The first East Asian Colloquium of the spring semester is Friday, the 21st of January.
EAST ASIAN COLLOQUIUM (Presented by the East Asian Studies Center)
PRESENTER: Kevin Tsai (Comparative Literature, IU Bloomington)
TOPIC: "How the Rhetoric of Difference Trapped the Chinese Scholars"
DATE: Friday, January 21
TIME: 12:00 p.m. - 1:15 p.m.
LOCATION: Ballantine Hall 004
Chinese literary scholars of the previous generation devoted much attention to “native” literary theories in order to resist naïve and inapposite application of Western critical practice. This corrective maneuver rested on a rhetoric of difference, drawing upon the particularities of culture and history to reframe literary inquiry in terms of cultural identity. Effectively putting the “Chineseness” of Chinese literature before its “literariness,” such a critical intervention in the following decades has come to subvert its founding ethics by unintentionally reinforcing the assumption that whereas the West has theory with which to comprehend the world, the Rest merely has “culture.” At some point insistence on identity paradoxically became an essentialist shield in itself. This lecture attempts to find a way out of this trap, examines fictionality as a key area of contention, and entertains connections to the notion of creativity in the development of twentieth-century cognitive science.
Shun-Chang Kevin Tsai (Ph.D., Princeton) is an assistant professor in the Department of Comparative Literature and an adjunct in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures and in the Program in Ancient Studies at Indiana University. His publications include Tang Dynasty prose, Roman epic poetry, and translation. He is currently finishing a book-length study of the Ming Dynasty chuanqi play, Killing a Dog.
For more information about any upcoming event, please contact:East Asian Studies Center
Indiana University
Memorial Hall West 207
1021 East Third Street
Bloomington, IN 47405-7005
(812) 855-3765easc@indiana.edu
(Light refreshments will be served. You are also welcome to bring your own lunch.)
TOPIC: "How the Rhetoric of Difference Trapped the Chinese Scholars"
DATE: Friday, January 21
TIME: 12:00 p.m. - 1:15 p.m.
LOCATION: Ballantine Hall 004
Chinese literary scholars of the previous generation devoted much attention to “native” literary theories in order to resist naïve and inapposite application of Western critical practice. This corrective maneuver rested on a rhetoric of difference, drawing upon the particularities of culture and history to reframe literary inquiry in terms of cultural identity. Effectively putting the “Chineseness” of Chinese literature before its “literariness,” such a critical intervention in the following decades has come to subvert its founding ethics by unintentionally reinforcing the assumption that whereas the West has theory with which to comprehend the world, the Rest merely has “culture.” At some point insistence on identity paradoxically became an essentialist shield in itself. This lecture attempts to find a way out of this trap, examines fictionality as a key area of contention, and entertains connections to the notion of creativity in the development of twentieth-century cognitive science.
Shun-Chang Kevin Tsai (Ph.D., Princeton) is an assistant professor in the Department of Comparative Literature and an adjunct in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures and in the Program in Ancient Studies at Indiana University. His publications include Tang Dynasty prose, Roman epic poetry, and translation. He is currently finishing a book-length study of the Ming Dynasty chuanqi play, Killing a Dog.
For more information about any upcoming event, please contact:East Asian Studies Center
Indiana University
Memorial Hall West 207
1021 East Third Street
Bloomington, IN 47405-7005
(812) 855-3765easc@indiana.edu
(Light refreshments will be served. You are also welcome to bring your own lunch.)
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