Contribution
The paper extends the Confucian-incivility literature (Tiwald 2008; Kim 2011; Foust 2017) from verbal remonstrance to bodily protest carried out inside a ritual. It supplies a phenomenological mechanism for how ritual shapes and can be resisted: motivation, habit, intercorporeity, incorporation and excorporation, style, and citational force. It also uses a contemporary case to support Nivison and Hutton’s reading of Xunzian sagehood as a diachronic, collective project. Its comparative method brings two traditions to bear on “an object of joint attention” rather than comparing them directly (§1).
Key insight
Walsh’s central point is that a ritual can be contested in its own grammar. Kneeling keeps the anthem ritual’s point, reverence for an ideal, while rebuking its current object, so the protest is a disruption that “aims at revitalizing that order rather than irreparably transgressing it” (Kim, via §3). Because the protest is bodily and imitable at the centre of a mass ritual, its authority on his account lies in its uptake by others, not in the protester’s intention.
Assumptions
Premises and authorities:
- Dialectical frame on patriotism: Walsh follows Keller 2005’s rough map. Liberalism is uneasy with patriotism, and communitarians (MacIntyre 2003) treat it as a virtue. He treats Confucianism as a communitarianism with explicit resources on ritual (§1, fn 2).
- Textual authorities: the Analects (Slingerland trans.), the Mengzi (Van Norden), the Xunzi (Hutton trans. 2014), the Zuo Commentary via Slingerland, and the secondary literature on li (Kline 2004; Li 2007; Bockover 2012; Chaibong 2001; Curzer 2012).
- Interpretive bet: Nivison’s diachronic reading of Xunzian sagehood, adopted though “not definitive” (§4, p. 14).
- Phenomenological apparatus: Merleau-Ponty (motivation, habit, intercorporeity, style); Bourdieu via Crossley; Wehrle 2017 on the normative body; Malmqvist & Zeiler and Zeiler 2013 on incorporation and excorporation; Butler and Derrida (via Wehrle) on citationality; Fanon; Ahmed.
- Factual premises about the case: Kaepernick first sat, then knelt after consulting Nate Boyer, and said he would stand when the flag “represents what it is supposed to represent” (Dubin 2016). Patriotic displays at sporting events grew after 9/11, partly funded by the DoD (Bryant 2018; McCain & Flake). The NFL adopted a stand-or-be-fined policy. These rest on journalistic and report sources. Walsh cites political reactions (Obama, Trump, O’Rourke) as illustrations of the controversy (fn 6).
Key results
What Walsh argues:
- §2: the dispute over Kaepernick is mis-registered as one about rights. His critics grant the right but charge disrespect, which reveals “widespread implicit approval of a basic principle of Confucian statecraft”: using ritual to inscribe values on the body politic.
- §3: Confucianism also supports a defence. Li demands being “fully present” (Analects 3.12). Remonstrance is endorsed (Analects 13.15, 14.22; Mengzi 4B:3, 5B:9). On Walsh’s reading of Xunzi 19, the proper target of Xunzi’s scorn for ritual show-offs is overzealous displays of “pseudo-patriotism”, not the kneeling. Popular approval is not the measure (Analects 13.24).
- §4: rituals are trans-generational “markers” (Xunzi 17). Kaepernick continues an African-American athletes’ heritage of contesting the anthem ritual. His gesture democratizes incivility and has “mimetic force”.
- §5: five phenomenological theses. (1) Ren motivates li, as thought motivates expression: li is necessary but not sufficient for ren (after Li 2007). (2) Habits are normative, a “tension that oscillates around a norm”. (3) Ritual meaning is historically and intercorporeally sedimented, and so can carry oppressive norms. (4) Style allows modification within mastery. (5) Sagehood is bodily “citational force”.
- §6: the anthem ritual can be a site of excorporation, in which one’s lived body “breaks in the encounter with others” (Zeiler), for many African-Americans (Robinson; Fanon). Opting out (sitting) is one response. The “sagely” response keeps what is central to the ritual and rebukes what has become pernicious. Kneeling is contrasted with the raised fist: reverence, deference and humility versus strength and defiance.
- §7: with MacIntyre, the patriot’s unconditional allegiance is to the nation as a project, not to its rulers. On Walsh’s reading, kneeling honours the American ideal as an ideal “we necessarily will fail to live up to”, and so, “perhaps”, shows what a 21st-century American sage might look like.
