Abstract
In Chinese classical poetics, the core category of “scene” is often understood as the product of a poet's “empathy” with, or “projection” of emotion onto, external things. However, Wang Fuzhi's (1619—1692) depiction of “sad emotion in a joyful scene” and the contemporary German aesthetician Gernot Böhme's discovery of “experience of contrast” challenge the plausibility of projection theory at the level of experience. “Projection theory” is based on the presupposition that the “thing” is a pre-existing and objectively real entity. Wang Fuzhi and Gernot Böhme show that this understanding of the “thing” ignores “hiddenness” or “transparency.” This blind spot is formed because, within an epistemological or subject-centered perspective and a dualistic paradigm marked by the opposition between subject and object and the distinction between things and the self, people examine things under the authority of the thinking subject. This is the fundamental crux of projection theory. Wang Fuzhi emphasizes that the poetic “scene” is “a thing of Heaven” and “the incipience of things,” while Böhme proposes to view the “thing” as “atmosphere.” Both theories aim to reveal that “scene” and “thing” are not ready-made entities that can be fully grasped at a glance. Rather, their fundamental mode of presence lies in their own “speaking” and “overflowing.”
Keywords
scene, projection theory, Wang Fuzhi, Gernot Böhme, atmosphere
First Page
200
Last Page
210
Recommended Citation
Li, Xiaoping. 2026. "Rethinking “Projection Theory”: Wang Fuzhi's and Gernot Böhme's Theories of “Scene” and “Thing”." Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art 46, (2): pp.200-210. https://tsla.researchcommons.org/journal/vol46/iss2/19
