Women, Rituals, and the Domestic-Political Distinction in the Confucian Classics

• Published date: 01 February 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00905917231191464
• Author: Loubna El Amine
• Date: 01 February 2024
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/00905917231191464

Political Theory

2024, Vol. 52(1) 90 –119

© The Author(s) 2023

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/00905917231191464

journals.sagepub.com/home/ptx

Article

Women, Rituals, and

the Domestic-Political

Distinction in the

Confucian Classics

Loubna El Amine1

Abstract

In this article, I show that women are depicted in the early Confucian texts

not primarily as undertaking household duties or nurturing children but

rather as partaking in rituals of mourning and ancestor worship. To make the

argument, I analyze, besides the more philosophical texts like the Analects

and the Mencius, texts known as the “Five Classics,” which describe women

in their social roles in much more detail than the former. What women’s

participation in rituals reveals, I contend, is that the domestic-political

distinction does little to illuminate the philosophical vision offered by the

early Confucian texts. Relatedly, while women’s involvement in communal

religious rituals has also been noted about early Greece, the political

import of such participation is even more pronounced in the Confucian

case. Specifically, I show that, by embodying intergenerational continuity,

the mourning and ancestor rituals that women partake in are foundational

to the Confucian state.

Keywords

women, domestic-political distinction, rituals, Confucianism, public-private

distinction

1Department of Political Science, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

Corresponding Author:

Loubna El Amine, Department of Political Science, Northwestern University, 601 University

Place, Evanston, IL 60208-0001, USA.

Email: loubna.elamine@northwestern.edu

1191464PTXXXX10.1177/00905917231191464Political TheoryEl Amine

research-article2023

El Amine 91

Scholarship on women in early China and early Chinese thought has, by

emphasizing the continuity between the domestic and the political spheres

in Confucianism, shown that women influence the political realm by help-

ing instill virtue at home (Chan 2000; Goldin 2000; Raphals 1998;

Rosenlee 2007). Even while rejecting a sharp distinction between the

domestic and the political, the continuity argument presupposes a conven-

tional conception of the domestic, one in which women take care of chil-

dren and the household, and a conventional conception of the political,

centered around the (male) business of government. But women are por-

trayed, in the early Confucian texts, primarily as participants in rituals of

marriage, mourning, and sacrifice to ancestors, not as homemakers.

Furthermore, mourning and ancestor rituals embody the value of intergen-

erational continuity, and this value is foundational to the Confucian con-

ception of the political. Or so I argue in this paper. To make this argument,

I analyze, besides the more philosophical texts like the Analects and the

Mencius, texts known as the “Five Classics.”

Scholars writing on early Greece have also revealed women’s involve-

ment in religious and ritual ceremonies central to the lives of their commu-

nities (Alexiou 2002; Goff 2004; Holst-Warhaft 1992; Honig 2009; Loraux

1990; Patterson 2007; Saxonhouse 1983), upending the conventional view

of Greek women as relegated to the private sphere of the household (the

oikos). I use this account of early Greece as a point of comparison to reveal

the distinctiveness of the Confucian view concerning mourning and ances-

tor rituals, how these rituals complicate the distinction between the domes-

tic and the political spheres, and the political import of women’s participation

in them.

The paper is divided into three parts: In the first part, I discuss the role of

women in texts like the Analects, the Mencius, and the Xunzi and make the

case for a turn to a different set of texts, known as the “Five Classics,” espe-

cially the Rites Classics, which I will also say more about. In the second part,

I illustrate women’s salient participation in all aspects of rituals of marriage,

mourning, and ancestor worship as depicted in the Rites and underscore the

rarity, conversely, of depictions of women in their household-related roles,

including their roles as mothers. In the third part, I show how these rituals are

important for the political realm, using arguments concerning women’s par-

ticipation in rituals in early Greece as a point of comparison. What the con-

cluding inquiry also reveals is that the domestic-political distinction does little

to illuminate the philosophical vision offered by the early Confucian texts.