Chinese Pillory Culture: From Ritual Performance To Informational Punishment

Pillory, the punishment dating back to the Slavery period in our country, hasbeen rooting in heart of law executors and ordinary people. Chinese people areinfatuated with pillory, and at the same time, absent of deserved question andintrospection on its existing rationality and legality. Analyze on the punishmentpillory from legal culture and propagate culture, are exactly for sake of understandingthe emergence and evolution in Chinese thousands years of history, and the interactionand intergrowth with judicial tradition, social mentality, human rights conception andrighteous requirement.According to the pattern of physical state of aggregation and informationspreading, pillory has narrow and broad definition. In Chinese long history, thenarrow one has long existed, which makes some stubborn complex, or even a specialcultural landscape. When it comes to ancient death sentence, decapitate, waist-breakerand hanging and so on are all executed public and have the significant of pillory.Except for executed pillory, shaming pillory is more common known as indicatingpunishment, flail punishment or the rod buttock. These punishments make pillory thelabel of wrongdoers and outsiders. Until recent times, the Great Cultural Revolutionmade full use of public dispose, public arrest, public trial and the so-called politicaland legal discourse. At the present times, though these pillory behaviors have beencriticized and introspected, repeated prohibitions are still common.Why? We observe that there are profound drama metaphors behind officialpillory. No matter either official or folk having blind faith in punishment of vigilanceand positive effects, doctrine of severe punishment are always prevailed in ourcountry, so as upholding the general prevention theory of punishment. At the sametime, behind it also contains the grand narrative of the ritual, which means that thecrowned law and national imagination, legal literacy and identity affirmation, and alsothe discourse power of the executors. As well, it continuously strengthens ourconsensus for legal state and individual identity.Despite, the existence of official pillory is still based on Chinese universal socialand cultural psychology, which include human’s generally lacking of social orientation of religious faith and personality rather than self orientation, and alsoinclude vipassana resistance loss and external expansion in the long history ofConfucian culture and Chinese people’s fear of humiliation but pay attention to thepsychological face. On account of this, officials are likely to think that only the publicpunishment could maintain social order and reconstruct morality. Ordinary peopleappears highly accept pillory because they agree with this public display which bringsmoral enlightenment and demonstration effect.As well, folk popular public behavior is a lynching culture ramification. Privatedemands of violence are the implementation of immediate justice, the maintenance ofpublic order, the release of repressive violence and the reform of personalenlightenment. Folk behavior of pillory are various, which are show of China’scriminal law imagination, while the core form are still parading, listed publicly,punished knelt in public, execution in public and so on.Pillory is never lack of spectators, and Chinese people fond of watching dramashas some kind of drama preference. Besides, Confucian ethics’ preface-structureprobably makes us lack of social mind, public spirit and citizen consciousness and thedisplayed as long as it has nothing to do with him, so there is no need for sympathyand anger. However, on the other side of the logic in this kind of social relationship,there is the reactionary family system of individualism. Under the face of familysystem, the deprivation and repression of privacy concept contributes to the rationalityof pillory and people’s desire to peep.And that, Confucian ethics cultured the reason and restraint, which makeChinese society lack of god of wine culture some like carnival bantering withalternating mainstream value and alternatively changing spirit of folk culture. If youdemand drawing a clear distinction with people rebel against the orthodoxy, unitaryculture of China will make single thinking people hardly hold deserved humanitarianattitudes on pillory. Confucian’s theory of virtue let people dare not openly talk aboutor recognize violence, however, in violence ceremonies of pillory, we let out our inneralone violence but not censored.Meanwhile, general pillory could also be understood as a kind of punishment bymeans of completion of mass communication. Public spread of moral anomie,criminal suspects or criminal information, which let them to accept the trial andpunishment of public opinion, whose essence is also pillorying. Narrow pillory contributes to general pillory, and its culture is the intangible encouragement torumors and some information alike. This encouraged and promoting fault publicopinion atmosphere, in today’s highly developed media, has caused a greater anddeeper range of media pillory, and also contributed to the grave of privacy violationand the neglect of human rights.The culture of pillory, shuttle weaving in the Chinese tradition and modern,mutually blend, influence and penetration with Chinese legal culture, lynching folkculture, communication culture, people’s social psychology problems and so on,which knitting as a huge cultural network. Looking through the pillory culture; we areable to understand many Chinese judicial phenomenon and propagation phenomenonnowadays, which pillory is mutually complementary to each other.