The Futures of Comparative Literature Envisioned by Chinese Comparatists

In their article "The Futures of Comparative Literature Envisioned by Chinese Comparatists" Sheng Meng and Yue Chen discuss the future of Comparative Literature from the perspective of Chinese comparatists. They argue that in response to the latest rhetoric around the crisis and death of Comparative Literature as a discipline, Chinese comparatists have fallen into four major representative groups. While the first one advocates restoring of international literary relations study of the French School, the second and the third camp see the future of the discipline lying in both the turn to translation and world literature respectively. However, the most ambitious is the Chinese School that propose an independent path of academic innovation from the Western theoretical framework. They believe all these thoughts will help shape the future of Comparative Literature both in China and around the world. Sheng Meng and Yue Chen, "The Futures of Comparative Literature Envisioned by Chinese Comparatists" page 2 of 7 CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 19.5 (2017): http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol19/iss5/10 Special Issue Against the "Death" of the Discipline of Comparative Literature. Ed. Shunqing Cao Sheng MENG and Yue CHEN The Futures of Comparative Literature Envisioned by Chinese Comparatists In her 1993 book, Comparative Literature: A Critical Introduction, Susan Bassenett writes "Today, Comparative Literature in one sense is dead" (47), and she further states, "Comparative Literature as a discipline has had its day. Cross-cultural work in women's studies, in post-colonial theory, in cultural studies has changed the face of literary studies generally. We should look upon translation studies as the principal discipline from now on, with Comparative Literature as a valued but subsidiary subject area" (161). What she signals is the identity crisis of Comparative Literature at the turn of the century. Admittedly, the legitimacy of this discipline has been questioned incessantly ever since its birth. In the early twentieth century, when Comparative Literature was still in its infancy, Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce challenged the credibility of Comparative Literature as a specific field of knowledge in that comparison is but a research method that can be applied into any subject. In 1959, in his paper "The Crisis of Comparative Literature", René Wellek attacked the French School for its reliance on "historical relativism" and "factualism" (282) that put comparative literature on the edge of a crisis. Yet, Susan Bassnett's provocative statement reverberated globally among comparatists and joined by Gayatri Chakravoty Spivak, who published the book in 2003 entitled Death of a Discipline, in the hope that it "will be read as the last gasp of a dying discipline" (xii). In the same year, Haun Saussy submitted an essay entitled "Exquisite Cadavers Stitched from Fresh Nightmares" to American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA), alluding to the crisis inherent in the history and tradition of the discipline. The horn of death blown from the traditional bastion of Comparative Literature quickly caused repercussions across the academic field of Comparative Literature in China, where the discipline had just revived in the late 1970s and early 1980s, marked by two milestones, the publication of Zhongshu Qian's masterpiece 管锥编 (Guan Zhui Bian) in 1979 and the founding of the Chinese Comparative Literature Association in 1985. Since then, Comparative Literature has been flourishing in China, with 9,269 papers published from 1980 to 2000, 1,129 books from 1978 to 2005, 81 textbooks by the end of 2008; 26 universities offering PHD programs and 94 universities offering 94 postgraduate programs (Sun, "The Revival" 2). However, Chinese comparatists were not immune to the crisis and felt the same concerns and anxiety about the future of the discipline, as according to the search results from CNKI, China's leading academic resources aggregator, 1,116 papers have been published in Chinese journals in regards to the Comparative Literature crisis. In their view, the crisis that Comparative Literature confronts can be attributed to two causes. Firstly, it has an obscure and ambiguous disciplinary boundary with an unidentified and unclear object of study. Comparative Literature shows the variation of its scope and boundaries in its major three stages of development. The first stage is the French school that features influence study and positivism confining the study strictly to the history of international literary relations. The second stage