War and balance: Following shi and rebalancing militant English-language knowing apparatuses

• Published in: The Sociological review (Keele) Vol. 68; no. 2; pp. 341 - 355
• Main Author: Lin, Wen-yuan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England SAGE Publications 01-03-2020; Sage Publications Ltd
• Subjects: Alternative approaches; Biomedical research; Biomedicine; Chinese languages; Dominance; English language; Hostility; Medical research; Medicine; Patients; Semiotics; Severe acute respiratory syndrome; Social sciences; Viruses; Taiwan; English-language knowing apparatus; SARS; Chinese medicine; shi-as-reasoning; yin and yang
• ISSN: 0038-0261; 1467-954X
• DOI: 10.1177/0038026120905475

English language and its warlike knowing apparatuses dominate global academic practice, including the repertoire of critique in social sciences. But what might be done about this? The paradox is that if we fight this, we simply rehearse the same logic of antagonism. This article tries to avoid this bind, experimenting instead with an alternative apparatus – an approach that values the art of balancing. In presenting this approach, shi-as-reasoning (shì, 勢), I take inspiration from Dr Hsu, a Chinese medical (CM) doctor in Taiwan, who avoids fighting viruses while treating patients with SARS in biomedically dominated clinics, and who publishes his work in English-language biomedical research journals. In doing so, he balances among the complexities of shi in the body of diseased patients, possible herbal interventions (decoctions), the contexts of CM practices in Taiwan, and English-language dominated biomedical research. Since this article describes Dr Hsu’s practices in English, it makes use of elements taken from the material semiotics of social science, Dr Hsu’s accounts of CM, and the logic of the non-antagonistic interplay between yin and yang. Following the lead of Dr Hsu, it thus suggests that a shi-inflected-reasoning might help to rebalance a situation that is imbalanced as a result of the domination of English in academia.