SUVANNABHUMI (수완나부미)

Korea Institute for ASEAN Studies (부산외대 아세안연구원)
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Re-writing World Literature through Juxtaposition: Decolonizing Comparative Literature in Vietnam

  • Pham, Chi P. (Institute of Literature, Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences) ;
  • Do, Ninh H. (Institute of Literature, Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences)
  • Received : 2021.10.01
  • Accepted : 2022.01.15
  • Published : 2022.01.31
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Abstract

Postcolonial critics have criticized Comparative Literature for exclusively studying literatures from the non-Western world through Western lenses. In other words, postcolonial criticism asserts that theorists and practitioners of comparative literature have traced the "assistance" of the classic "comparison and contrast" approach to an imperialist discourse, which sustains the superiority of Western cultures and economies. As a countermeasure to reading through the comparative lens, literary theories have offered a "juxtapositional model of comparison" that connects texts across cultures, places, and times. This paper examines practices of Comparative Literature in Vietnam, revealing how the engagement with decolonizing processes leads to a knowledge production that is paradoxically colonial. The paper also analyses implementations of this model in reading select Vietnamese works and highlights how conventional comparisons, largely based on historical influences and reception, maintain the colonial mapping of World Literature, centralizing Western, and more particularly, English Literature and in the process marginalizing the others. Therefore, the practice of juxtaposing Vietnamese literary works with canonical works of the World Literature will provoke dialogues and raise awareness of hitherto marginalized works to an international readership. In this process, the paper considers the contemporary interest of Comparative Literature practice in trans- national, trans-regional, trans-historical, and trans-cultural perspectives.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

This research is funded by Vietnam National Foundation for Science and Technology Development (NAFOSTED) under grant number 602.06-2020.300

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