The other "Canon"

[lawpark]

You are arguing about pseudo-readings of history, not the point I was trying to make, the point I was trying to make was that everywhere has 5000 yeas of history, and that there is no such thing as this "great Chinese tradition" that is a continuous beast. I do not know what you are arguing about.

The point I am attacking is this idea of "Old wonderful tradition" that is spoken of every time we hear about Chinese culture. Simply put, every place with people has a long history. you are just rambling about particular events that only illustrate my point.

- I am just responding to some of the factual aspects of your points that I feel require additional thinking.
- Everywhere has 5000 years of history, fine, but if "there is no such thing as this great Chinese tradition that is a continuous beast", there is also no such thing as the great Western tradition as conjured up in all academic history books - but while you would tolerate the latter, you just couldn't tolerate the former - because China currently has no freedom of speech. I argue that this view is just faulty.
- BTW, Dali was conquered by Mongols in 1251, but the Duans continued in power as kind of governors on behalf of the Mongols.

AS for Jin Yong's fiction then, he has imposed an idea of nationalism then into a fake historical discourse. As you put it, nationalism is a new idea - so why don't we read that in him hmmm? Why don't we discuss how he is obsessed with a false idea created by my understanding during the Boxer Rebellion.

- We can discuss nationalism in Jin Yong for sure, but you are making that the basis of why he is bad, and accuses him of Jingoism, accuses of being obsessed with the idea ... yet you don't respond to Alexander III's points about Tolstoy being as twisted about his Russian nationalism in W&P.

As for Chomsky, well he is a whack, he was alright in the beginning but now he is just selling things out. Check on Tudou.com for instance for a speech he made in Beijing - anybody who could sell out like that is pathetic. He knows what he is talking about and knows how to spin it to sell books. He never agrees with anyone, and never says anything positive, he is just someone who likes to piss on everything and charge as much as he can for it. He can get up in China in front of an audience and rant about how bad American policy is, meanwhile getting a foreign honorary degree and not once mentioning them - why didn't he say something like,m we are in an intellectual environment, 20 years ago those same intellectuals got plowed by your government.

But no, he took the pay check.

- I am not familiar with Chomsky's recent work (I stopped reading him - too depressing), I personally just can't believe that he does things for money. Maybe it is the same type of emotional believe as yours ("that everyone who talks positive about China is a sell-out, because China is bad full stop."). In my view, Chomsky is clearly a highly ethical person, and super intellectual; someone who can clearly makes his life easy and makes a lot more money than working double job to try to document issues with American foreign policies.

[lawpark]

(I will add that like JBI points, the list make it a geographical busines, which is false. It also makes some short of chronological organization. False too. And put together works which give no clue to the reader if he will conect with those works).

Interesting view - why false?

In one of these threads one has mentinoed (which I agreed) that ultimately any canon list (in literature, or art), is linked with how history (of literature, or of art) is (to be) written. Thus my interest in why you feel a list making some time-space distinction is false.

[JCamilo]

Because the history of literature is not true the history of countries. Making it by nations is false, as the existense of western canon. It does not guide anyone. Eça de Queiroz is not near Flaubert or Machado de Assis or all else. Camoes is closer to Petrarca than all other italian poets, and he is not even near him. The history of literature is not the history of political fronteirs.

[JBI]

The idea of a Western tradition is just as false, as I've argued elsewhere. I will put an example, and an additional example.

Essentially very regime change in China sought to end the tradition of the regimes before it. Each dynasty had its own motifs, culture, and symbols. The writing of official history was traditionally part of the process, as it would mark the previous regime as history. This was followed by religious change (the tang, for instance, claimed to be descendants of Laozi, and Wu Zetian claimed to be a Buddhist Goddess, and essentially destroyed the Confucian bureaucracy by removing the material from her Imperial exams, and favoring Buddhism), The Song Dynasty emerged with its own culture, and a set of values.

Lets look at literature - each major dynasty seems to have even changed in literary development, from Han dynasty Fu poems, to Tang Shi poems, and Song Ci poems, and Yuan Qu poems, and Ming novels, and Qing anthologies - even the literary culture did not remain continuous.

There was always a clear understanding of a break - of one regime failing, and another taking it over, of the past being illegitimate, and of discontinuity.