Claims
| id | claim | strength | support |
|---|---|---|---|
| C1 | Critics’ charge of disrespect presupposes a Confucian-style view of civic ritual | moderate | interpretive argument with anecdotal illustrations (the Campeau-Laurion ejection, fan quotes via Bryant 2018) (§2) |
| C2 | Classical Confucianism licenses incivility aimed at harmonization, including remonstrance of rulers | strong (as textual exegesis) | primary texts: Analects 13.15, 13.23, 14.22, 4.18; Mengzi 4B:3, 5B:9; Kim 2011 (§3) |
| C3 | Kaepernick’s kneeling is incivility at the bodily level within ritual, a form existing scholarship has not treated | moderate | interpretive argument (§3–4); the novelty claim is about the scholarship Walsh cites |
| C4 | Sagehood and ritual form a diachronic, collective project (Nivison and Hutton) | weak | adopted interpretation that Walsh concedes is “not definitive” (§4); the case is offered as support for it |
| C5 | The relevant tradition for Kaepernick’s gesture is African-American athletes’ contestation of the anthem ritual | moderate | historical examples from Bryant 2018 and Robinson 1972 (§4) |
| C6 | The Confucian ren–li relation is analogous to the phenomenological thought–expression relation of “motivation” | weak | informal analogy (§5.1) |
| C7 | A sage’s authority “just is” the power to institute body language that others take up (citational force) | weak | assertion assembled from Wehrle, Butler and Derrida and Confucian exemplarism (Olberding; Zagzebski) (§5.5); no criterion separates sagely from merely popular uptake |
| C8 | Kneeling expresses reverence and humility, unlike the raised fist, and so keeps faith with the ritual’s point | weak | interpretation of gesture meaning (§6–7); assertion |
| C9 | The gesture is a patriotic expression compatible with both American and Confucian ideals | weak | synthesis of C2–C8 with MacIntyre 2003 (§7) |
Concepts
- Li (禮): the system of practices from etiquette to formal ritual, with an explicitly political role (§2). It is read as a cultural “grammar” (Li 2007; Kline; Bockover) (§5.1).
- Ren (仁): goodness or humanity, the supreme virtue. Li is necessary but not sufficient for it (§5.1).
- Harmonization (he 和) vs agreement (tong 同): exemplary engagement corrects excess and deficiency, like a chef or musician, rather than conforming (§3).
- Confucian incivility: disruption of the li-based order that aims at revitalising it (Kim 2011). Walsh extends it to the bodily level.
- Sage (sheng 聖) vs junzi (君子): the junzi masters existing forms; the sage institutes new ways of relating while remaining guided by harmonization (§1). Walsh uses the term deflationarily.
- Motivation (Husserl, Merleau-Ponty): a dependence relation between aspects lived as a whole, between logical entailment and blind causation (§5.1–5.2).
- Habit body: pre-reflective, sedimented routines that are themselves normative (§5.2).
- Incorporation / excorporation: incorporation is the gradual inscription of norms into the body schema. Excorporation is an abrupt breakdown in which one’s lived body “breaks in the encounter with others”, forcing incorporated norms into view (Zeiler 2013) (§5.3, §6).
- Citational force: the authority of a gesture as it is iterated and taken up by others, not as it is intended (after Butler and Derrida, via Wehrle) (§5.5).
- Mimetic force: a gesture’s capacity for easy, visible imitation and uptake (§4).
Connections
The paper builds on the literature on Confucian incivility and remonstrance (Kim 2011; Tiwald 2008; Foust 2017) and on Confucian ritual and democracy (Chaibong 2001; Curzer 2012). It uses Merleau-Pontian feminist and critical-race phenomenology (Weiss; Diprose; Zeiler; Ahmed; Fanon) and Bryant 2018’s history of Black athletes and patriotism.
Among held works: LIT-174 (Bunton, athletes and entertainers speaking out) discusses the same protest from media ethics. Walsh does not cite it, and the two are complementary. Bunton asks when a celebrity’s speaking out is justified. Walsh argues that Kaepernick’s act is not “speaking out” at all but bodily ritual, and that its force comes from exactly that difference (§4). No other held work in the record’s literature treats Confucian philosophy, ritual or Merleau-Ponty, so the paper has no closer neighbours in nucleation.
Agency. The paper presupposes a phenomenological account of agency. Ritual action is “motivated” activity located “between absolute mechanism and absolute voluntarism” (Crossley on Bourdieu, §5.2). It is pre-reflective, habit-borne and norm-sensitive, and it is not “rigidly deterministic”: it “may be difficult to remain seated during the national anthem, but it is not impossible” (§5.4). Exemplary agency, on Walsh’s account, is collective and distributed: the sage’s power is his gesture’s uptake by others, “not simply a matter of his individual will or intention” (§5.5). Rituals are also presented as a “political technology” for shaping bodies, i.e. as instruments of social control, and protest as agency exercised within them. The agency tag is justified, as a secondary tag. The blurb’s “action, autonomy, control” fits the paper’s account of bodily action under inscribed social norms and of agency exercised inside a ritual that disciplines it. A reader browsing agency for accounts of embodied, habitual, socially constrained action would be right to expect it. The paper’s primary subject is ethics and political philosophy, so the current order (ethics, society-and-governance, agency) is right.
