Paper presentation by Yukun Zeng (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology)
The workshop starts at 16:00 CET on Zoom. The zoom link will be shared with Network members via the mailing list.
Abstract
This paper examines the semiotics of labor intensity through an ethnographic account of dujing (“reading classics”), a grassroots Confucian movement in contemporary China. Originating in Taiwan in the early 1990s, dujing has since spread across mainland China and global Chinese communities. It mobilizes youth to recite Confucian texts aloud without interpretation, with the belief that repetitive recitation engraves classical wisdom in the heart. What distinguishes dujing is its radical intensity: full-time dujing students read aloud for eight or more hours daily over years, often at the cost of mainstream schooling. Drawing on ethnographic analysis, this article traces how the intensity of reading is semiotically produced through “taskization”, repetition, and bodied labor, and how the valorization of intensities in turn intensifies the movement itself. It also advocates for a semiotic approach to labor intensity as a productive lens for rethinking reading, labor, intensity, and the study subjects of linguistic anthropology.