Mahjong Agonistics and the Political Public in Taiwan

Fate, Mimesis, and the Martial Imaginary

Bibliographic Data

ID3036276
AuthorsPaul E Festa (corresponding author)
Year2007
Volume80
Issue1
Pages93-125
Publication date2007-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAnthropological Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0003-5491 • E-ISSN: 1534-1518
PublisherProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/anq.2007.0004
OpenAlexW2061214528
LanguageEN
Citations received18
References cited25

In this article I examine high-stakes mahjong in Taiwan as a ritual mode of male agency fraught with political significance. I show how men divine fate by conjuring estranged game forces, while disavowing the "abeyance of agency" by deploying strategy and style to control fate's fickle flip-side-luck. Through "combat" with luck, men reanimate an officially orchestrated male totality, or martial imaginary, that reproduces idealized masculine values and patterns of citizenship. By further situating mahjong within a socially and politically encompassing play-ritual framework, I argue that mahjong mimesis generalizes a pathos of "sympathetic agonism" that blurs gender boundaries and that preserves a space for a plural democratic agôn

Aesthetics · Agency (philosophy) · Art · Democracy · Epistemology · Literature · Luck · Pathos · Political science · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · The Imaginary · Cinema and Media Studies · Diversity and Impact of Dance · Law · Martial Arts: Techniques, Psychology, and Education · Philosophy · Psychology

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