Take the west, the whole idea is ridiculous. In a sense there is no real idea of the west, the same way nation, and even religion are fluctuating things. The west is just grouped together so that it can justify colonial range - simply put, the was a network of communication since Roman times from Rome through China, including southern seas. The whole idea of a notion of a Silk Road undermines these things.

Simply put, the West emerges when Europe goes to war with Muslims - the same way The Orient is "discovered" when Napoleon invades Egypt. There is no real concept to it, the same China has no real concept of continuous history.


History is merely something used to say we have and you have not - that is also an implication of culture.

The Western tradition of literature if you will is given solidity by the racism and rejectionism of other players from the tradition - England, France, Italy, etc. all narrowed themselves and cut themselves off from other linguistic and cultural traditions - that is the idea of the west - commerce and culture though still walked all over it - the idea of Western tradition is xenophobic in its construction, and narrow-minded in its outlook. IT even plays at war with itself cutting out its own players, the way English authors disliked their French contemporaries, or ignored their Spanish ones - the same way Italians view opera even to this day as something only possible in their language (they are one of the few countries I can think of that still regularly preform translated operas).

[JCamilo]

And of course, this imply that geographical references are unable to guide the artistic tradition. Italians are romans? No, but in a list people will place it just due to the geographical place and funny enough, one of most influential works of rome, the bible is obviously not roman.

If some guides by geographical data, one may think that Italy had nothing to do with German fairy tales of XIX century, when it is where the re-recording tradition starts. Simply put, someone who reads only the listed canonical texts is missing a considerable "local color" of a given style and genre. The failures, mistakes, minor works that build up the sustainance for the canonical works. Not that people cannt ask for lists or anything, but their vallue as preservation or formation of a tradition is considerable small.

[JBI]

And of course, this imply that geographical references are unable to guide the artistic tradition. Italians are romans? No, but in a list people will place it just due to the geographical place and funny enough, one of most influential works of rome, the bible is obviously not roman.

If some guides by geographical data, one may think that Italy had nothing to do with German fairy tales of XIX century, when it is where the re-recording tradition starts. Simply put, someone who reads only the listed canonical texts is missing a considerable "local color" of a given style and genre. The failures, mistakes, minor works that build up the sustainance for the canonical works. Not that people cannt ask for lists or anything, but their vallue as preservation or formation of a tradition is considerable small.

There is an even bigger problem - the books on the canonical "lists" tend not even to fit with the public's tastes. We are basically fighting over colonial world ideas here.

[lawpark]

And of course, this imply that geographical references are unable to guide the artistic tradition. Italians are romans? No, but in a list people will place it just due to the geographical place and funny enough, one of most influential works of rome, the bible is obviously not roman.

If some guides by geographical data, one may think that Italy had nothing to do with German fairy tales of XIX century, when it is where the re-recording tradition starts. Simply put, someone who reads only the listed canonical texts is missing a considerable "local color" of a given style and genre. The failures, mistakes, minor works that build up the sustainance for the canonical works. Not that people cannt ask for lists or anything, but their vallue as preservation or formation of a tradition is considerable small.

Granted - proximity of time and space and languages and countires might not gesture proximity in style or other aspects of aesthetics. But if we start out and say that time and space is not really (that) relevant, what is? I guess it comes down to - what is a better view on these two questions:

1) What is the (historical / social) process of canonization? It may not have comes from a list, but it is generated somewhere in some circles - e.g. Bloom's list, or Norton's Anthology, or any guidebooks to any portion / sub-set of literature that has ever been written.

2) Is history of literature (or art history, or intellectual history) broadly-speaking, useless? If it is not completely useless, what would be the better ways to organize the phenomenon of literature rather than time and space? Style? Genre? "Spirit"? Personality?

[lawpark]

The idea of a Western tradition is just as false, as I've argued elsewhere. I will put an example, and an additional example.

Take the west, the whole idea is ridiculous. In a sense there is no real idea of the west, the same way nation, and even religion are fluctuating things. The west is just grouped together so that it can justify colonial range - simply put, the was a network of communication since Roman times from Rome through China, including southern seas. The whole idea of a notion of a Silk Road undermines these things.

Simply put, the West emerges when Europe goes to war with Muslims - the same way The Orient is "discovered" when Napoleon invades Egypt. There is no real concept to it, the same China has no real concept of continuous history.

