Final conclusions

A little late, but here it goes...

Miner's essays, I think, were a good way to end this microseminar, especially in contrast with Pandit's afterward. The contrast between the broad, inclusionary poetics that Miner works to establish and the smaller, specific applications of non-Western theory that Pandit offers is striking, and Pandit serves to offset the necessarily unspecific nature of Miner's work.
As a European medievalist, my work primarily deals with what Miner would call "intracultural" comparisons, which can be problematic. He says, "In existing practice, comparison is dominantly intracultural, even intranational" and gives the example of comparing Goethe and Schiller. He finally says, "Comparative literature clearly involves something more than comparing two great German poets" (Introduction 5). This becomes problematic for a medievalist, who compares French and Italian works to their English counterparts, but also compares medieval writers from the same tradition as well. Trying to isolate one national tradition at all can be difficult before the Renaissance; major English writers are writing in English, French, and Latin. Do their French works constitute a separate tradition, or are they still characterized by some inherent "Englishness?" And how different are these national traditions, given that they only rise, for Miner, to the level of "intracultural" comparison.
My final conclusions about post-colonial theory is that while it's important for Miner to establish a comparative poetics that includes non-Western sources, and while it is important for scholars to recognize the worthiness of non-Western theories, it is not necessary for every scholar to incorporate these works into their own scholarship. To universally only practice Asian studies, or South-South comparisons, or even East-West comparisons would be a detriment to scholarship. There must be people comparing Asian literatures, just as there must be people comparing Western literatures. Along with more broad comparisons, there must be more targeted comparisons at all. To establish that one or the other is unworthy is another form of colonialism. In fact, Miner himself is indebted strongly to part of the Western tradition; he relies heavily on Aristotle's Poetics in order to discuss genre, in particular.

Miner notes

Language

Language as ground of thinking, literature (from rhetoric to language's relation to the world and the mind).

"Let it be said that our problem is not the indeterminacy of language. Language is irresistibly predicative, given to claim and determination even in conditional and subjunctive moods. The constraints oflanguage allow me no more freedom than they do the next person." (4)

"I would go farther than that sentence alone suggests and claim that language is inescapably referential and predicative, predicative in the sense of constantly entering truth claims. (Special signs or conventions are necessary for us to know that a fiction is implied, a very different, less definitive predication.)" (17)

Binaries:

It stood out to me how binaries work in Miner's first chapter, how he creates a dynamic between them and undoes (or does not undo) them.

implicit -- explicit

theoretical -- practical

universal -- particular

originative -- derivative

original -- translation

familiar -- outlandish

free -- constrained / free -- contaminated

imitation -- motivation

Knowledge:

literary -- nonliterary knowledge

art -- knowledge

Information (14):

"Once a culture is advanced in writing, and certainly once it has means to duplicate what has been composed, the products can and, so people believe, must be ordered and stored. The old libraries of Alexandria and China, like the modern ones of our universi ties, reflect in their intellectual ordering autonomies of kinds of knowl edge. It is clearly significant that the major classification used (when the information is available)"

Scale: universal, "largeness" (4) 

Code (16): reading as decoding

"The differences are physical in terms of coding but cognitive in respect to the person doing the knowing."

coded reading (implicit/explicit as mode of reading? layers of text? "patterns" of reading and of production? (16) 

"In addition to the physical coding, a text may be taken as the main body of writing as opposed to interlinears, notes, or indexes and other appendages. In an edition, the text is opposed to the commentary." (16) [commentary in Chinese tradition?]

"There are, however, telltale signs that may be arbitrary as semioticians say. They are not neutral. One need only read or listen like a sentinel alert on the passwords." (26)

Metaphor as comparison: 

"Also, "sphere" is metaphorical, whereas the terms set forth are of the literal kind we do well to pursue so that they may be more readilyjudged for their truth or falsehood, or at least for their utility or inutility. (18)

production (16):

literary factor(ie)s

The existence of a poem (poet, poem, production) (6. 16) 

Art -- science

"These considerations are rudimentary. But the art (not to mention the Wissenschaft) of comparison has a long way to go before clear canons are provided us." (22)

*What makes a "tradition"?

*mimesis/antimimesis/unmimesis 

Why do humans compare? A Toy Story.

There were two ideas brought up in Miner’s texts that presented a bit of a conundrum for me. Miner states that comparing should be done interculturally, rather than intraculturally. He also states that the problem with comparative practice today is that is assumes the predominance of Western genres: drama, lyric and narrative, and theory of literature.

