Describing Other Literary Cultures
Anders Pettersson
I
The intercultural study of literature has recently attracted more and more attention,1 but there
is also acute awareness of its inherent difficulties. In the globalization issue of PMLA 2001,
for instance, Paul Jay indicated “the danger that globalizing literary studies will colonize
world literatures for Western academic consumption by channelling them through its own
normalizing vocabulary”.2 In my paper, I shall consider Jay’s formulation from various
angles, focussing on a question which it implicitly raises: Is it possible for us to describe
literary cultures other than our own in a defensible manner, and if so, what kind of vocabulary
do we need?
The basic attitude behind my reflections will be optimistic. I shall argue that we can in fact
quite often understand and describe other literary cultures in a defensible manner and that we
do not really need any new vocabulary for accomplishing this. However several reservations
will be made along the way. It should also be emphasized that I restrict myself, more or less,
to the delineation and explication of my own standpoint, and that even my own views and
reasons are presented in broad outline. This is because of the limited format of the paper,
which makes a truly comprehensive discussion impossible.
I want to stress at the outset that my aim is not to criticize Jay. What he says does in fact
appear indisputable to me, when interpreted literally: there is indeed a danger that globalizing
literary studies will colonize world literatures for Western academic consumption by
channelling them through its own normalizing vocabulary. Besides, the apprehensions should
perhaps not even be ascribed to Jay personally, since the words cited form part of his account
2
of an argument put forward by Caren Kaplan in her Questions of Travel: Postmodern
Discourses of Displacement, a book from 1996.
I also ask the listener to note that my use of the expression “literary cultures” is not meant
to carry the absurd implication that Western literary culture, Chinese literary culture, etc. are
homogeneous and unchanging entities. The generalizing talk of literary cultures should be
taken as convenient shorthand.
II
We cannot describe another literary culture, or elements of it, in a defensible manner, unless
we understand that culture or those elements. Good descriptions presuppose adequate
understanding. It is the description of other literary cultures, not the understanding of them,
that is my central subject here, but I shall say a few words about the latter topic.
There are several fundamental obstacles to securing knowledge generally, and to securing
knowledge of other minds specifically, and these of course also affect the possibilities of
knowing and understanding other literary cultures.
First, even sense perception must arguably take the form of representations. Since we
never have an absolute guarantee that such representations are veridical, we can, as Donald
Davidson once put it, never have “evidence that is not some sort of belief”.3 And even when
our representations are indeed veridical, they can never be true to reality in the sense of
rendering reality in reality’s own terms – for reality has no terms of its own. To quote John
Searle: “Systems of representation, such as vocabularies and conceptual schemes generally,
are human creations, and to that extent arbitrary. It is possible to have any number of different
systems of representations for representing the same reality.“4
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3
Second, to understand another literary culture we will often have to understand other
minds. This introduces a new difficulty. I simply do not have access to your sensations,
feelings, and thoughts in the way that you do; even if we do not suppose that a person has
“immediate” access to his or her inner states we are bound to accept that even “knowledge of
thoughts is asymmetrical, in that the person who has a thought generally knows that he has it
in a way which others cannot” (that was Davidson again).5 Induction and empathy can
doubtless tell us much about other minds, but there are limits to their power. It is not always
possible to know or even vividly imagine what the world is like for another subject. As
Thomas Nagel once pointed out: “The subjective character of the experience of a person deaf
and blind from birth is not accessible to me, for example, nor presumably is mine to him.”6
Our knowledge and understanding of other literary cultures will thus always be limited,
relative, and insecure in various respects, and inevitably, not incidentally, so. It is important to
see this, but it should be added, I think, that this is true of our knowledge and understanding
generally. It is also worth emphasizing that nothing that has been said here excludes the
possibility of knowledge of other literary cultures – as long as we do not introduce unrealistic
epistemological pretensions but accept the inevitable restrictedness, relativity, and
precariousness of empirical knowledge.
In reality, most students of literature seem to believe firmly in the possibility of knowing
and understanding other literary cultures. Their main argument is an argument from
experience, and it does indeed appear evident that some measure of intercultural
understanding is very often actually achieved. There is, for example, say Douwe Fokkema
and Elrud Ibsch, “empirical evidence that … cross-cultural communication is sometimes
possible, as in negotiations between representatives of states that are culturally wide apart,
and in the sometimes successful translations of literary texts originally produced under
strikingly different cultural conditions.”7 Radical scepticism about the possibility of
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4
intercultural understanding is sometimes even described as having morally dubious
implications, as when Ülker Gökberk says, following Tzvetan Todorov, that “to deny the
possibility of communication among cultures means to postulate a discontinuity within the
human species; the danger of such a conception is that it resembles some kind of apartheid”.8
Can we, then, understand other literary cultures or their elements? The reasonable answer
is, I suppose, not “yes” or “no” but “it depends”. It depends on what kind of phenomena we
are speaking about, and on our conditions for calling something “understanding”. Naturally,
our ability to understand also varies from one individual case to another.