History is merely something used to say we have and you have not - that is also an implication of culture.

The Western tradition of literature if you will is given solidity by the racism and rejectionism of other players from the tradition - England, France, Italy, etc. all narrowed themselves and cut themselves off from other linguistic and cultural traditions - that is the idea of the west - commerce and culture though still walked all over it - the idea of Western tradition is xenophobic in its construction, and narrow-minded in its outlook. IT even plays at war with itself cutting out its own players, the way English authors disliked their French contemporaries, or ignored their Spanish ones - the same way Italians view opera even to this day as something only possible in their language (they are one of the few countries I can think of that still regularly preform translated operas).

I'd question whether this is going too far. First on the western tradition:
- If something fluctuates, it does not exist. I'd argue that this extreme (Nagarjuna-like argument) position is not very useful for studying anything. As long as we don't hypostatize a concept, like a fixed "West", the concept might still be of some use - of course after critical thinking about the concept itself.
- And historically, I think the concept of the West is earlier than colonialism - not the term, but the idea of Christendom, should be as early as the time of Crusades (you are clearly right that it is developed against Islam), so saying the concept is used to justify colonialism is probably anachronistic.
- Yes, in canon war, there are many propagandas, half-truths, etc. involved. While the Western traditional internally has been set up with a lot of internal exclusion, once it is set up, it actually has real effects - e.g. Virgil was canonized in Roman times, and became part of Latin education curriculum. Many later major authors in Europe probably know of Virgil - some might be more directly influenced by it (e.g. Dante), while some may not (e.g. Shakespeare). It became a social reality that has effects. At any point in the link, the perception could be false, or half-truth; but it does not make the fact that a system of long-range dialogues / reactions get set up. This is not to say that Dante is not influenced by other local works / factors; this just says that calling labelling the West as a tradition has some basis. Of course, how compelling this basis is, is up for argument.
- It is the same question for JCamillo - if you feel the Western canon as it is constructed right now is too xenophobic / colonial - what would make it less so? Saying the concept of canon is just useless really does not work, because it is actually used in countless classrooms and academias, by practical necessity of selection given finite time - thus, refusal to propose an alternative actually just supports the status quo. And if further, this refusal also applies to the literature in the rest of the world, it actually further strengthens the Western canon

[JCamilo]

1 - Bloom and Norton is a reflect of canonization, not the proccess. They give continuity to it, granted, but it is not the main factor.

2 - As JBI pointed, the canonization reflects a mentality. Obviously, the more broad it is (the canon since day one, the western canon, the world canon) you will have a caledoscopy of mentalities reflected there.

3 - The public taste is a tricky one. Because it is today something that is confused with the popularity. Even Dante reflected public taste, as difficulty it is. But a narrow public inside a public even narrow of readers. The democratic process of inclusion of readers certainly add more factors to the process of canonization. Not because of popularity per si, but because you will have to include the canonized works of other sources while a process of canonization when artificial is not inclusive, rather selective. So, when Bloom do it, he fails, it is false, it is pointless.
One of results is the school of resentment. And of course, Bloom as member of a minority (and he attempted to list hebrewish books) should understand that he just cannt deny them. Because it would be judging their influence (which leads to the inclusive process) is basead on poor quality and this is ridiculous as imposing only the european-colonial view.

4- A person must understand that a canon is not a ranking. If so, it would be very narrow. But those days, Homer is a canonical as every single of his imitadors of epic tradition. And of course, not all of them are Ovid, Virgil, Dante, Camoes, etc. Some are quite bad. Some could point Thomas Mallory for example is canonical albeit he never got in the level of Ariosto or Tasso. But he sits in the same place as them, He is canonical and him to fail the entire production of arturian circle would need to be erased from our memory.

A list is simple an attempt to limit the potential infinite. It is like having a map for the universe says "16 meters from the border you turn right" knowing universe is is constant expansion. The list will fail, logically so. As funny they maybe.

[lawpark]

Essentially very regime change in China sought to end the tradition of the regimes before it. Each dynasty had its own motifs, culture, and symbols. The writing of official history was traditionally part of the process, as it would mark the previous regime as history. This was followed by religious change (the tang, for instance, claimed to be descendants of Laozi, and Wu Zetian claimed to be a Buddhist Goddess, and essentially destroyed the Confucian bureaucracy by removing the material from her Imperial exams, and favoring Buddhism), The Song Dynasty emerged with its own culture, and a set of values.