is the American School "with its emphasis on studies of analogy and interdisciplinary research" (Cao, "The Variation Theory" xix). The third stage is the recent trend that saw the shifts and turns in the object of study from literature and literariness to theory study, translation, culture and media study. Literature has lost its appeal to comparatists. Instead, they turn to study gender, race, queer theory, mass culture and media studies. Meanwhile, on the one hand, theories such as poststructuralism, western Marxism and post-colonialism have been proposed and produced by scholars and researchers among schools and departments of Comparative Literature and are applied to other disciplines of the Humanities. Literature, on the other hand, is ignored and marginalized. The scope of comparison is also at a constant change and evolving, extending from cross-nation, cross-language, cross-culture, cross-discipline to cross-civilization. In one word, many scholars believe that it is the uncertainty and unlimited expansion of scope and object of study that has lead to the crisis of Comparative Literature. Secondly, there is a controversy on the methodology of Comparative Literature. Jean-Marie Guyard said, "Comparative Literature is not comparison of literatures. It is in fact a scientific method misunderstood...It is vain to try to make a clear definition of its feature" (La Littérature 5). Comparative Literature was born at a time when comparative reasoning prevailed as a trend of thought in the nineteenth century and when disciplines that shared the same title such as Comparative Anatomy, Comparative Religion and Comparative Linguistics were just beginning. The rationality of Comparative Literature was questioned from its nascence. The well-known Italian scholar Croce was one of the critics. He held that comparison is but a simple and universal method and cannot Sheng Meng and Yue Chen, "The Futures of Comparative Literature Envisioned by Chinese Comparatists" page 3 of 7 CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 19.5 (2017): http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol19/iss5/10 Special Issue Against the "Death" of the Discipline of Comparative Literature. Ed. Shunqing Cao be regarded as the foundation of a discipline. There are scholars who still believe today that Comparative Literature is not qualified to be recognized as an independent subject and has no unique methodology. Those who acknowledge comparison as the method of the discipline would wonder whether there are other methods besides comparison. In addition, the method of comparison itself, if used inappropriately, is also questioned and criticized. The most criticized approach is unidirectional illustrative study and the comparative pattern of "X+Y". Illustrative study was analyzed by Taiwanese scholar Tianhong Gu in his essay "Chinese Comparative Literature: A Simple Exploration of Its Categories, Methods, as well as Mentality", with an intention to "illustrate Chinese literature as well as existing literary and arts theories by the systematical Western literary criticism" (see Cao, 220). The problem of this unidirectional illustrative study is that it neglects the heterogeneity between two cultures and treats Western theories as universal theories that can be applied in different contexts, backgrounds and cultures. One-directional illustrative study will lead to "one-way fluid trend of culture" and "cultural hegemony of the West" (Cao, 221). The simplified comparison pattern of "X+Y" such as the comparison between William Wordsworth and Yuanming Tao, a recluse poet of the Chinese Six Dynasties period, is the reduced, simplified, superficial comparison that fails to see both poets coming from two heterogeneous cultures and civilizations and were subject to different aesthetic values and literary theories and their poems were products of their respective times and cultures and were subject to different poetic styles, genres and aesthetics. Conclusions and findings made from "X+Y" comparison are too often arbitrary and farfetched and can give rise to an infinite sea of possibilities, which may not be counted as a scientific approach. These and other criticism has instigated a crisis in the discipline. In response to the disciplinary crisis, Chinese comparatists have fallen into four broad camps. The first camp advocates restoring the study of international literary relations of the French school, and specifically, to the paradigm and basic orientation of it. Comparatists in this club follows the logic that since the current crisis of Comparative Literature stems from generalization and constant expansion that blurs the disciplinary boundary and incorporates cultural studies into