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- Author or Editor: Ning Wang x
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“Death of a Discipline”?
Toward a Global/Local Orientation of Comparative Literature in China
Summary
Starting with questioning Gayatri Spivak's controversial book Death of a Discipline, the present article tries to argue that unlike the case in the United States, comparative literature in China is still very energetic playing a leading role in Chinese-Western cultural and academic exchange and communication. Although, to the author, comparative literature in China did not become an independent discipline until the 1980s, it has been developing so rapidly that it was soon involved in international comparative literature scholarship and has become an important member of the International Comparative Literature Association. Since comparative literature became an independent discipline in mainland China in the 1980s, it has been both combined with “area studies” with its focus on Chinese-Western comparative studies and with the strategy of “crossing borders” and more topics from other disciplines or branches of learning. Even in the age of globalization when many of the other disciplines of the humanities are severely challenged, comparative literature studies in China is still flourishing as it is closely related to or even combined with world literature into one discipline, with many of the internationally discussed theoretic topics “globalized” in the Chinese context.
Abstract
Globalization has indeed exerted strong influence on China’s literary and cultural studies. The present essay first of all deals with the controversial issue of globalization with the author’s reconstruction of it from a Chinese perspective on the basis of his previous observations. Then it discusses cultural studies, including studies of elite culture and its products challenged by popular culture, in China. It lays particular emphasis on the currently prevailing Cultural Studies introduced from the West into China at the beginning of the 1990s. The author addresses the following issues: how Cultural Studies is introduced into the Chinese context, how it is integrated with domestic elite culture studies and literary studies, how it is institutionalized in the Chinese context, and how it is developing into the phase of carrying on equal dialogues with the Western scholarship in the age of globalization. To the author, Cultural Studies has a lot in common with literary studies, especially in the Chinese context, so these two branches of learning should not necessarily be opposed to one another. A sort of dialogue and complement rather than opposition between literary and cultural studies could be realized. Even in the age of globalization, when many of the other disciplines of the humanities are severely challenged, comparative literature, merging with cultural studies, is still flourishing as it is closely related to the debate on the issue of globalization. Although both the two disciplines are closely related to the advent of globalization and have travelled from the West to China, they have after all been “glocalized” in the Chinese context with certain Chinese characteristics. That is why they still survive the age of globalization.
Abstract
In the present era of globalization, discussing the relations between man and nature as well as the environment has become a cutting-edge theoretical topic for almost all humanities scholars. In this respect, the rise of eco-criticism in the English-speaking world takes the initiative of intervening from a literary critical perspective. Partly due to introduction and translation from the West, and partly from China’s own ecological resources, eco-criticism has also risen in China and quickly flourished. Actually, the relation between man and nature has long been a theme not only in Western literature but also in Chinese literature, and Tao Yuanming’s creation of the “Peach Blossom Spring” as a Chinese version of Utopia serves as a particularly notable example. The present article, after some critical review and reflection of the positive aspects of eco-criticism, tries to deconstruct from a postmodern eco-critical perspective the exclusiveness of the “people-oriented” ethics dominated in current Chinese ideology, and at the same time, questions the nature-earth-centric mode of thinking advocated by the eco-critics. To the author, it is necessary to construct a sort of postmodern environmental ethics characterized by harmoniousness with differences reserved in the present era rather than raise another binary opposition between man and nature.
Abstract
Modern Chinese literature is most open in the history of Chinese literature, with various Western literary currents and cultural trends flooding into China. As the most important and popular genre in Chinese literature, modern Chinese novel has been developing under the Western influence, and it has played a vital role in flourishing modern Chinese literature and enlightening modern Chinese intellectuals and the broad reading public. To the author, toward the end of the nineteenth century, Chinese literature was almost “marginalized”. In order to resume its lost grandeur it moved from periphery to centre by identifying itself with Western cultural modernity or modern Western literature. To realize this grand and ambitious aim, translating novel became an important task. In dealing with the Western influence, the author also reperiodizes twentieth-century Chinese literature: modern literature started with the May 4th Movement in 1919 and ended in 1976; since 1976, Chinese literature has been in the contemporary era, which is characterized by more postmodern than modern. In this global context, Chinese fiction writing has become part of world literature and been developing in a pluralistic direction.
Abstract
Since world literature is represented in different languages, translation has played an important role in reconstructing such world literatures in different languages and cultural backgrounds. In the past decades, the postcolonial literary attempts have also proved that even in the same language, for instance, English, literary writing is still more and more diversifying, hence the birth of international English literature studies. Thus the concept “world literature” is no longer determinate, for it has evolved in the historical development of literature of all countries. Today’s literary historiography is thereby pluralistically oriented: not only by means of nation-state, for instance, British literature and American literature, but also by means of language, such as (international) English literature(s), and (international) Chinese literature(s). Walter Benjamin, in dealing with the task of the (literary) translator, pertinently points out that translation endows a literary work with “continued life” or “afterlife”, without which many literary works of world significance will remain dead or marginalized. Inspired by Benjamin’s thinking of translation and Damrosch’s emphasis on the role played by translation in constructing world literature, the author lays particular emphasis on the translation of literary works which may well help form such a world literature. The reason why Chinese literature is little known to the world is largely for lack of excellent translation. The author thereby calls for translating Chinese literature into some of the major world languages.