Wherein lies the conundrum? Trying to understand the practice of comparing as it developed, I traced it back to my first encounters with it, in children (like a good Romantic would). Look at Toy Story. In this film (drama or narrative?), Andy establishes a parameter to gain order in his life: he writes his name on his beloved toys, distinguishing between what is his and what is not. Didn’t Descartes do something similar, by trying to establish an absolute truth from which to base all other thought? Doesn’t our author, Miner, seek to do the same by tracing back in history to the first (authoritative) text/poetic, outlining how a genre should be (Aristotle’s poetics). A second lesson from Toy Story: after establishing the parameter, comparisons are made. We base something new on something we already know. Is this based on a desire to lighten the cognitive load (think: lazy/efficient J)? “I’ve already learned one complicated new thing… are there other things like it?” Woody and Buzz are both Andy’s toys, this is an intracultural comparison. Buzz is initially judged “cooler” than Woody because of his more advanced technology. (The problem with Pixar, is that it appears to be an ideal world for didactic purposes, making it difficult to elaborate on the point I’d like to make, that initial comparisons predispose the comparatist to making evaluative comparisons.) When comparing Woody and Buzz with Sid’s toys next door, these “other” toys are deemed scary and malformed through in the initial shock of seeing them, and the film’s creators play on this fear. This is our initial reaction when viewing the other in this comparison. See this as first drawing an intercultural comparison: how does this “other” text compare to what I know (Andy’s toy/not Andy’s toy)? This “other” is not complete or whole within the standard of what I know (in a Toy Story, it’s downright scary). My conundrum? If we can understand Toy Story as being universally applicable for scholars growing up in western, capitalist countries, these scholars are also predisposed to establishing parameters and drawing evaluative comparisons from childhood! Miner recognizes this and cautions against turning western eyes on the world, looking, for example, for what one knows

Over the course of the movie, we come to understand these “other” toys, not as malformed, but ultra-useful, having functions (like strong arms, pulleys and levers, and the scare-factor) and compassion that bespeak their intrinsic worth. While the lesson gained from the movie is valuable in learning to appreciate the intrinsic worth of both parties when drawing comparisons, it’s impossible to ignore the fact that Pixar’s “other” is voiceless in the film… Predominance of the standard of comparison persists! Would a comparatist know better? After reading Miner’s text, would they know better?

Why Compare?

So, not to beat the same drum for this entire microseminar, but again I’m struck by a problem I have seen consistently, from Hogan’s attempts to think about precolonial non-Western Theory, now to Miner’s discussion of how to make a contemporary cognitive poetics. This is the issue of establishing exactly what the goals of studying literature are. Of course, this is not an easy question; if it were, someone would have answered it a while back and we wouldn’t have so much trouble justifying our work to our relatives and to our deans.

            To relate this to these two specific chapters, let’s examine Miner’s thesis, as he states it clearly on page seven: “[A]n originative poetics develops when a critic or critics of insight defines the nature and conditions of literature in terms of the ten most esteemed genre.” This is a fine formulation, even if a little circular (“poetics develops when someone develops a poetics.”) What is missing here for me is that Miner does not really address the issue of why a poetics develops, what its cultural conditions are, and what the poetics sets out to do. Why do Westerners become so interested in art as representations (26), while India develops a theory about emotional affect (27)? 
           I find that the question persists as miner goes onto to discuss what can be considered a valid comparison and not. Again, more than the formal aspect that Miner highlights as the "for the moment" best possible criterion for comparison, I want to know why we bother holding one author up to another in the first place. Again, these questions aren't easy, and I don't have a quick answer, but I really think that this discussion is missing from the discourse, and we should spend some time, not just by ourselves, but as a group, as a department, as a discipline, really asking these kinds of questions.

Malleable poetics?

One of the primary questions I have about Miner’s poetics is the seemingly unidirectional premise of literary categories. For example, right in the beginning, when he discusses how poetics assumes literature as autonomous knowledge: “Once we begin to think in terms of autonomous kinds of knowledge, we order our social institutions to reflect them: the Chinese literatus, the renaissance patron and poet, school curricula, departments of universities, even publisher's catalogues” (15). There seems to be a chicken-and-the-egg kind of question embedded in this premise. I can see how the assumption of autonomous knowledge (though I'd still like to parse through this term) would lead to these categorical organizations, but aren't those organizations also constitutive of our conception of the autonomous knowledge?