Comparative Literature studies, the way out is to separate cultural studies from Comparative Literature and retreat from interdisciplinary study to transnational literary influence study. Hua Zhong writes in the paper "比较文 学危机及出路之我见" ("Personal Perspective on Comparative Literature Crisis and Its Way Out"), "we have reason to believe that there is perhaps only one way out for its release from the crisis and predicament and remold the dignity and image: to return to and transcend the French school" ("我们有 理由认为, 要让比较文学学科走出重重危机与困境, 重塑比较文学的尊严与辉煌, 出路或许只有一条:回归并超越'法国学 派'" [86]). He further maps out the future of the discipline. Firstly, he suggested a return to the research paradigm and orientation of the French school based on cross-lingual, cross-national international literary relations. Secondly, transcending nationalism and European centralism existing in the French school to adhering to the doctrine of value neutrality, and making the studies of Comparative Literature open and non-discriminatory, with an emphasis on the correlation between literature works from different nations. Thirdly, transcending the triviality and fragmentary of the empirical research methods employed by the French school that reduce Comparative Literature study to communication, biography and "international trade" of literature and giving consideration to both factualism and aesthetic values. Fourthly, he claims that the study should transcend the confines of historical facts by the French school, and find heterogeneity and homogeneity of literature across languages and nationalities as well as common rules and theories governing literature, to construct world literature and general literature (86). Hua Meng also believes Comparative Literature is in essence the study of "cultural intercourse in terms of literature" ("What" 53) ("文学方面的文化交流 " ["皮" [53]) and as long as cross-cultural communication exists, Comparative Literature has no reason to disappear. She quoted Xianlin Ji, who wrote in the essay "Comparative Literature and Cultural Exchange" that "Comparative Literature belongs to the category of cultural communication...Ever since the advent of human society, people from different nationalities and regions have been constantly engaging in cultural exchanges...Comparative Literature is the study of cultural exchange in terms of literature" (Meng 53) ("比较文学的研究属于文化交流的范畴...自从有了人类社会以来, 世界上各民族、各地区就在不断的进行着文化交流... 比较文学所要探索的正是文学方面的文化交流" [53]). Since Comparative Literature is the product of cultural intercourse among nations, the study of international literary relations represents the most original and fundamental domain of the discipline and maintains the identity and nature of it. Following this reasoning, she naturally concluded that a return to the study of international literary relations is the solution to the crisis and "international literary relations was, is and should be the most essential and important research field in Comparative Literature as a discipline" ("国际文学关系研究过去是,今天与未来 Sheng Meng and Yue Chen, "The Futures of Comparative Literature Envisioned by Chinese Comparatists" page 4 of 7 CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 19.5 (2017): http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol19/iss5/10 Special Issue Against the "Death" of the Discipline of Comparative Literature. Ed. Shunqing Cao 也应该是本学科最基本、最主要的研究内容" [51]). Similarly, she also readjusts and reforms the approaches of international literary relations: international literary relations focuses on cross-culture and crosslanguage phenomenon and facts as a production of exchanges. Based on positive and factual methods, it studies the causes, evolution process, consequences, effects and its consequent literary and cultural issues. Such study is based on influence and acceptance of an empirical approach, complimented by analogy and interdisciplinary approach. The second camp is represented by Tianzhen Xie, who agrees with, to some extent with Susan Bassnett's idea of "translation studies as the principal discipline" (Comparative 61), and believes that the translation turn is the mainstream trend for the development of comparative literature in China. Xie's opinion is based on the following two points. Firstly, translation studies itself has experienced a shift from the traditional studies that deals with the technical aspect of translation to a linguistic and then to a cultural perspective. In the 1950s, Eugene A. Nida, Peter Newmark and J.C. Catford, who represent the linguistic school of translation studies, began to study translation from the linguistic approach. In the 1970s, James S. Holmes, Itamar Even-Zohar, Gideon Toury, shifted their attention to the cultural aspects that focus on issues such as "'why