Are we comparing yet? On standards, justice, and incomparability

Saussy H. Are we comparing yet? On standards, justice, and incomparability. BiUP General . Bielefeld: Bielefeld University Press; 2019.Debates about the possibility of an open culture – or indeed about the possibility of an open debate about the openness of culture – often turn on questions of standards. But since no benchmark can be absolute, judgement is a proliferation of comparisons. Through a series of case studies in everyday and academic comparison (literature, history, politics, philosophy), Haun Saussy calls out the typical vices of comparison and proposes ways to unseat them. For however much it is abused, distorted, and manipulated, comparison retains an essential link to the idea of justice

Are We Comparing Yet? On Standards, Justice, and Incomparability

Debates about the possibility of an open culture - or indeed about the possibility of an open debate about the openness of culture - often turn on questions of standards. But since no benchmark can be absolute, judgement is a proliferation of comparisons. Through a series of case studies in everyday and academic comparison (literature, history, politics, philosophy), the author calls out the typical vices of comparison and proposes ways to unseat them. For however much it is abused, distorted, and manipulated, comparison retains an essential link to the idea of justice

Are We Comparing Yet?

Debates about the possibility of an open culture – or indeed about the possibility of an open debate about the openness of culture – often turn on questions of standards. But since no benchmark can be absolute, judgement is a proliferation of comparisons. Through a series of case studies in everyday and academic comparison (literature, history, politics, philosophy), Haun Saussy calls out the typical vices of comparison and proposes ways to unseat them. For however much it is abused, distorted, and manipulated, comparison retains an essential link to the idea of justice

Sebastian Veg, Fictions du pouvoir chinois : Littérature, modernisme et démocratie au début du XXe siècle

The excellence of this book risks being unappreciated if it is taken as the usual sort of comparative literature study. Books in this field often treat their texts as offering varying perspectives on the same thing: the comparison pivots around what authors of different languages, nationalities, and periods do with a theme or genre taken as stable for the purposes of the investigation. It would be a mistake to read Sebastian Veg’s book as reflecting “China,” or the “image of China,” in Victor..

Sebastian Veg, Fictions du pouvoir chinois : Littérature, modernisme et démocratie au début du XXe siècle

On ne fera pas justice à la très grande qualité de ce livre si on le considère comme un exemple de la littérature comparée traditionnelle. Cette discipline utilise les textes comme autant d'éclairages jetant la lumière sur un objet donné : la comparaison tourne autour de la manière dont divers auteurs de langue, de nationalité et d'époque différentes, traitent d'un thème ou d'un genre considéré comme stable pour les besoins de l'étude. Le livre de Sebastian Veg n'a pas pour sujet « la Chine »..

Sebastian Veg, Fictions du pouvoir chinois : Littérature, modernisme et démocratie au début du XXe siècle

The excellence of this book risks being unappreciated if it is taken as the usual sort of comparative literature study. Books in this field often treat their texts as offering varying perspectives on the same thing: the comparison pivots around what authors of different languages, nationalities, and periods do with a theme or genre taken as stable for the purposes of the investigation. It would be a mistake to read Sebastian Veg’s book as reflecting “China,” or the “image of China,” in Victor..

Les engagements multiples de la traduction : Baudelaire retransmis par Xu Zhimo, 1924

Ce singulier kiosque, fait en marqueterie, d’une originalité concertée et composite, qui, depuis quelque temps, attire les regards depuis l’extrême pointe du Kamtschatka littéraire romantique, j’appelle cela la folie Baudelaire.Sainte-Beuve Que le lecteur ne soit pas indifférent, que le texte l’engage, le happe, tant au niveau physique qu’intellectuel ou moral, Baudelaire le prévoit, comme dans « Une Charogne » (Fleurs du mal, xxix) : « La puanteur était si forte, que sur l’herbe/Vous crûtes ..

Exile As Formative Experience in Classical Chinese Poetry

Video of full lecture with presentation slides edited into the video.The East Asia Program is honored to have Haun Saussy, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago give this year's Hu Shih Distinguished Lecture: "Exile As Formative Experience in Classical Chinese Poetry." The “myth of loyalty and dissent” (as Laurence Schneider put it) surrounding the figure of Qu Yuan has structured a great many self-representations by cast-off officials. But when poets banished to the margins of the empire adopt Qu Yuan as a source of style and allusion, the result is, often enough, a gain in descriptive and evocative power. By calling the experience of exile “formative” in the cases of Xie Lingyun 謝靈運, Shen Quanqi 沈全期, Song Zhiwen 宋之問, and Su Shi 蘇軾, I aim to put biography in second place. What occupies the foreground is rather the fashioning of transpersonal roles and attitudes that could be adopted by later poets— replicating the author-function that had made Qu Yuan such a powerful reference. Professor Saussy's primary teaching and research interests include classical Chinese poetry and commentary, literary theory, comparative study of oral traditions, problems of translation, pre-twentieth-century media history, and ethnography and ethics of medical care.Cornell East Asia Program, the Departments of Asian Studies, History, and the Cornell Society for the Humanities.1_w4drhb0

The Ethnography of Rhythm: Orality and Its Technologies [Table of Contents]

“Only Haun Saussy—with his historical range, theoretical breadth, and fine close-reading—could have pulled off this brilliant comparative history of ‘the perturbation caused by the idea of oral literature.’ The disciplinary range of this dazzling scholarly performance takes us from linguistics and philology to ethnography and religious studies, from physiology and psychiatry to the history of graphic and sound technologies. Be prepared to marvel—and learn.” —Linda Hutcheon, University Professor Emeritus of English and Comparative Literature, University of Toront