Bearing on the record
In nucleation it pairs with LIT-174 as the record’s two readings of the 2016 anthem protest. It is also the record’s only work on Confucian ritual theory and on the phenomenology of habit and excorporation, which could matter to any THEORY document on norms, habit or embodied agency. It carries nothing for ML practice.
Limitations
- Sagehood as uptake. The key normative notion (C7) is not separated from popularity or virality. Walsh cites Analects 13.24 against popular approval as a measure, which sits in tension with defining sagely authority by others’ take-up. The constraints that do the work (harmonization, fidelity to what is central, reverence) are asserted of this case rather than given as criteria.
- Contested exegesis. The diachronic reading of Xunzian sagehood is openly contested. The case is used both to apply it and, circularly, to support it (§4).
- The meaning of the gesture. The claim that kneeling signifies reverence and humility rather than defiance (C8) is an interpretation of how the gesture reads. The paper also reports critics who read it as disrespect, and gives no way to settle between readings beyond Kaepernick’s stated aims.
- Scope. The paper takes no position on whether patriotism is valuable. Its claim of compatibility with “American ideals” rests on MacIntyre’s account of patriotism, not on an argument within liberal theory.
- Evidence. Empirical and historical claims (the post-9/11 ritualisation of sport, the DoD spending, the spread of the gesture) rest on journalism, one media-framing study, and a Senate oversight report whose date is cited inconsistently.
- This is a reading of the accepted manuscript, not the version of record.
Open questions
- What criterion distinguishes sagely citational force from mere popularity, given that the Confucian texts Walsh cites reject popular approval as a measure?
- Does bodily incivility within ritual generalise to other rituals and gestures (Walsh’s fn 1 lists school, university and international cases), and does it depend on the ritual being non-hierarchical, as he argues of the anthem ritual (§4)?
- How does this phenomenology of habit and norm-inscription relate to accounts of agency and control elsewhere in the record, e.g. whether “motivated” action is a distinct category from intentional action?
Corrections to the seeded skim
- “Confucian incivility” is Kim’s (2011), not Walsh’s. The dossier says §3 “develops ‘Confucian incivility’ (Mengzi against ‘making obedience one’s standard’)”. Walsh adopts Sungmoon Kim’s notion. Incivility aims at harmonization (he 和), not mere agreement (tong 同) (Analects 13.23; Kim 2011: 35). Walsh’s own addition is that existing scholarship treats only discursive incivility (remonstrance), and that Kaepernick’s case shows incivility “functioning at the bodily level within ritual itself” (§3, p. 11). The Mengzi “obedience” line is in fn 9, not the argument.
- §4 is mainly about heritage and the diachronic reading of sagehood, not peerhood. The dossier reduces §4 to Xunzian “differentiations” and peerhood, which is its first page. The section’s argument (pp. 12–17) is threefold. (i) Following Nivison 1996 and Hutton 2018, sages are participants in a trans-generational “epistemic project” of ritual, not solitary geniuses; Walsh acknowledges that commentators agree this reading “is not definitive”. (ii) The relevant historical community is “the African-American community”, not the U.S. “understood as a single, homogenous community”. Its earlier “markers” are Paul Robeson, Muhammad Ali, John Carlos and Tommie Smith, Jackie Robinson and, in fn 15, Frederick Douglass. (iii) Kaepernick’s gesture “democratizes” incivility, which in the classical texts only ministers could exercise, and its power lies in its “mimetic force”, its ready imitability at the visual centre of the ritual. The Ole Miss basketball players’ 2019 kneeling is the example.
- “Sage” is explicitly deflationary. The dossier does not note this. Walsh says he is “certainly not arguing” that Kaepernick is the “embodiment of perfect … morality” or “culmination” of virtue (§1, p. 3). The claim is that the gesture is sagely because it institutes a new ritual form rather than mastering an existing one, as the junzi (君子) does.
- Walsh takes no position on whether patriotism is valuable (§1, p. 2). The dossier summary’s “founds a new bodily form of patriotism that liberal rights-talk cannot capture” slightly overstates the anti-liberal point. Walsh says rights-talk is the wrong “register” for critics’ charge of disrespect, since “Kaepernick clearly has the right”, and that the liberal rejoinder does not “fully capture” the gesture’s significance (§§2–3).
- The dossier’s question: how “citational force” does normative work. In §5.5 sagely authority “is not simply a matter of his individual will or intention, but rather just is his power to institute new body language that others take up”. Taken alone, that makes the normative status (sagehood) consist in uptake. The normative constraints come from elsewhere: aiming at harmonization rather than defiance, fidelity to what is “central” to the ritual (Xunzi 19.167–171), and reverence. §§3 and 6 argue these, not §5.5. The paper does not say how to tell a sagely gesture from a merely viral one, which is a limitation, not a correction.
- Minor internal inconsistency. The Department of Defense spending figure (upwards of $6.8 million) is cited in the text as “McCain and Flake 2017” and in the references as 2015 (§2, p. 5).