This panel will feature three presentations: "Bowing to the Sage: Confucius Veneration Ceremony in San Franciscoʻs Chinese Diasporic Community (1982-Present)," "Review on the Theory of Self-Cultivation of Islamic-Confucian," and "Reimagining Femininity: Toward an East Asian Feminist Discourse Beyond Masculine Constructs."
This paper delves into the enduring practice of Confucian veneration ceremonies within the Chinese diaspora of San Francisco, sustained for over 40 years. It critically examines the ceremonies' dual role as both a cultural tradition and a stage for power dynamics within the diaspora's social organizations and in relation to broader society. Drawing on a published archive for the first ceremony in 1982, namely Chronology of the World Confucian Veneration Movement, supplemented by personal archives and oral histories collected in March 2023, and participant observations from September 2023, the study offers an in-depth exploration of the ceremony's transmission, influence and present situation. It commences with the cultural importance of Confucian rituals in immigrant communities and provides insight into how such rituals are leveraged by diasporic social groups to articulate and negotiate their internal and external power structures, presenting a unique perspective on cultural continuity and adaptation.
Presently, there are diverse interpretations and responses within academia concerning the concepts of "self-cultivation and realm" and "moral cultivation and spiritual exercise." Since the Islamic Confucian philosophical system lacks an internal transformation and adjustment mechanism of "Ontology-Cultivation-Realm", it can only be discussed within the content of Sufi practice. However, the Sufi approach does not meet the needs of all the modern Chinese Muslims although the relationship between the two is closely intertwined, the actions of a select few individuals may not entirely address the cognitive and emotional needs of the majority. Conversely, the ethical transformation in Chinese translated texts during the Ming and Qing Dynasty broadens its scope beyond mosque attendees to encompass a wider spectrum of believers. This shift has significant implications for the philosophy of self-cultivation.
This paper will attempt to translate East Asian thinking into a new cultural setting where feminist and pluralist discourses prevail by pointing out certain limitations of Western feminist discourse and comparatively reinventing femininity as an alternative concept. Firstly, Western mainstream epistemology and ontology will be critically reviewed from the gender perspective. The paper will argue Western mainstream thought operates through masculine discourse and that some feminism is actually a byproduct of and reinforces it. Next, it will examine East Asian gendered cosmology, systematically completed in Neo-Confucianism and discuss how the gender binary framework of yinyang can remove the charge of essentialism and modify Western masculine discourse and feminism. It will be argued that the Dao can offer a new feminist paradigm. Here, femininity is not an antithesis of masculinity in the confrontational male-female dichotomy, but an alternative discourse at a larger level that transcends and encompasses that dichotomy.