3 Now Samuel was dead, and all Israel had lamented him, and buried him in Ramah, even in his own city. And Saul had put away those that had familiar spirits, and the wizards, out of the land. 4 And the Philistines gathered themselves together, and came and pitched in Shunem: and Saul gathered all Israel together, and they pitched in Gilboa. 5 And when Saul saw the host of the Philistines, he was afraid, and his heart greatly trembled. 6 And when Saul enquired of the Lord, the Lord answered him not, neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets. 7 Then said Saul unto his servants, Seek me a woman that hath a familiar spirit, that I may go to her, and enquire of her. And his servants said to him, Behold, there is a woman that hath a familiar spirit at Endor. (1 Samuel 28 (KJV))
A séance is an event with a fairly short history of inserting meaning into that word. Around the time of the founding of the American Republic its meaning was understood as "a sitting, a session," as of a learned society, originally in French contexts, from French
séance "a sitting,"(
here), and ultimately from the Latin
sedere "to sit". Its more popular meaning dates form the 1840s--in the sense of a "spiritualistic session in which intercourse is alleged to be held with ghosts of the dead" (
here). The rituals of meetings of the factotums of States in this century might perhaps be characterized as one long séance in which all sorts of ghosts have attempted to be conjured up for the predilection of those invited to view the spectacle. Everyone understands this--real conjurers of the dead stay away from things--but the spectacle is hard to resist and is a useful markers for those involved in the performance of séance.
It is always fun to seek to conjure ghosts and apparitions (
信鬼神)--even for the apparatus of the Chinese State, though one must be careful about the sort of spirit one seeks to conjure (
China warns party members to stick to Marx, not 'ghosts and spirits'). Messrs Biden and Xi, along with their entourages, appeared eager to conjure the spirit of Mr Trump at the performative spectacle that was their side meeting at the 2024 annual meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum of its leaders that was held from 15 to 16 November 2024 (
here). And yet that conjuring also required the medium of a leader quickly fading from the scene, along with his entourage, someone who was very much present in the moment, but also a bridge to another realm of reality that will explode on the global scene in January 2025.
Beyond that, it was not clear the point other than to address the spirits outside th the séance room, and more particularly an incoming president who is not known to take instruction from other leaders kindly. The performance was likely the point, and its opportunity for the press to take something away from it for the purpose of dissemination among the masses. Perhaps an instruction delivered through his fading predecessor would be more effectively received? That is unlikely, especially when the instruction is interpreted by Mr. Trump's key advisors around these issues--the Secretary's of State and Defense, and the new national security advisor. Perhaps the object was provocation of a leader who loved to be provoked (and in that sense can be managed through well conceived provocations). That is a gamble--the Trump Administration and its leader, version 2.0 may be quite different than that in Trump Administration version 1.0. And the U.S. Congress is more likely to go along with Administration initiatives that require legislation this time around. Of course, this is not much of a provocation. Nothing in the points raised was either new or otherwise hidden. In a sense, at its most benign, it appears to be nothing more than one leader reminding the other about what is important to them. The Biden Administration has been reminded about this list, in whole or in part, since the last version of these sorts of meetings occurred at the start of the Biden Administration in Anchorage (consequences considered here, and here). On the other hand, it is not the content but the delivery that counts in public performances like this one--that is something that both thin skinned countries are well aware of. And that, rather than the content, might be the provocation, if the Americans chose to see it that way. It seems that the "Anchorage" shoe may now have moved to the other foot; assuming the Trump shadow administration is even in a mood to listen.
All of this raises questions that cannot be answered even through a
performance in which the questions themselves beg answering ("A reporter
in the room asked Biden whether he has any concerns about the
relationship under Trump, but he did not respond. The same reporter
asked Xi whether he had any concerns about tariffs that Trump has called
for, but Xi did not respond."
here). Beyond that, the usual--performances for domestic audiences, projections outward to the press organs outside of China, and theater that can be leveraged within the international institutions in which China has been acquiring more experience in successfully managing--if and when it suits them. That is both banal and likely will have an infinitesimally short half life in media reporting cycles. But people have longer memories.
And yet, at least from the Chinese side, some important information--or at least formal and official stances--were transmitted and underscored, and that ought to have some significance. They could not possibly be more than a transmission; great States tend not to lecture each other except as theater for consumption by others, but they do signal. Among the more important of the signals said to have been conveyed in the formal performance of text between the two sides was the 4th of 7 lessons from the term of Mr. Biden:
Fourth, it is important not to challenge red lines and paramount principles. Contradictions and differences between two major countries like China and the United States are unavoidable. But one side should not undermine the core interests of the other, let alone seek conflict or confrontation. The one-China principle and the three China-U.S. joint communiqués are the political foundation of China-U.S. relations. They must be observed. The Taiwan question, democracy and human rights, China’s path and system, and China’s development right are four red lines for China. They must not be challenged. These are the most important guardrails and safety nets for China-U.S. relations. (MoFA, President Xi Jinping Meets with U.S. President Joe Biden in Lima)
That one, certainly, caught the attention of press organs--if only because they provided a handy list of specific conditions that would be more or less easy to track. The others were a bot more ethereal; with the exception of the very few spots where some movement toward joint action were announced (see eg, here, here, here, here, and here. What did not catch the media's attention was that the Americans also have strongly held core positions--and these were also expressed. Unstated were the red lines that the Americans will develop now more forcefully under the incoming administration.
But even signals can lose something in its transmission--that is the nature of séance in which apparitions are the object of communication, and its medium of transmission. Still it is worth considering the way in which the meeting was packaged for digestion by press organs and the masses who read them. The form of that feeding, of course, were the now much expected "read outs" of high level meetings like this one. Both the Chinese and the U.S. readouts follow below: (1) An Overview of the Meeting Between Chinese and US Presidents in Lima by Foreign Ministry Spokesperson; and (2) Readout of President Joe Biden’s Meeting with President Xi Jinping of the People’s Republic of China. As is usual for these devices, they say more about the way in which each side orders the world for consumption by others than it says about the meeting itself. But then semiotics suggests that it is not the meeting but its perception that, for outsiders at least, is the more important, at least in the construction of the memorialization of the event. Trust, of course, is an entirely different matter. Tricky business among the land of living ghosts and the spirits of that which may become.
That, condensed to its essence, might be understood as the core semiotics of legal semiotics--a faith in meaning; and a meaning that performs its faith in the ordering premises of its lebenswelt. Courts and their procuratorates, function at their best as the iterative, mimetic performance of and custodian for an affirming role; a sort of phenomenology of law as faith-act. Not bad; not good, but intimately consequential--(re)producing the faith-experience of bad/good. In a sense, then, that is all one need know in order to appropriately approach the text recently performed by the apparatus of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, the Press Release and supporting decisions crafted over the signature of its officials, and flowing from the self-centering and affirming operations of the apparatus, all of which follow below (along with links to the original). To extract its premises, to distill its lebenswelt, is to begin to be able to approach its actualization in the text presented, and perhaps eventually, in its performative experiences. The impulses that drive the patterns into which all of this is woven, are universal; the application, in this case is contextually embedded--but the context is itself an object of the impulse and a manifestation of the inter-subjectivity of its patterning in this form and at this time and in this place. For a standard analysis, please look elsewhere.
