José SARAMAGO
Is It Time to Return to the Author? Between
Omniscient Narrator and Interior Monologue
(Translated from the Portuguese and French
by Roumiana Deltcheva)
Abstract: Nobel laureate of 1998 José
Saramago, in his essay "Is It Time to Return to the Author? Between
Omniscient Narrator and Interior Monologue" (trans.
from the Portuguese and French by Roumiana Deltcheva), presents a short
yet passionate treatise in defense of the "author" both as an individual
and as a writer. For Saramago, the literary text as such exists because
of the author, his or her thoughts, perceptions, and emotions, which in
turn are reflections of the author's external environment and inner world.
Saramago goes further to suggest that the reader's attraction to the literary
narrative goes beyond the mere reading of the story unfolding before his
or her eyes, in the unconscious quest to uncover its author. While accepting
the premise that the authors of the past remain in the present by virtue
of the texts they have left behind the living author can and should be
judged not solely as a writer, but even more so as a social and ethical
individual. Saramago stands in opposition to many in the current landscape
of literary studies whose approach is to dissociate the authorial voice
from the voice of the actively engaged writer and citizen.
Mabel LEE
Nobel Laureate 2000 Gao Xingjian and his Novel
Soul
Mountain
Abstract: In her article, "Nobel Laureate 2000 Gao Xingjian
and his Novel Soul Mountain," Mabel Lee introduces Gao Xingjian,
the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature of 2000. Lee is the translator
of several of Gao's works from the Chinese into English, including the
Nobel's main text of reference, Soul Mountain (first published in
Chinese in 1990). Lee's article combines descriptions of Gao's biographical
background and its relevance to his work and writing with a brief analysis
of literary aspects of Gao's work based on tenets of the comparative literary
and cultural studies approach. As is evident in Gao's texts, Lee explains
that Gao refuses to enter political and ideological debates in or with
his texts and that Gao, consequently, argues vehemently against the inroads
on the individual in modern times wreaked by tyrannical politics, mob action,
religious fundamentalism, and crass commercialism. For Gao the creation
and production of literature represents the solitary act of the individual
and thus the return to the author, in theory and practice. In the history
of literature, of significance is the fact that this is the first time
the Nobel Prize for Literature has been awarded to an author on the basis
of a body of work written in the Chinese language.
William H. THORNTON
Analyzing East/West Power Politics in
Comparative Cultural Studies
Abstract: In his article, "Analyzing East/West Power Politics
in Comparative Cultural Studies," William H. Thornton acknowledges culture
as a central force on the geopolitical map and undertakes at once to preserve
the strategic potency of political realism and to move beyond the "billiard
ball" externality of both neo- and traditional realisms. Although Huntington
and Fukuyama are taken seriously on the question of East/West power politics,
Thornton develops a world view by grounding balance-of-power politics in
national and local (not just civilizational) social reality. Further, Thornton
argues against external democratic teleologies both Huntington and Fukuyama
have imposed on the cultural Other. The thrust of Thornton's argumentation
goes beyond the monolithic fallacies of political modernism, namely, political
realism on the one hand and today’s "reverse domino" globalization on the
other. Once political realism takes this postmodern turn, it confronts
the agonistic realities that killed the New World Order in its infancy.
Although Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations also confronted these
grim realities, but did so in terms of a negative and retreatist realism.
For Thornton, in the post-Cold War world that Huntington well describes
but declines to fully engage, any effective realism must temper cultural
agonistics with Bakhtinian cultural dialogics.
Johan F. HOORN
The Hazard of Hidden Interactions: A Reanalysis
of Designs in Reaction-Time Studies on Metaphor
Abstract: In his article, "The Hazard of Hidden Interactions:
A Reanalysis of Designs in Reaction-Time Studies on Metaphor," Johan F.
Hoorn argues that research designs in empirical literature and the psychology
of aesthetics often include unanalyzed factors. The nature of these factors
may be linguistic such as word frequency or lexical ambiguity or technical
such as presentation order, repeated measures, etc. By not correctly analyzing
an experiment, higher-order interactions may go unnoticed, while interfering
with results. Hoorn reviews a sample of reaction-time experiments on metaphors,
some of which are considered key studies in the area. Because the quality
of an argument depends on the quality of the experiment, Hoorn places emphasis
on designs and statistics. He then discusses the consequences of improper
analysis for the theory of metaphor processing.
Benton Jay KOMINS
Comparative Spaces and Seeing Seduction
and Horror in Bataille
Abstract: In his article, "Comparative Spaces and Seeing Seduction
and Horror in Bataille," Benton Jay Komins explores Bataille's preoccupation
with "seeing": The eye holds a preeminently ambiguous position in Georges
Bataille's universe of enucleated priests and scatological window scenes.