There are literary cultures – if that is what they were – that we cannot understand for the
simple reason that they were wholly oral cultures which have ceased to exist and of which we
have no accounts, or that they are – like the Etruscan culture – literate cultures which are now
extinct and whose documents we are unable to read. (The latter circumstance may change
with time, of course.)
Then there are literary cultures, like Old Babylonian literary culture, where our knowledge
and understanding is considerable though still restricted. For instance, the Epic of Gilgamesh,
in its classic Babylonian version, was compiled perhaps around 3 000 years ago, possibly by a
scribe named Sin-leqe-unnini. Its text may still be incomplete, but what we do have is, it
seems, more or less comprehensible. Apparently, however, assyriologists cannot describe its
original functions with any real certainty.9
Then there are literary cultures or subcultures, even distant ones, of which we have fairly
intimate knowledge. Around a thousand years ago, a lady-in-waiting at the imperial Japanese
court whose name is now lost to us but who is famous under the pseudonym Murasaki
Shikibu, composed the Genji monogatari (The Tale of Genji), an extensive, formally realistic,
fictional narrative of a brilliant Japanese prince. She also left a diary, the Murasaki Shikibu
nikki. We have, I believe, a very good understanding of the literal meaning and intended
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5
functions of these texts. Yet, naturally enough, the exact nature of the sentiments expressed
cannot always be defined with certainty.
In the introduction to his English translation of Murasaki Shikibu’s diary, the Japanologist
Richard Bowring writes, about her attitude to the ostentatious feasts and ceremonies arranged
by the Empress’s father, the strong man of the regime, Fujiwara no Michinaga:
What … is Murasaki’s attitude to this display of Fujiwara power? Knowing her acute
awareness of the realities and psychological ramifications of power as demonstrated in
the Genji monogatari, it is extremely difficult to believe that she simply acquiesced in
what she saw. There is the occasional moment in the diary when one feels a hesitation,
but usually the moment is personalized and the vision returns to her own predicament;
there is little overt sign that she saw the status quo as anything but immutable. It is
tempting to deduce that she simply was not in a position to do anything but praise
Fujiwara power and elegance….
But can one look a little further? Was she not aware of the tendency of such records
[sc. as her diary] to become opaque and is this why the text has a tendency to slip into
personal anecdote and self-analysis given half the chance? The very opaqueness might
then be seen as betraying an underlying sense of resistance.10
If we seek a precise understanding of what goes on in another person’s mind, and of the exact
mechanisms behind those processes – something that we often have very good reason to do –
we are bound to face uncertainty. However this is true whether that other person is a family
member or a Japanese gentlewoman who lived a millennium ago. There is always, ultimately,
the unavoidable element of interpretation, and though interpretation may certainly be much
easier or incomparably more difficult depending on the nature of the cultural and
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psychological distance that one has to traverse, the difference is arguably, fundamentally, one
of degree.
III
As I already indicated, I consider Jay’s fears entirely justified, in their literal interpretation.
Actually, world literatures are constantly being subjected to distorting descriptions in Western
terms.
My own interest in this problem is motivated particularly by my participation in a
Swedish research project which addresses some basic theoretical problems associated with the
writing of a world history of literature. (The project is presented in another workshop at this
conference, where I will give a paper about the extra complications which surround the notion
of literature when it is employed about older times and non-Western cultures.) As is well
known, not only the term “literature” in its current meaning, but also the corresponding
concept, made its first appearance in Europe, and then not until the 18th century or
thereabout.11 Its frequent unreflecting use about all times and all cultures – especially
conspicuous in comprehensive histories of world literature like the twenty-five volume
German Neues Handbuch der Literaturwissenschaft (New Handbook of Literary Studies,
1972-2002) – inevitably leads to ethnocentric and anachronistic distortions.12 (To be fair, one
should add that individual contributors to such works of literary history may be completely
conscious of the doubtful applicability of the concept to older periods.)
That said, it is natural to ask whether we have any means of avoiding colonizing world
literatures for Western academic consumption by channelling them through Western
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normalizing vocabulary. One possibility, of course, would be to stop taking an interest in
other literary cultures than one’s own, but hopefully better alternatives can be thought out.
The sting in Jay’s formulation clearly lies in the two words “Western” and “normalizing”.
