Chuang Tzu.

New York: Columbia University Press.

Watts, A. (1960). The spirit of Zen: A way of life, work

and art in the Far East. New York: Grove Press,

Inc.

Watts, A. (1989). The way of Zen. New York: Vintage

Books.

Zhang, P. (2013). A note on photography in a Zen key.

China Media Research, 9(3), 20-27.

Zhang, P. (2014). McLuhan and I Ching: An

interological inquiry. Canadian Journal of

Communication, 39(3), 449-468.

04/11/15




Copyright of China Media Research is the property of Edmondson Intercultural Enterprisesand its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv withoutthe copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, oremail articles for individual use.

The Human Seriousness of Interality: An East Asian Take

Documents