The year 2017-2018 was devoted to the third part of a cycle of lectures that takes the side of decentering Chinese civilization, an undertaking of current significance if ever there was one, at a time when China presents itself - and is perceived by the rest of the world - as being in full rise to power and in a position to assert a claim to universality that it would have exercised over its periphery for centuries.
We began by examining what I consider to be the foundation of such universality, namely what I have termed the "anthropo-cosmic continuism of ritualistic culture". We then set out to show that this continuism is rooted in a highly centered and hierarchical conception of Chinese civilization, a conception that translates into a spatial representation that privileges the hyper-stable geometric figure of the square and the grid pattern.
Chinese civilization thus projects itself as a very strong centrality, radiating its influence in concentric waves with no outer limits. We have attempted to identify its symbolic foundations, illustrated in archaeological traces, textual sources and formulas that have become canonical, and which crystallized during the Han period, a dynasty that lasted four centuries between the 2nd century B.C. and the 2nd century A.D., and consolidated the territorial unification and centralization achieved by Qin.