Self-Perception and Identity 111
tory of literary culture—that is, the culture of the literati, or shi.
Thus Zhao’s decision to write his work through the forms of a
specific and well-known genre is precisely what makes it a power-
ful statement on Chinese Muslim scholars’ self-perception. It gives
a clear indication of the way in which they understood themselves
vis-à-vis the Chinese intellectual and literary arena and how they
envisioned this culture as a whole. The central dissimilarity be-
tween Zhao’s project and those of Confucian genealogists revolves
around the two communities’ different understandings of what
could legitimately be categorized as shi. The fact that the genea-
logical genre had in the past been used by the Confucian elite as a
device to exclude not just non-Confucians but even Confucians
considered outside its mainstream makes Zhao’s decision to use it
all the more interesting. In an ostensible effort to purify tradition,
genealogical texts in fact aimed to purge all those who stood dan-
gerously close to the tradition’s periphery. Indeed, Wilson has
identified this subtle but definite exclusionary element as the pri-
mary characteristic of genealogical discourse: “This capacity to ex-
clude without explicitly doing so is central to the ideological char-
acter of genealogical discourse, for exclusions are never innocent.
They implicitly or explicitly delegitimize anything that lies on the
outside.”^73
Muslim Chinese scholars, however, did not think that the term
jingxue, classical learning, was reserved exclusively for Confucian
classical learning and saw fit to describe their own scholarly project
by this term. As we shall see, this was but one of a number of con-
cepts common to Chinese literati culture Chinese Muslim scholars
made free use of.
Z
Zhao’s Genealogy in its content and form, as well as by its very ex-
istence, suggests that Chinese Muslim intellectuals of the late impe-
rial period understood themselves and their work through the val-
ues and the social categories of the broader society of which they
were a part. In this chapter, we have seen the ways in which Chi-
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73. Wilson, Genealogy of the Way, p. 11.