Let us take “normalizing” first.
There is a sense in which we can never manage without normalizing vocabulary. All
concepts are normalizing, and consequently all language. Not all oranges are exactly alike, for
example, but this is not taken into account in our normalizing application of the general
concept of an orange. If we were to abstain from normalizing vocabulary, we would have to
give up the use of speech. We should not, therefore, believe that all normalizing vocabulary is
to be shunned. Normalizing vocabulary is unavoidable – but some ways of expressing oneself
may of course be unduly normalizing.
In their context, it appears natural to interpret Jay’s words about normalizing vocabulary as
a reference to the discrepancies which arise when one is describing other people or other
cultures in terms that are not their own. Other people are not like oranges. They have minds of
their own and their own systems of concepts and of values. Even if we were to understand
them perfectly, the representations they use would presumably not be the exact counterparts
of our own, so that no exact synonymy between their descriptions and ours could be achieved.
Consequently, something would necessarily be changed, be “normalized” if one wishes, if we
were to describe them and their outlook in our own terms and not in theirs.
All this is true. It may sound as if the logical next step would be to go on to say that the
other outlook, and the other literary culture which it defines, cannot defensibly be described in
terms that are not indigenous to the culture, because to do so would be unduly normalizing.
However, if we are not allowed to describe another literary culture in terms that are
extraneous to it, we face another dilemma. Isidore Okpewho puts his finger on it in his
African Oral Literature (1992):
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8
Many European and American scholars – Malinowski, Bascos, and Ben-Amos being
perhaps the most notable – have suggested that whatever systems of classification we
apply to the folklore (including oral literature) of a people must be based on the systems
traditionally recognized by the people themselves. On the face of it, this looks like a
very good idea. The citizens of a community are perhaps better qualified than outsiders
to determine into what aspect of their lives a particular song or story fits. There will be
no point, for instance, in grouping a song under a category such as “praise poetry” when
the people who sing it would prefer to group it under “funeral poetry,” or in considering
a story an “explanatory” tale when the people themselves treat it as a “historical”
account. But the trouble with relying solely on the judgment of the indigenes is that we
will be unable to see each society in relation to another.13
If we are not able to see a society “in relation to another”, we will be forced to treat it as a
perfectly self-enclosed world. We will not be able to learn from it (or vice versa), since that
would presuppose translating some of its ideas into the representations that we ourselves
employ. Intercultural comparison of all kinds, and a fortiori intercultural literary studies,
would be an impossibility. We would be back with the unattractive option of refusing to take
an interest in other literary cultures than our own.
There is an alternative, I think, and a quite simple one. In his African Oral Literature,
Okpewho attempts to understand the African cultures of which he is writing “from within”, as
it were. He tries to comprehend how people with native cultural competence view the texts,
the ideas, and the practices in question. Yet he also feels free to describe what he has
comprehended “from the outside”, once he has comprehended it – to describe it in a language
independent of the various indigenous terminologies in order to compare the cultures and to
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paint a larger picture. There is of course nothing very original about that – this is how most
intercultural work in literary studies is performed. Nor, to my mind, is there anything
principally amiss with it. Why cannot an understanding from the inside form the basis of a
description from the outside? What we have here are two positions which should not
prematurely be considered as impossible to combine.
If one accepts that idea, it is natural to go on to ask in what terms we should couch our
descriptions of other literary cultures. When I first began to understand, some years ago, the
profound importance of the differences between contemporary Western literary culture and
many other systems of thought and practice in connection with what we are used to calling
“literature”, I asked myself whether we do not need a kind of specifically intercultural literary
terminology, an interlingua of literary studies. I sense, perhaps falsely, a similar idea behind
Jay’s scepticism towards “normalizing vocabulary”.
Should we, in fact, attempt to construct special intercultural concepts for use in such
literary studies that radically transcend cultural and temporal barriers? The whole idea may
sound Utopian. Yet if transcultural literary studies were to flourish, and were to be carried out
with great sensitivity to the individuality of literary and cultural phenomena, the need for a
partly new conceptual and descriptive apparatus would probably make itself felt. A less
Westernized literary-critical vocabulary may thus perhaps emerge one day – as a result of, and
a vehicle for, literary research with consciously transcultural ambitions.
We are not there yet, however. For the time being, we have only our respective vernaculars
and the often problematic vocabulary of literary scholarship and criticism. Whatever we want
to describe, construct, or reform in the field of literary studies, those are the only vocabularies
currently at our disposal. Even if we wanted to create a new terminology, we would have to
make use of these words and concepts in explaining it and agreeing on it.
