Re-Orient?

Abstract

The economic rise, first of Japan and Korea, then, even stronger, China, and in its wake perhaps soon much of South and South-East Asia, has brought about a major geopolitical recalibration from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from Europe, or what we are used to call the “Western world,” to Asia. In his 1998 book ReOrient, Andre Gunder Frank argued that this in fact merely marks a return to the pre-1800 situation, when China, India and places in-between, likewise were at the center of the world economy. Consequently, he asks Western scholars to look at the world with different eyes than their customarily Euro- or Western-centric ones. In many ways, this chimes with other such appeals launched since the 1970s, also in literary studies. Initially, this call was loudest from the side of postcolonial studies. Since the turn of the millennium world literature studies has joined the chorus. In the present essay, I consider what the implications of such a shift might be for the discipline of Comparative Literature. I will be particularly concerned with the role China and Chinese literature play in this.