Lies That Bind: Chinese Truth, Other Truths

Abstract

Lies That Bind: Chinese Truth, Other Truths, by Susan D. Blum. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007. viii + 232 pp. US$69.00/£45.00/euro70.88 (hardcover), US$27.95/£17.99/euro28.33 (paperback). Lies that Bind is an insightful book, which explores the complex ideology of truth, lies and in and beyond. It begins with the flavor of paradoxical fairytale, imagining Utopian society where each person tells the truth always and unconditionally. It continues by narrating stories and offering explanations of literary and philosophical anecdotes, which will be familiar to many scholars. The central question of the book is deception, and the author delves into the dynamics, processes and reasons for lying and cheating, as well as investigating their opposite: truth and sincerity. Many comments will resonate with Western scholars of who have experienced firsthand, often trying to come to terms with, the tendency for and the intertwining mechanism of truthfulness which might appear to dominate public interactions in China. However, the author claims that the book is only partially about China, since is thoroughly anthropological; the subject touches everything about what [i]t is to be human, past and present, here and there (p. 5). In this sense, the book is both something less and something more than scholarly work. It is also and foremost book of human self-discovery, written by scholar who went to for the first time in 1982 as an English teacher, before starting an academic career. Over period of two decades, Blum has not been mere outsider-witness but, in her own words, a victim and beneficiary of deception (p. 14). Blum's self-positioning informs her analysis: as linguistic anthropologist, she skims through the writings about truth and in psychology, philosophy and theology, but ultimately sets on pragmatics. Pragmatics illuminates her understanding of language's uses in social interactions and sheds light on the inherent potential for manipulative speech, which leads to displacement and prevarication. Language does things (p. 194) and for Blum language is culture-specific, rather than natural, since [w]hat is most important are the consequences of one's utterances ... responsibility is critical, but 'truth' may not be. Lies might tie people together: relations may matter more than surface truths (p. 18). The book is divided into four parts. At the end of the introductory part, Blum proposes sixteen maxims underlying Chinese behavioral patterns. These become guiding principles to investigate social interactions in urban Han China, where allegedly even more than in the United States ... it is essential to predict others' actions (p. 45). The second part of the book, China Present, examines the morality of and truth from ethnographic, social and literary perspectives. Blum provides multiple examples, epitomizing the sixteen maxims, of how corruption, fakes, censorship and secrecy operate in contemporary Chinese society. The third part, China Past, examines notions of and truth from the premodern period throughout the twentieth century. Here Blum offers thought-provoking insights on the concern for frankness and the notion of performance biaoxian) in Mao's times. Although the author focuses on China, she argues that instances of and lying are typical of all societies. In line with this, the fourth part challenges two previously outlined possible historical explanations, which led to the two claims that either practices of would be enduring features of Chinese culture or that they might have arisen with Communism and reached their climax with the Cultural Revolution. …