Diffracted Waves and World Literature

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Notes

¹ Franco Moretti, ‘Conjectures on World Literature’, New Left Review, 1 (2000), pp.54–68.

² Franco Moretti, ‘Conjectures on World Literature’, p.67.

³ Moretti here draws on Frederic Jameson, ‘In the Mirror of Alternate Modernities’, in Origins of Modern Japanese Literature, by Karatani Kōjin (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1993), p.xiii; Franco Moretti, ‘Conjectures on World Literature’, pp.58–65. Moretti borrows the term ‘interference’ from Itamar Even-Zohar, ‘Laws of Literary Interference’, Poetics Today, 11:1 (1990), pp.53–72.

⁴ On these two competing models for thinking world literature, see Susan Stanford Friedman, ‘World Modernisms, World Literature, and Comparativity’, in The Oxford Handbook of Global Modernisms, ed. Mark Wollaeger and Matt Eatough (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), p.501.

⁵ Rebecca Walkowitz, ‘Close Reading in an Age of Global Writing’, Modern Language Quarterly, 74:2 (2013), pp.171–172.

⁶ Karen Barad, ‘Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter’, Signs, 28:3 (2003), pp.818, 815.

⁷ Donna Haraway, How Like a Leaf: An Interview with Thyrza Nichols Goodeve (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), p.105.

⁸ Yang Lian, Where the Sea Stands Still, trans. Brian Holton (London: Wellsweep, 1995). John Cayley and Yang Lian's ‘performance reading with cybertextual projections’ of Where the Sea Stands Still was held at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, on 27 May 1997. I base my account of the performance on the videocassette recording held in the ICA Archive. The HTML version of the hypertext poem is available at < http://programmatology.shadoof.net/works/wsss/index.html> [05/07/2013]. Parenthetical numbers following quotations from the poem refer first to the part of the poem and then to the subsection within that part. I have sometimes modified Holton's English translation.

⁹ Christopher Bush, Ideographic Modernism: China, Writing, Media (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), p.21.

¹⁰ Lisa Gitelman, Scripts, Grooves, and Writing Machines: Representing Technology in the Edison Era (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), p.224.

¹¹ Jerome McGann, Radiant Textuality: Literature After the World Wide Web (New York: Palgrave, 2001), pp.10–11.

¹² Lisa Gitelman, Always Already New: Media, History and the Data of Culture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006), p.148.

¹³ Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2007), p.137.

¹⁴ For another argument for rethinking materialism in discussions of world literature, see Ben Etherington, ‘What is Materialism's Material? Thoughts toward (Actually against) a Materialism for “World Literature”’, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 48:5 (2012), pp.539–551.

¹⁵ Yang Lian, Dahai tingzhi zhi chu: Yang Lian zuopin 1982–1997; Shige juan 大海停止之处：杨炼作品 1982–1997； 诗歌卷 (Shanghai: Shanghai wenyi, 1998); Yang Lian, Where the Sea Stands Still: New Poems, trans. Brian Holton (Newcastle: Bloodaxe, 1999).

¹⁶ Yang Lian, ‘Yinwei Aodexiusi, hai cai kaishi piaoliu’ 因为奥德修斯，海才开始漂流, in Yan dui wo shuo 雁对我说 (Hong Kong: Ming bao yuekan; Singapore: Xinjiapo qingnian, 2010), p.277. Yang Lian also entitled a subsequent series of poems Concentric Circles, trans. Brian Holton and Agnes Hung-Chong Chan (Tarset, UK: Bloodaxe, 2005).

¹⁷ Yang Lian, Unreal City: A Chinese Poet in Auckland, trans. Hilary Chung and Jacob Edmond (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2006), p.88; Yang Lian, Guihua – Zhili de kongjian: Yang Lian zuopin 1982–1997: Sanwen – wenlun juan 鬼话·智力的空间; 杨炼作品 1982–1997; 散文·文论卷 (Shanghai: Shanghai wenyi, 1998), p.28.

¹⁸ Yang Lian, ‘Cong Yu siwang duicheng dao Dahai tingzhi zhi chu’ 从“与死亡对称” 到 “大海停止之处”, unpublished manuscript, Yang Lian Papers, Special Collections, University of Auckland, New Zealand; Yang Lian and Yo Yo, ‘Stepping outside Post-Cultural Revolution: Contemporary Chinese Painting’, trans. Chen Jung-hsuan and Jacob Edmond, Body, 8 August 2013, < http://bodyliterature.com/stepping-outside-post-cultural-revolution-six-contemporary-chinese-artists-by-yang-lian-yo-yo> [02/02/2014].

¹⁹ Stephen Owen, ‘What Is World Poetry? The Anxiety of Global Influence’, New Republic (19 November 1990), pp.28–32. Even if Yang had not read Owen's original article when he wrote Where the Sea Stands Still, he is very likely to have encountered Michelle Yeh's response to Owen in a journal published by Chinese writers who went into exile after 4 June 1989. Michelle Yeh 奚密, ‘Chayi de youlü – yige huixiang’ 差异的忧虑——一个回响, Jintian 今天, 1 (1991), pp.94–96. Tang Xiaodu discerns a direct response to Owen in Yang Lian's essay on Where the Sea Stands Still, ‘Yinwei Aodexiusi’, p.278. Tang Xiaodu 唐晓渡, ‘“Zhongyu bei dahai modaole neibu”: Cong dahai yixiang kan Yang Lian piaobo zhong de xiezuo’ “终于被大海摸到了内部”——从大海意象看杨炼漂泊中的写作, < http://yanglian.net/yanglian/comment.html> [04/07/2013].