Komins' comparative examination presents several aspects of Bataille's
eyes: Existing between fascination and revulsion, this most Bataillean
organ moves between subjective vision and objective blindness. The eye
both captures and is captured in episodes of seductive horror. Through
the denigration of vision, Bataille's dethroned eye exceeds the confines
of visuality. Bataille develops an extraordinary notion of ocularity --
as a metaphor, action, and traumatic fixation - in his novels, autobiographical
notes, and critical writing. His compelling eyes surface between written
genres and lived experience, that is to say, in the comparative space between
the phantasmatic and the social, inviting psychological and historical
analysis.
Haidar EID
Naipul's A Bend in the River and Neo-colonialism
as a Comparative Context
Abstract: In his article, "Naipul's A Bend in the River and
Neo-colonialism as a Comparative Context," Haidar Eid discusses the dialectical
interplay between the political import and aesthetic qualities in Naipaul’s
novel. It contests Naipaul’s conclusion that "Third World" peoples are
not genuine and authentic human beings, like Westerners. Further, Naipaul’s
implication that political and social disorder is the unavoidable product
of contemporary liberation movements, and that Africans are nothing
and with no place in the world, are challenged and deconstructed. The independence
of Third World countries, according to Naipaul, eliminates the last
hope of resistance to ignorance, as well as the last civilizing traces
of Western influence. What remains in Naipaul’s Africa is only greedy,
consumptive desire, and backward cultural identities. Eid argues that what
Naipauls offers us is a condemned and fragmented society that lacks creative
potential, a black society that cannot govern itself: a society that should
be governed by an external
power. Naipual’s conclusion, therefore, is not different from the racist
ideology of colonialism that justifies the occupation of other lands, and
then defends the so-called human face of Western colonialism.
Yasamine C. COULTER
A Comparative Post-Colonial Approach to
Hedayat's The Blind Owl
Abstract: In her article, "A Comparative Post-Colonial Approach
to Hedayat's The Blind Owl," Yasamine C. Coulter discusses post-colonial
theories of Edward Said, Frantz Fanon, and Jalal ale Ahmad, and relates
them to the major themes of Hedayat's novel. For the most part,
the fact that the text's narrator is disillusioned with his country's traditional
way of life makes him an outsider within his own society. However, he fails
to find peace in his other, chosen, mode of being and this implies that
he is unable to fully identify with Western traditions, either. It is at
this point of the text that Coulter draws a parallel between the narrator's
distress and Sadegh Hedayat's personal angst, both of which stem from an
inability to reconcile Western and Eastern influences and modes of existence
and culture. Moreover, the narrator's inability to completely accept or
disregard the notion of metaphysics is a macrocosmic manifestation of his
cultural dilemma. Coulter concludes her argumentation with a discussion
of how one of perhaps the most important fault lines of post-colonial discourse
is very real in present-day Iran, precisely because Iranians still do not
agree on how to reclaim their cultural past and assert their own identity
in the real context of Western cultural omnipresence.
Slobodan SUCUR
Thematizing the Subject from Gothicism to
Late Romanticism
Abstract: In "Thematizing the Subject from Gothicism to Late
Romanticism," Slobodan Sucur takes Habermas’ suggestion that "modern art
reveals its essence in Romanticism; and absolute inwardness determines
the form and content of Romantic art" and offers an analysis of a spectrum
of primary texts in relation to the statement. The texts analysed range
from Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto to Odoyevsky’s
Russian Nights.
The texts are analyzed in chronological fashion, in an attempt to see how
the thematization of the subject shifts as the Early Gothic novel (Walpole,
Radcliffe) develops into High Romanticism (Hoffmann, Maturin) and finally
into Late Romanticism (Poe, Odoyevsky). There appears to be a gradual but
perceptible shift from third- to first-person narration across this broad
period. Consequently, the present study engages ideas of the sublime (Edmund
Burke, Carl Grosse), the picturesque (Uvedale Price), and spatial constructs,
and attempts to see the ways in which such ideas reconfigure the subject
and are themselves reconfigured as the subject is further thematized during
these significant years in which the Gothic novel is transformed into other
Romantic and Late Romantic forms.
Book Review Articles
Xiaoyi ZHOU
East and West Comparative Literature and
Culture:
A Review Article of New Work by Lee and
Collected Volumes by Lee and Syrokomla-Stefanowska
Katharine RODIER
Women Writing World War One:
A Review Article of New Work by Higonnet,
Ouditt, and Tylee, Turner, and Cardinal