about the conference
What is literature? What is literary theory? What are the boundaries of Japanese literature? Japanese literary theory? Discussions on these questions are inexhaustible yet unavoidable in our study. These basic questions govern our practices because they define our discipline as well as our approaches to our objects of inquiry. In Japan and elsewhere, historical contingencies have defined and redefined “literature” and “literary theory”; numerous theoretical trends have further configured and reconfigured the contours of “literature.” The categories “Japan” and “Japanese” too have gone through much transformation, further complicating this line of inquiry. This three-day conference will revisit these basic questions and attempt to rigorously explore the foundation of our study.
As Michel Foucault has shown, literature as we know it now is a 19th Century invention. But works we categorize under the rubric “literature” have existed since time immemorial and across the globe. Various approaches have been taken to theorize literary works: in premodern Japan, we have, for example, a variety of karon (poetic theories) such as the famous “Preface” to the Kokinshū by Ki no Tsurayuki and other genre-specific treatises such as those on renga (linked verse) and haiku. Discussions of prose narratives have also appeared throughout history. Western literature, aesthetics, and philosophy entered Japan of the modern period, and literature took a dramatic turn: the discipline of “literature” was produced, along with a new sense of aesthetics and new attitudes toward expression and form. Whether in the premodern or modern era, theories thus not only offered paradigms by which to compose and interpret their putative literary objects, but they often arose out of complex negotiations with the varying forces of history.
The above questions cannot be divorced from the more recent theoretical trends, evidenced in the surge of theories that we often categorize under the blanket term “postmodernism” that have further reconfigured our literary practices: these include post-structuralism, postcolonialism, feminism, queer theory, and other theories of gender and sexuality to name a few. Many such movements have questioned the basic tenets of our past and present literary studies and hence the boundaries of “literature.” How do these theoretical perspectives define Japanese literature? What are their strengths and weaknesses? What are the main theoretical issues governing our study for literature today? This conference hopes to address such issues and more.
The scope of inquiry will range from ancient writings to contemporary texts. We hope the participants will explore a variety of issues, including but not limited to:
- Recent theoretical trends: their possibilities and limits
- Historical changes in how we perceive literature and literary theory in Japan
- The transformation of the role of the author and his/her relation to the literary production in the history of Japanese literature
- Historical development of literary theory from the premodern to modern times.
- Shifting boundaries of “Japan” and “Japanese-ness”
- The mutual relationship between theory and practice and how they have evolved in the history of Japanese literature
- The relationship between a chosen mode of discourse and its “object”
- How theories of translation, cultural studies, and nationalism engage with the production of Japanese cultural and literary boundaries
- Relationship between history, memory, and literature in Japan
- Relationship between politics and literature in Japan
- “Anti-theory” and “pro-theory” in the study of Japanese literature
Correspondence may be directed to the organizers Richard H. Okada and Atsuko Ueda via the contact information listed below:
AJLS 2007
Department of East Asian Studies
211 Jones Hall
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ 08544
ajls2007@princeton.edu
AJLS 2007 is generously funded by the Toshiba International Foundation, Northeast Asia Council, Department of East Asian Studies, Program in East Asian Studies, Council of the Humanities, and Department of Comparative Literature, Princeton University.