²⁰ Yang Lian gives an account of these and other aspects of the poem's form in Guihua, pp.259–262. He gives further details in an unpublished note to his translator, Mabel Lee, entitled ‘Dahai tingzhi zhi chu fuyan’“大海停止之处”附言, Yang Lian Papers, Special Collections, University of Auckland, New Zealand.

²¹ Cosima Bruno, Between the Lines: Yang Lian's Poetry through Translation (Leiden: Brill, 2012), p.106.

²² Donna Haraway, How Like a Leaf, pp.103–105.

²³ John Cage and Daniel Charles, For the Birds: John Cage in Conversation with Daniel Charles (London: Marion Boyars, 2009), pp.220–221.

²⁴ Yang Lian, ‘“In the Timeless Air”: Chinese Language, Pound and The Cantos’, trans. Yang Liping with Jeffrey Twitchell-Waas, Painted Bride Quarterly, 65 (2001), < http://pbq.drexel.edu/yang-lian-in-the-timeless-air-chinese-language-pound-and-the-cantos> [03/07/2013].

²⁵ Yang Lian, Unreal City, p.68; Yang Lian, Guihua, p.4.

²⁶ Karen Barad, ‘Posthumanist Performativity’, p.817.

²⁷ Yang Lian, ‘In the Timeless Air’.

²⁸ John Cayley, ‘Beyond Codexspace: Potentialities of Literary Cybertext’, Visible Language, 30:2 (1996), p.169. For Cayley's most developed computer-based scoring of Chinese regulated verse, see John Cayley, HyperCard Wine Flying: Non-Linear Explorations of a Classical Chinese Quatrain, diskette (London: Wellsweep, 1992). For an example of Cayley's writing on Pound and his use of Chinese, see John Cayley, ‘“New Mountains”: Some Light on the Chinese in Pound's Cantos’, Agenda, 20 (1982), pp.122–158.

²⁹ John Cayley with Yang Lian, ‘Hallucination and Coherence’, Positions, 10:3 (2002), p.780.

³⁰ John Cayley, ‘Background Information’ to Where the Sea Stands Still, < http://programmatology.shadoof.net/works/wsss/index.html> [02/02/2014]; Christopher Bush, Ideographic Modernism, pp.64–65. Yang also writes of the complementary relationship between the computer, the timelessness of the Chinese language and Where the Sea Stands Still in Yang Lian, ‘Dahai tingzhi zhi shi – Shi yu diannao: Changkai zhongwen de neizai shijian’ 大海停止之时——诗与电脑：敞开中文的内在时间, Ershiyi shiji 二十一世纪, 56 (1999), pp.90–92.

³¹ Charles Bernstein, A Poetics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), p.123.

³² John Cayley, ‘Beyond Codexspace’, pp.173–174.

³³ This account of the link structure is based on the HTML version available at < http://programmatology.shadoof.net/works/wsss/index.html> [02/02/2014]. Comparison with a recording of the HyperCard version projected at the ICA indicates that the linkage and nodal structure is the same.

³⁴ John Cayley, ‘Background Information’. Both Cayley and Yang have confirmed to me that Yang drew a map of all the linkages that he wanted in the poem. Unfortunately, the original map has been lost.

³⁵ John Cayley, ‘Beyond Codexspace’, p.168.

³⁶ David Ciccoricco, Reading Network Fiction (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2007), p.27.

³⁷ John Cayley, ‘Beyond Codexspace’, p.172.

³⁸ N. Katherine Hayles, ‘Virtual Bodies and Flickering Signifiers’, October, 66 (1993), pp.69–91 (p.77). Cayley uses the term ‘holography’ in the title of John Cayley, Indra's Net; or, Holography, floppy disk (London: Wellsweep, 1993). He outlines his concept of ‘holography’ in the introduction to John Cayley, Moods and Conjunctions:Indra's Net III, floppy disk (London: Wellsweep, 1993–1994). See C. T. Funkhouser, Prehistoric Digital Poetry: An Archaeology of Forms, 1959–1995 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2007) for more on Cayley's holography (pp.179–180) and the actual use of holograms in poetry by Eduardo Kac, Richard Kostelanetz and others (pp.265–270).

³⁹ Donna Haraway, ‘The Promises of Monsters: A Regenerative Politics for Inappropriate/d Others’, in Cultural Studies, eds Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson and Paula A. Treichler (New York and London: Routledge, 1992), pp.295–337. Haraway's account of diffraction first appeared in print a year earlier when it was cited in manuscript in Joan W. Scott, ‘The Evidence of Experience’, Critical Inquiry, 17:4 (1991), p.777, n.7.

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Jacob Edmond

Jacob Edmond works on theories and practices of comparison in modern and contemporary literature with a particular focus on generic and inter-art boundary crossing, new media, and globalization in avant-garde poetry in Russian, Chinese and English. He is author of A Common Strangeness: Contemporary Poetry, Cross-Cultural Encounter, Comparative Literature (Fordham University Press, 2012), co-editor of Recentring Asia: Histories, Encounters, Identities (Brill, 2011), and co-editor and co-translator of Yang Lian's Unreal City: A Chinese Poet in Auckland (Auckland University Press, 2006). His articles have appeared in journals such as Comparative Literature, Contemporary Literature, Poetics Today, and The China Quarterly. He is associate professor in English at the University of Otago, New Zealand. Email: [email protected]