His discussion of the utility of different kinds of knowledges and their degree of utility toward each other (p. 15) reminds of blood types. This analogy comes up for me again when he talks about genre leakages (221). I'm not sure where that analogy will take me…perhaps it speaks once again to a notion of originary autonomy which is rooted in a unidirectional (from the genes of the genre outward) poetics.

The question comes up for me again in his discussion of the lesson he uses to teach his students about differences between genres. It is interesting to note the “genre action verbs” he groups together (I say HIM, because I assume the exercise is designed to guide his students toward these): “Students quickly identify a still scene from nature or a lovers' embrace as lyric ("presence" and "intensification," "matters of moment"). They will identify a defined area with people actively inter involved as drama ("estrangement" and "engagement," "make-up"). Ant they will identify what seems to go on as narrative ("continuum" and "fulfillment," "movement").” So once again, how much of these action verbs, and their categories, are uniderectionally determined?

I’m still left with this question of the unidirectionality of the canon when I read Pandit. She refers to the new Norton anthology as a “mirror of changing, expanding, massively pluralist world culture.” How does the anthology constitute the canon rather than simply reflect it? Her reference to the addition of “textual space” seems to be related to this question. What kind of space does “the canon” exist in, how is that space constructed, and what are its tools?

Pandit makes a compelling case for applying a cultural variety of theoretical tools as a means of illuminating previously unavailable resonances of signification. But something about this still gives me pause. Maybe it’s my training so far, or somehow I’m default just one of those cultural purists she critiques. It seems that in using these widely (contextually) different analytical tools (which I would like to think we'd be able to do), the anchor must return to the text, and emphasize how what we've discovered through the mobilization of that tool makes sense for the text. Otherwise, I don’t see how we avoid Miner’s critique of comparative work executed through a lens of a discursive tool (in his example Freud or Marx), which becomes an ideological exercise.

The Ethics of Comparison

“Just as the feminist argument rests on the unshakeable rock that justice be done to that half of the race that bears us, so consideration of the other three-quarters or four-fifths of the race must enter into any literary study denominating itself comparative.” (Miner, 11)

In my Religious Studies MA Method and Theory class, we grappled with the dark origins of the discipline- a scholarly enterprise rising out of the desire to show the superiority of Christianity in comparison to all other religions-, and discussed the ethical issues this creates for contemporary scholars. Comparison in this context is a dirty word, unless one explicitly rejects the idea of Truth, and instead focus on diversity and difference. In this case, the word “comparative” is usually dropped in favor of phrases such as “dialogue” or “pluralism.” In the quote above, what does Miner mean by consideration? Justice does not mean simply giving space to “ the other three-quarters or four-fifths of the race.” After all, the early scholars of religion “gave space,” i.e. space on the page in scholarly works, to other religions, but this did not mean it was just.

In response to the Miner readings I want to present a passage by Wendy Doniger for possible consideration in our class discussion:

“My argument here is for the academy, for multicultural, multidisciplinary approaches. I would hope that the respect for 'difference' (and pluralism, and diversity) that prevails in cultural studies would extend to the methodologies within the discipline of the history of religions, and indeed within the academy at large. I have argued against the present trend of studying only one cultural group- Jews, blacks- or, as discussed in chapter 5, only one gender. Now I challenge the trend of limiting those who study any group to those within the group- women studying women, Jews studying Jews- a trend which, if followed slavishly, would automatically eliminate not only y tiny, precious world of cross-cultural comparison but the more general humanism of which it is a part. This is a trend fueled, in large part, by the high moral ground assumed by disciplines, such as feminism and cultural studies, that argue, or imply, that their subject matter (racism, sexism, class struggle, genocide) has such devastating human consequences that there is no room for error or playfulness or the possibility of more than one answer.” (Doniger, 155)

Doniger, Wendy. The Implied Spider: Politics and Theology in Myth. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.

Doniger came to mind as I was reading the sections on relativism in Miner, and his claim that “the best solution to this problem of controlling relativism known to me is that offered in the first chapter, identification of formally identical features in the things being compared. Even then, success is not ensured, because one may have assumed a degree of identity- of comparability- that in fact does not exist.” (Miner, 232) I find it hard to navigate between the poles of absolute relativism and essentialism, and I would like to deal with this more in class, that is get outside of the dialogue in my head and hear other voices on the issue.

