The Social Life of Inkstones Read Along: Introduction

[forestofglory]

Welcome to the first post of our read a long of The Social Life of Inkstones: Artisans and Scholars in Early Qing China by Dorothy Ko! For this post we are reading the introduction.

Since this the introduction to the book, I thought it might be nice for us to introduce ourselves, so here are some optional discussion questions:

1. What do you hope to get out of reading this book? What do you hope to get out of the read a long format?

2. What is your experience reading academic history books? (No experience necessary of course, but it's helpful for me to know for planning purposes)

3. What is your experience using an inkstone or writing languages that historically where written with inkstones?

4. In the introduction what did you find interesting and/or exciting?

Comments

[xmarksthespotwhereistand]

Hello!
I dropped out of university during my masters (literature with cultural anthropology minor for my BA) and i still miss reading seminars so this event is a gift to me.
I don't have experience with inkstones and copying characters is the part of my language studies that i neglect the most (even more than practicing talking!) due to time constraints. Though, i am afraid that i will break soon and actually acquire an inkstone. I am a big fan of the object and the topic, too, since i wrote i grieve from lovesickness. That's when i first met Ko's writing, too: i have read a review.
I usually enjoy writings about how meanings are projected on objects through social practices; Ko seems to focus on how meanings are projected on social practices through objects, i will definitely find this read stimulating. I definitely see my own prejudice to identify with the literati and the scholars in this direction of my own inquiries and that's why Ko's methodology fascinates me so much. I will try to keep an open mind and look forward to what this methodology will look like at work in the coming chapters.
These methodologies also relate to the class relations in the focus of the book: laboring with brain vs laboring with brawn, how separate these works are and what is the result of one, what is the result of the other.
It is a really interesting twist on the "discursive advantage of the scholar" then that Ko refuses to write about objects they haven't tried their hands at fabricating. That's an attitude that i have met before and it inspires me further to touch inkstones. After all, as Ko claims "even high-resolution photographs fail to capture the qualities most important to the Chinese craftsman or connoisseur: not just the form or design of the stone but the softness of touch akin to a baby's skin, the minute veins and other mineral features, and the wooden instead of metallic echo when tapped with the forefinger."
During my studies, i took some history courses, literature history or cultural history and the concept of histories ("localized and partial perspectives") instead of a history is not completely new to me, but it is a suspicion of mind that the shadow of a bigger picture will unintentionally will fall on these smaller histories and i kinda already see the hint of that.
P.s.: I just really enjoy Ko's writing for such beauties as: "It could be fashioned from kiln-fired sieved clay or other ceramics, lacquered wood, old bricks, fallen tiles, glass or semi-precious stones, but was most often made from specifically harvested stones, hewn from quarries to be designed, carved, polished, sold, commissioned, used to grind ink, washed, repaired, gifted, sold, stolen, collected, admired, studied, written on, written about, lost and forgotten." "Our guide on this tour of small worlds is an enigmatic woman, about whom much has been written about but little is known, who was one of the most accomplished inkstone makers of her days." (emphasise mine) So musical!

[forestofglory]

Hello, welcome!

Thanks for the link to the review!

Your thoughts on how meanings being projected on objects through social practices vs meanings being projected on social practices via objects are really interesting, and I'm going to look out for that as we keep reading.