Lets look at literature - each major dynasty seems to have even changed in literary development, from Han dynasty Fu poems, to Tang Shi poems, and Song Ci poems, and Yuan Qu poems, and Ming novels, and Qing anthologies - even the literary culture did not remain continuous.

There was always a clear understanding of a break - of one regime failing, and another taking it over, of the past being illegitimate, and of discontinuity.

- Agreed that in China dynastic change signifies many aspects of changes at the same time. I would add that in the 20th century the break was even more severe - grammar of the written language change (baihuawen instead of guwen), the script change (simplified vs. tradition), and some actually argued that the lingua franca changed (I am no expert here - the theory was that the lingua franca was a putative Nanjing Mandarin inherited and developed from early Ming, and was not Beijing-style Mandarin used throughout Ming / Qing).
- But all literary people, have access to what happens in the last dynasties and read some those dynasties' works (might not agree to any of them), and has those at the back of their mind when writing new works. So while there is a conscious break, there is also a practical level of continuity.
- Take the example of Shi Jing - the Book of Songs. It got so much commentaries throughout the many dynasties. The version Mao Shi Zheng Yi codified in early Tang (7th century A.D.) includes the original text (material from Zhou, supposedly compiled by Confucius or at least during Spring/Autumn or Warring States), Mao's uncle and son interpretation of the texts in Western Han, commented on by late Eastern Han Zheng Xuan,
and also a yin yi (phonetic-semantic glossary) by Lu De Ming in late Six Dynasties (Chen), which then the Tang Kong Yingda and his team wrote sub-commentaries on, mostly based on many work done on the topic throughout the Northern-Southern Dynasties. Subsequently, of course, the Song folks did not agree with the interpretation, and you have other works like Zhu Xi's commentaries on the Odes becoming canonical, and the commentaries tradition continued to be strong in Qing dynasty. Yes, every dynasty might understadn the text differently. But to say that because of this change the Chinese tradition of literatue simply does not exist, is really a difficult thing to argue.
- I guess for both the western and Chinese tradition examples - your argument that they don't exist is like the Russell dilemma (a shoe which you first changed the bottom and then replaced the surface - is it still the same shoe?), a fun intellectual question, but at the end, it should be possible to treat historically (i.e. "shoe got changed bottom first and then with surface replaced", a statement that does have a substantive content).

[JCamilo]

I'd question whether this is going too far. First on the western tradition:
- If something fluctuates, it does not exist. I'd argue that this extreme (Nagarjuna-like argument) position is not very useful for studying anything. As long as we don't hypostatize a concept, like a fixed "West", the concept might still be of some use - of course after critical thinking about the concept itself.

Each exactly? Usuallly literary studies have the tendency to specialization. Like, someone specialized in that language, time period and style. He may grasp something general, like you need to study Virgil, know about greece, but you just limit it making the whole canon not our subject, a guideline or anything.

- And historically, I think the concept of the West is earlier than colonialism - not the term, but the idea of Christendom, should be as early as the time of Crusades (you are clearly right that it is developed against Islam), so saying the concept is used to justify colonialism is probably anachronistic.

I think it predates cristians, roman are westernes already. Alexander is probally the first real western enterprise and his work has all traits of colonical imperialism.

- Yes, in canon war, there are many propagandas, half-truths, etc. involved. While the Western traditional internally has been set up with a lot of internal exclusion, once it is set up, it actually has real effects - e.g. Virgil was canonized in Roman times, and became part of Latin education curriculum. Many later major authors in Europe probably know of Virgil - some might be more directly influenced by it (e.g. Dante), while some may not (e.g. Shakespeare). It became a social reality that has effects. At any point in the link, the perception could be false, or half-truth; but it does not make the fact that a system of long-range dialogues / reactions get set up. This is not to say that Dante is not influenced by other local works / factors; this just says that calling labelling the West as a tradition has some basis. Of course, how compelling this basis is, is up for argument.

But they didnt. It didnt matter, Virgil is the classical author by all means, but he was Roman author. Yet, the roman's self proclammed themselves the new greeks, and this is false. Alexandria was out of their borders, they absorved much of non-greek influence, the bible does not came from there, the very greek literature is based on west-east conflict (Troy, persians)...

