Wuthering hands: ‘Wood Virtue’ and artechnai in early China

What stirs us when a wooden object is made, used, disposed—and felt—in our own hands? The concept of techno-(onto-) poiesis, which foregrounds the prevailing, manifest importance of technical ingenuity and the processual effect upon the end-product itself, has emerged from recent discussion on the genealogies of various techniques from around the premodern world. Relying on the textual and archaeological materials whose intersection tends to be overlooked by precedent studies of ancient history, this article engages with the new concept techno-(onto-) poiesis as an entangled situation at the intersection of woodworking experience temps lié, ‘linked time’ (a recyclable sense of practice bound in duration, smoothly and connected, rather than at a fixed moment of completion) and artisanal/intellectual labor in Early China as a situation that may help us in rethinking the established conceptual structure (common ground and gaps) between techniques, language, and religious and aesthetic experience.