3/17 Readings

Pandit

Non-Western theories applicable to literatures in other traditions

Example: 

• Zhang 
• Wen: liberate “wen” from Western confinement 

Example:

• Akhenaten’s Hymn to the Sun and Sabi
• Basho: Sabi = principle of “loneliness” [of all things portrayed in a poem]
• Akhenaten’s Hymn to the Sun and Dhvani 
• The poem becomes about the reification of panoptic machinery of the state (aestheticization of the state)
• What is dhvani? - artistic enjoyment from literature derived not from images but by associations and ideas evoked by these images 
• Vachya- the started
• Pratyamana- the implied 
• Sanskrit drama & Xiang, Yi, and Yan 
• Partibha: Institution, talent
• Alfrabi: imagination as that which receives, projects, and recreates images, and motivates action 

Miner

• Problem of “universality” of theory vs. problems of relativism
• 2 kinds of general poetics: 
• Implicit in practice, belongs to every culture
• Originative, foundational, found in some cultures but not in others
• “West vs. the rest” 
• Lyric, drama, narrative
• What are sufficient grounds for comparison? 
• “We must establish a basis of comparison between things possessing elements in common to degrees of likeness higher than resemblance or analogy” (21). 
• “The Practical principle holds that comparison is feasible when presumptively or formally identical topics, conditions, or elements are identified.” 

Going back to Miner’s question of the problems of both relativism and universalism, Pandit demonstrates how non-Western literary theory/aesthetic models may be applied to diverse traditions. Is she saying that each theory would be universally applicable? For example, in Pandit’s discussion of sabi and Akhenaten’s Hymn, is it enough to simply borrow the notion of “aloneness” without making more statements about the culture/time period/politics and etc. the theory or work came from? Can we isolate theory and literature like this? 

For comparison: Fokkema (cited in Miner): “In our text analysis we respect as far as possible the linguistic, stylistic or rhetorical distinctions offered by the text, instead of immediately imposing allegedly universal parameters on it” (231). Is Pandit imposing a sort of universal parameter (or at least a universalist assumption) by saying that theories can be applied to any literature or does she dodge it by simply showing that readings of literature can gain from using different approaches? 

Also, what about interdisciplinary approaches? 

Thoughts and Questions about Miner's Comparative Poetics and Finnish Folklore

Earl Miner’s Comparative Poetics (Intro and Chapter 1) relating to Finland’s folklore—comments and questions:

•      “Aristotle’s founding his Poetics on drama illustrates the validity of the very concept of drama…all other examples of poetics are founded not on drama, but on lyrics. Western literature with its many familiar suppositions is a minority of one” (Introduction, pg. 8)

o   Finland folklore is founded also on lyric, not drama: shaman incantation runes, stories were told in the form of song. Written culture nonexistent until long after the oral; even then, it was written in lyrical form (Lönnrot’s work with the Kalevala)—so is Finland “western literature”? How should it be categorized? It certainly is not Eastern either== seems to exist in its own marginalized space?

•      “Names designate authors of works that are identifiable, separable from those by other named authors, from anonymous writing, and from other writings not deemed autonomously literary. Until such distinction of authorship and kinds of knowledge are reached, a poetics is infeasible. That is also to say that a poetics presumes the existence of other distinct autonomous kinds of knowledge.” (Comparative poetics, pg. 14)

o   Shows the work Lönnrot does (compiler [and in a way creator] of the Kalevala—Finns’ epic)

§  Prior to Kalevala, no published and circulated text of Finnish culture; it existed in oral tradition. When Lönnrot published work, it established the Finnish poetics, if only by the fact that it created a named distinction—something “identifiable, separated”—that otherwise was nonexistent in Finnish identity.

•       “Without a text, we have no evidence of the writer’s work…the reader can have access to the authorial creation only by means of a text, by which is meant here some physical coding, whether in our familiar black marks on paper, in the sound waves of a recitation and theater, or in the recollected memory of the poet or anyone else who can summon memory of the creation. The more often the physical text is multiplied, the more variations will be introduced…it is also evident that the multiplication of readers leads to the varying reception of what there is to know.” (Comparative Poetics, pg. 16)

o   This concept amplifies even more in the nature of oral tradition; with concrete text, multiple readers can refer back over time to some consistent thing-- objectively the same. As long as there exists an “original manuscript” of the writing, the variants come only through the interpretations of the readers. However, orally, the reciter applies small nuances in each retelling of the rune, and adds an entirely new source of disparity. I now wonder how this aspect of oral tradition changes after the written publication of Kalevala?  Now that a solid, tangible “archive” is added to the discourse, will oral tradition become more or less fluid (continuing to develop off the base of previous oral stories along the same trajectory, or trying to adhere to [or even adjust to] the canonized standard of the newly defined Finnish culture)?