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10
With that, I leave the word “normalizing” and proceed to Jay’s reference to the West,
which introduces the themes of bias and of power.
Descriptions of other literary cultures are not seldom distorted. “In practice”, says Mineke
Schipper, “– partly because we know too little about the many existing literatures in our
world, and partly because we unconsciously let ourselves be influenced too much by our own
value systems – we make judgements that are indeed demonstrably ethnocentric and not as
well-grounded, systematic or objective as our discipline demands of us.”14 Such judgements
are of course, just as Schipper implies, instances of poor scholarship or criticism. As such,
they are deplorable, but also rather trivial from a purely theoretical point of view. More
theoretically significant is the fact that we cannot, naturally, free ourselves from what
Schipper calls “our own value systems”, which leads to the kind of unavoidable relativity in
our descriptions and judgements to which I have already referred.
The issue of power is equally sensitive. We have seen that we need some system of
representation to be able to describe other literary cultures, and that the system cannot simply
be borrowed from the cultures being described. This gives rise to questions about the use and
abuse of power. When engaging in attempts at cross-cultural understanding, we are,
ultimately, as Zhang Longxi expresses it, dealing with “real people in history”, and we have
moral obligations towards them.15 If we are powerful enough, our descriptions may play an
important role in determining how the literary cultures in question will be perceived by third
parties, perhaps even by their own members.
These are important questions. If one wishes to pursue them, however, one is led into a
discussion of ethics, politics, and the theory of value. I have chosen to restrict myself, in this
paper, to discussing whether it is possible for us to describe other literary cultures than our
own in a defensible manner (and if so, with what kind of vocabulary). I believe it is, despite
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the problems referred to: I can see no reason to suppose that the power of description cannot,
in principle, be wielded in a responsible manner.
1
Exemplified, e.g., by the January 2001 issue of PMLA, ”Globalizing Literary Studies”, and
the Fall 2001 issue of Comparative Literature, ”Globalization and the Humanities”.
2
Paul Jay, ”Beyond Discipline? Globalization and the Future of English”, PMLA 116 (2001),
no. 1, pp. 32-47; here, p. 41.
3
Donald Davidson, ”Empirical Content” (1982), in D:s Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001), pp. 159-75; here, p. 165.
4
John R. Searle, The Construction of Social Reality (New York: Free Press, 1995), p. 151.
5
Donald Davidson, ”The Myth of the Subjective” (1988), in D:s Subjective, Intersubjective,
Objective, pp. 39-52; here, p. 52.
6
Thomas Nagel, “What Is it Like to Be a Bat?“ (1974), in Nagel’s Mortal Questions
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), pp. 165-180; here, p. 170.
7
Douwe Fokkema and Elrud Ibsch, Knowledge and Commitment: A Problem-Oriented
Approach to Literary Studies, Utrecht Publications in General and Comparative Literature,
no. 33 (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2000), p. 178.
8
Ülker Gökberk, ”Understanding Alterity: Ausländerliteratur between Relativism and
Universalism”, in Theoretical Issues in Literary History, ed. by David Perkins (Cambridge,
Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 1991), p. 163.
9
Our knowledge of its intended functions and of the circumstances surrounding its production
and reception is, I believe, relatively general and approximate. See, e.g., the introductions in
The Epic of Gilgamesh: The Babylonian Epic Poem and Other Texts in Akkadian and
Sumerian, trans. and with an introd. by Andrew George (London: Penguin, 2000) and in
Gilgamesh; Enuma Elish: Guder og mennesker i oldtidens Babylon , ed. by Ulla and Aage
Westenholz (Copenhagen: Samlerens bogklub, 1997).
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12
10
”Introduction”, in The Diary of Lady Murasaki, trans. and introd. by Richard Bowring
(London: Penguin Books, 1996), pp. xii-lii (here, p. l).
11
A story told many times. A good recent discussion of this is found in Larry Shiner’s The
Invention of Art: A Cultural History (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press,
2001).
12
Neues Handbuch der Literaturwissenschaft, ed. Klaus von See et al., 24 vols. to date
(Wiesbaden: AULA-Verlag, 1972-2002).
13
Isidore Okpewho, African Oral Literature: Backgrounds, Character, and Continuity
(Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1992), p. 127.
14
Mineke Schipper, Beyond the Boundaries: African Literature and Literary Theory
(London: Allison & Busby; Published by W.H. Allen & Co., Plc, 1989), p. 26. My thanks to
Stefan Helgesson for drawing my attention to Schipper’s book.
15
Zhang Longxi, Mighty Opposites: From Dichotomies to Differences in the Comparative
Study of China (Stanford, Cal.: Stanford University Press, 1998), p. 6.
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