Disorientations: Chinese Literature in the American University

Abstract

This paper examines the various scholarly and institutional mediations by which Chinese literature has been studied in the West, starting with the governing assumptions of nineteenth-century European philology and moving to the defense-strategical motivations behind the development of area studies programs after World War II, to the burgeoning of East-West comparative literature, and finally to the often concealed, but usually overtly universalizing presumptions of contemporary Western theory. While I do not wish to argue for a parochial cultural essentialism or exceptionalism that would insulate Chinese literary traditions from the analytical tools of Western academic practice, I do feel that concepts with claims to be "global" have not really been seriously tested by works embedded in very different histories and contexts, and questions about the function and nature of humanistic discourse have been assumed to be transportable rather than subject to confrontation and transformation from those works. Finally, I point out how the asymmetry in this relationship between Western theory and other traditions has been institutionalized in the typical departmental structure of the American university, a situation that is only now being subject to challenge.

Résumé

Ce texte examine les diverses médiations savantes et institutionnelles dans lesquelles la littérature chinoise a été étudiée à l’Ouest; allant des hypothèses dominantes de la philologie du 19ème siècle aux motivations de défense stratégique qui soutenaient les programmes d’étude régionale de l’après-guerre, jusqu’au bourgeonnement de la littérature comparée de l’Est et de l’Ouest; il aboutit à la façon dont la théorie contemporaine occidentale cache parfois et plus souvent rend universelles ses présuppositions. Sans vouloir défendre un essentialisme ou un exceptionalisme culturel chinois, qui isolerait les traditions littéraires chinoises des outils analytiques de l’Ouest, je pense que les concepts dits « mondiaux » doivent montrer leur efficacité à partir d’oeuvres insérées dans des histoires et des contextes très différents.