Criticism challenges/re-imagines the status quo (existing state of affairs)

I was inspired by the conversation in class yesterday, but particularly Bo’s comment about the rejection of Chinese theorists due to their inaccessibility to western audiences, to take a closer look at the Norton Anthology. After graduating with a Masters in German literature, I’d been asked to teach a freshmen elective course in World Literature. Being sorely underprepared to teach such a course, I was relieved to have a volume of texts with explanations that could serve as a foundation. As the semester wore on, and as I further researched the texts my co-teacher and I would be teaching, some inadequacies in the text became apparent. For example, if we were to look at Genesis and the story of Job as profoundly Hebrew texts, why were we reading them in King James’ English? These translations were replaced in the third volume with a more recent translation by Robert Alter, which makes efforts to remain faithful to the poetic rhythms of the original. But what brought about this change?

Interested more specifically in the volume of Theory and Criticism that was the subject of yesterday’s conversation, I turned to Samaa Gamie’s review of the Theory and Criticism Anthology, which I heartily recommend. In this review, Gamie deconstructs Norton’s introductory statements about generously including women, people of color and post-colonial critics within their volume. Gamie reveals this generous account to be no greater than 7 non-white critics to a whopping 131 white critics. Further, rather than integrating these authors into the Anthology by virtue of the function of these texts within their respective literature, they are chosen merely by virtue of the author’s identity. Although being included in a canon of texts (albeit, a canon that changes with each edition) lends authority to these texts, isolated texts, removed from context and situated by virtue of identity will do little to restore the unique literary, linguistic and cultural identity to these marginalized communities. In fact, Gamie’s collective critical arguments with this recent anthology reflect those issues we’ve been talking about directly in class.

This is a perplexing situation. In the reading this week, Spivak showed us how to look at widely read texts with new eyes. Jane Eyre can no longer be seen as merely a feminist text, but one that reveals the perceived hellish result of imperial conquest (an animal-like Creole and her proper English husband). Should Jane Eyre or any of the other texts deconstructed by Spivak be dismissed? For that matter, should Norton’s Anthologies? We’re living in a world in which Oprah and Ellen DeGeneres can host talk shows and even the Oscars; a world in which Barack Obama could be elected President of the United States and Angela Merkel chancellor of Germany. Things are changing; can this be due to a critical attitude towards the status quo? Although far from perfect, the Norton Anthologies are making changes and adjustments. Although Spivak’s interpretation of Jane Eyre dampens the ardor of youthful reading, unlocking this text revitalizes its cultural importance, providing substance to critical statements towards reimagining the status quo. Spivak’s chapter on literature makes strides towards imagining a new status quo, as does Gamie’s book review, and Shu-Mei’s defense of Taiwan’s cultural wealth. But who will imagine this status quo? This will be decided by the persuasive capabilities of the critics. 

3/3 class, postmortem

Since I didn’t manage to post about the readings beforehand (and managed to get out most of comments during class), I’ll write a few thoughts on our discussion today.

Both Izzy and Max brought up really important doubts and questions about the project of postcolonial criticism as we’ve seen it in the context of these course readings. Izzy, in particular, questioned the presence of actual, clear solutions and approaches to addressing the disparities the critics are highlighting.

For me, what’s refreshing about a non-prescriptive argument how we address these problems of imbalanced representation of both literary and critical archive from the non-Western world is that it both points to and tackles the problem that the issues are in the very rhetoric and logic that we use as critics to make literary texts communicable. It’s an extremely tricky, and fraught, mode of critical intervention. Can you perform what you are pointing to at the same time? It’s kind of a mindfuck.

But I'll admit that I find this very compelling about deconstruction. As a critical strategy, it seems to get us to push at what we think are the limits of our expression of knowledge. I think there is a venue for more outlined, prescriptive, exegetical scholarship or argumentation. But it seems to me that a tool through which we can interrogate and expand the structures through which we create knowledge (which is what we purport to do) is essential.

The outcome of the utilization of such a tool may simply mean you approach your work with a new transparency about what you’re doing. This can be the take-away for a person in any field. I really appreciated Dr. Abel’s comment on Spivak’s postcolonial deconstruction project as a sort of 10% shift in the way we think about texts we both encounter for the first time and hold near-and-dear. It’s similar to the comment we made about Spivak’s project in her “History” chapter, in which we lay bare the structures of rhetoric and knowledge we are deploying, though not destroying them.  It means that when we teach our own version of CMLIT 010, Introduction to World Literature, we make a proactive, transparent decision about our chosen topography of World Literature.