“Within the Gates of the Master, Is There Any Such Thing as a Prime Minister?”

A Space without Frames in the Zhuangzi

Abstract

In chapter five of the Daoist classic Zhuangzi, we find the story of an altercation between Shen Tujia and Zichan in the halls of their master Bohun Wuren [engl. Uncle Dim Nobody/Non-Human]. Zichan, a famous prime minister, does not want to be seen quitting his master’s hall together with the ex-convict Tujia, so as not to have his reputation tainted by this acquaintance, and asks him not to leave at the same time as him. Shen Tujia responds that “within the gates of the master,” there is no such thing as a prime minister: By crossing the threshold of the hall of practice, they have entered a space where external, societal forms fall away. Starting from this exchange, and the paradoxical situation of a spatial frame where framings vanish, this article seeks to explore the Daoist practices of ‘forgetting’ and ‘emptying’ presented by the Zhuangzi. Building on sinologist Romain Graziani’s analysis of the complex relation between the spatial threshold and the difference between external, societal space, and internal, open and formless space in this scene, this paper sets out to question how the liberatory and equalizing promise of meditative emptying relates to existent framings of social space.