a translator translates in this way' instead of 'how to translate' and 'why a translator chooses to translate the works of this author in this country instead of works of that author from that country'" ("On the Translation" 44) ('为什么这么译', '为什么译 这些国家、作家的作品而不译那些国家、作家的作品 '等问题上 " ["论比较 " [44]). In the 1980s, the representatives of the cultural school of translation studies are André Lefevere and Susan Bassnett. André Lefevere developed the theory of translation as a form of rewriting and put forward the triad theory of 'ideology', 'patronage' and 'poetics' in his book Translation, Rewriting, and the Manipulation of Literary Fame. Susan Bassnett, together with André Lefevere, pioneered the "cultural turn" of translation studies. In her essay "The Translation Turn in Cultural Studies", she writes: "We call this shift emphasis 'the cultural turn' in translation studies, and suggested that a study of the process of translation combined with the praxis of translating could offer a way of understanding how complex manipulative textual processes take place" (Bassnett, 123). Secondly, comparative literature has also undergone a cultural turn. After the end of the World War II, Western academia saw an upsurge of theories, from semiotics, deconstruction, to postcolonialization, post-modernization, new historicism and among others. Whereafter, research subjects have been extended beyond written text to visual images. Xie concluded: In summary, due to the context of globalization on which the academic studies are based, international comparative literature study has undergone the popularity of theories in the 1970s, the prevalence of postmodernism and the reflection and reconstruction of traditional literary canons in the 1980s, and the extension of the research subjects beyond written books to film, TV and animation, for example. The focus has shifted from studies on literary relations seeking rapports de fait, to a stage of what Spivak called 'cultural pluralism and culture study', thus presenting a tendency of comparative literature study different from the traditions or 'the father generation' ("On the Translation" 47). (概而言之,由于当前整个学术研究处的经济全球化的大背景,国际比较文学研究经历了 70 年的理论热,80 年代后现代主义 思潮盛行并对传统文学经典进行反思和重建,到 90 年代把它的研究对象越来越多地扩展到了语言文字作品之外,如影视、动 漫等,其关注重点也越来越多地跳出"寻求事实联系"的文学关系研究,从而呈现出不同于传统(所谓"父辈")比较文学研究的 态势,进入到了斯皮瓦克所说的"文化多元主义和文化研究"阶段。("论比较" 47). Based on this background, Xie put forward three new trends for the future development of comparative literature after the cultural turn. The first trend is to apply contemporary cultural theories to literature and culture studies. One of the examples he cited was the interpretation of the Chinese classic Journey to the West as initiation rite of non-literate people, as seen from literary anthropology. "As issues such as geographical politics, civilization conflicts and natural ecology are incorporated into research," he writes, "the subject of study will be further deviated from literature itself" (48). The second trend is the expansion of research interest from written works to films and movies, cartoons and animation. The third trend is translation study. He holds that the translation turn is in the closest relationship with comparative literature studies. But he takes a more cautious attitude. He writes: "I am not in full agreement with Susan Bassnett's claim that the path of comparative literature only leads to translation studies or even completely replaced by translation studies. I believe they are complementary, mutually reinforcing and enriching." However, he believes that the translation turn will bring a new opportunity and a promising perspective for Chinese comparative literature (48). The third camp believes comparative literature is to give way to world literature. The most dominant proponent of this view is Ning Wang. In his paper "The Death and Rebirth of Comparative Sheng Meng and Yue Chen, "The Futures of Comparative Literature Envisioned by Chinese Comparatists" page 5 of 7 CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 19.5 (2017): http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol19/iss5/10 Special Issue Against the "Death" of the Discipline of Comparative Literature. Ed. Shunqing Cao Literature" he writes: "we have talked about the issue of the crisis of comparative literature for many years and now we have a tentative conclusion on it in the era of globalization: an increasingly closed, rigid and conventional comparative literature is destined to die. In the context of globalization, a new comparative literature characterized by cross-culture, cross-civilization and cross-discipline is about to be born". ("我们已经谈论了多年的'比较文学的危机'问题终于在当今这个全球化的时代有了暂时的结论,日趋封闭和 研究方法僵化的传统的比较文学学科注定要走向死亡,而在全球化语境下有着跨文化、跨文明和跨学科特征的新的比较