- It is the same question for JCamillo - if you feel the Western canon as it is constructed right now is too xenophobic / colonial - what would make it less so? Saying the concept of canon is just useless really does not work, because it is actually used in countless classrooms and academias, by practical necessity of selection given finite time - thus, refusal to propose an alternative actually just supports the status quo. And if further, this refusal also applies to the literature in the rest of the world, it actually further strengthens the Western canon

Well, for once the canon is being build not in classrooms, it is not xenophobic.

The concept is not useless, the attempts to define it are. I dunno if it is taught in all classrooms, etc.

So, the canon is a nice chat, not a tool for work. Ultimatelly when we end talking about canon, lets say, people know that Mortal will bring canonical works, but he does not bring the canon, he brings the works (which are usually classical stuff), JBI goes sometimes for italians, chinese, etc. Stlukes has a borges idea or two, bring some european neo-classicism, etc. Nobody talks about canons and nobody know all the other know. Overall knowledge about all, but that is pretty much. For example, if the talk is Borges, them I can follow Stlukes pretty fine, but if it some italian poetry, specially not Dante or more old, it is Stlukes and JBI. But if I talk about Camoes, it is over... Not much to add except what i know. Nobody is using canon but we end in specific knowledge. Simple as that.

[lawpark]

A list is simple an attempt to limit the potential infinite. It is like having a map for the universe says "16 meters from the border you turn right" knowing universe is is constant expansion. The list will fail, logically so. As funny they maybe.

It is clear that fundamental different in understanding would not end by forum discussions (or most other discussions anyway).

Just to end this (at least for myself, finishing my long summer vacation after today) with an anecdote.

I was in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NY City earlier this week, and picked up their "Guide". Here are some sentences from the Introduction:

"The Metropolitan Musem is a living encyclopedia of world art... A guide to the Museum's immense holdings ... can be only the briefest of anthologies. Through a selection of some of the finest works in every department we have attempted to give a balanced picture of the collection. Inevitably many legitimate candidates had to be excluded ... The difficulty we faced in these choices makes it clear that the works of art reproduced here are only signposts to direct and introduce the visitor to the various parts of the Metropolitan. ..." Philippe de Montebello, Director.

The Guide is organized by departments, with sections such as "The American Wing", "Arms and Armor", "Asian Art", "European Paintings", "Photographs", etc.

I have no prior training or knowledge of art - I find the guide fascinating, and I may even pick up a book or two of Art History after flipping through this "Guide". If I were to drill deep into the topic and become good at it, maybe a decade or two later I would come back and say the "Guide" is not balanced, or say that this "Guide" is quite useless, and "failed".

[JCamilo]

and How was the trip by the museum?

[lawpark]

It was a nice walk - awed by the whole room of Rembrandt (awed by how rich the Museum was, and also how much black he liked to use, and the care he took to draw out the very fine, neckware type stuff that was part of the costume back then), saw some interesting African / Papua New Guinear works (never seen before), thought the lighting of the Chinese Suzhou-style garden was good (though the garden itself hardly justifies the real estate in middle of NY City, for someone who was living in Shanghai just before moving to US), the South Asian / Chinese buddhas were quite impressive (many Northern Wei and Sui dynasty stuff - same as what was in the Freer Museum in Washington D.C., made me wonder why). The place is clearly too big for an afternoon (we brought two kids too, and my wife had a slightly injured ankle on that day). It was great time spent!

[JBI]

The problem about the idea about the West with Virgil and Homer etc. is that Homer was Greek - namely, not part of the Western European tradition (how many other Greek authors, that is, post-Roman Greek authors are included in the Western Tradition), Aristotle an Alexandrian (Egyptian tradition?) with influence on Alexander (Macedonian?) who conquered Persia (Persian tradition?) and Helenized where he conquered, mainly, the Near East (Islamic, Arabic, Jewish, etc. tradition?). Even the Bible and Christianity are not Western in creation. Virgil may have been, but Carthage, and Troy are not. Homer is not, even Ovid was Greek, and spent the last years of his life writing verse in Greek that has since been lost.

There is the foundation of your Western culture. By my estimate, the true centre of western literature is Dante, and he reading Virgil and appropriating him based on geography.