(10:26 AM) | John Emerson:

John Emerson Grumbles About Theory

(Most of the specifically Sinological references in this piece
have been excised. The complete piece is here.)

I tend to read everything I can find about topics of interest of me. The poets of the Chinese Han and Wei dynasties are among my favorites, so when I saw Christopher Leigh Connery’s book The Empire of the Text (which inter alia covers the literary culture of that time) I bought it. But I didn’t like the book and couldn't finish it, so I decided to use this opportunity to articulate my feelings about Theory, rather than just muttering and grumbling as per usual. (People tell me that Theory is passé and nothing to worry about any more, but in my opinion it isn't passé enough yet.)

I’m not sure that the methodological and theoretical passages could have been of much use to anyone – they’re too sketchy and basic to be very valuable for someone who is sophisticated about methodology, but for the same reason they would not be very helpful for someone ignorant of methodology. They seem like defensive writing, proving to people in the biz that the author has all his theoretical ducks in a row.

I suspect that there are only a few dozen people in the world capable of giving this book a better reading than mine, and what I especially fear is that the book will become a canned version of China for theory people, allowing them to pretend that they know what they’re talking about when they don't. (Connery actually cites two books which do just that -- Kristeva and Barthes spent a couple weeks each in China and Japan respectively, and they came back to write fluffy books which were mostly just their impressions of the Oriental vibes, with little substantive content.)

What is this book “about”? Well, it’s not “about” “Chinese” “literature”. It especially discusses changes in the self-definition of the Chinese elite and in the way they looked at what we call “literature”. The poetic forms which were so highly valued by later Chinese and by Western translators did not, during the Han period at least, have the importance that was later given to them.

But above all, this book seems to be about theory. Meta-statements, methodological discussions, and scare quotes stud the book like speed bumps. One of the author’s rules is that since his intervention (no scare quotes on this term) attempts to replace the standard ways of talking about the era (and about Chinese culture generally), he should make no reference to, and use no concepts from, any of the standard interpretations except when he is refuting them.

As a result, the reader learns little about the collapse of the Han and of Han Confucianism, Cao Cao’s unorthodox and perilous rise to power, or the lives and the works of the poets of the time. Since this era and its literature (especially the Wei poets) have not been well-covered in the English-language literature so far, non-Sinological readers will be at somewhat of a loss reading this book -- Connery is providing a revisionist view to an audience which is mostly unfamiliar with the received view. It would have been far better for the first substantial book in English discussing the literary world of Wei to have been more basic and inclusive. (Connery includes no Chinese texts, and only two translations of different versions of a single unexceptional poem.)

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