Organizer and Chair: Jane C. Britting, Princeton University
Discussants: Nina Cornyetz, Rutgers University; Norma M. Field, University of Chicago; Hosea Hirata, Tufts University; Lawrence E. Marceau, University of Delaware; Jane C. Britting, Princeton University
Cynics among us contend that theory exists as a commodity that has traveled into the Japanese academy; certainly interpretations of Japanese works utilizing "Western" theory are currently more prevalent than they have been in the past, and American and other Western scholars of Japanese literature refer to their colleagues in Japan when justifying their own use of this theory in their critiques or interpretations of Japanese literature. How do we break out of this tautology? Is theory intrinsically productive to extrapolation of Japanese literature—and Japanese culture—or is its current vogue merely typical of patterns of commodity transfer in the present world economy? What do we mean when we talk of Japanese scholars "importing" theory; how are we to consider issues of adaptation and origins in this context? What about non-Japanese academics? Finally, is it possible—or even desirable—to consider scholarship as purely intellectual exercise, or is it always more productive to take into consideration the professional and economic realities confronting the scholars themselves?
The goal of our roundtable is to generate a discussion of the "Western" theory/Japanese texts debate that grapples with theory-as-commodity assertion but which attempts to open up other possibilities as well. We will debate "theories of theory" that understand theoretical production as specifically located, both culturally and temporally, but we will attempt to circumvent the tired Orientalist versus counter-Orientalist paradigm. We will discuss how to discuss Japanese literature as Japanese literature, and how one’s position—concretely, one’s professional and economic position—may affect one’s scholarship. Most contentiously, we will debate whether it is literature qua literature that problematizes: is it because the literary defies analysis so completely that we spend so much time critiquing each other?