A Cultural Ambassador East and West: J. Hillis Miller’s Lectures in China

Abstract

Since 1988, Prof. J. Hillis Miller has traveled to China over a dozen times and delivered more than thirty public lectures to an audience of college professors, students, scholars, and artists from a broad spectrum of Chinese society. His lectures aroused immense interest from Chinese academia as well as local and national media. It may well be claimed that he is the most influential among Western scholars who have actually traveled to China since China entered the New Period of Reform and Openness and exerted a profound and salutary impact on Chinese humanistic scholarship, especially in the fields of literary studies, media studies, and cultural studies. In a way, it is no exaggeration to say that Miller's China lectures have contributed significantly to the reestablishment of literary criticism, literary theory, comparative literature, and cultural studies in China after the Mao Era. Recently, Miller carefully selected fifteen lectures from among his thirty-odd lectures in China, revised them with necessary background information, and put them together into a collection with a meaningful title: An Innocent Abroad: Lectures in China.1 Its title is a parody of Mark Twain's popular book The Innocents Abroad (1869), but has entirely opposite intentions and themes. Twain's book is a record of his travels to Europe and the Holy Land with a group of American travelers. Ostensibly, it describes the innocent and even foolish behavior of the Americans, but its sometimes witty and comic, and sometimes biting and satirical tones and descriptions explicitly or implicitly ridicule and criticize the conservative society and backward customs of the old world.2 Miller's book title is not at all meant to be a satirical one. Rather, as he informs us in the “Introduction,” his parody has a double meaning. On the one hand, it alludes to his status as an alien in an alien land; on the other, it is meant to recognize that he is an ignoramus who knows nothing about Chinese language, literature, and culture, and his lecture trip is therefore a process of learning from the other.Prof. Miller's book is prefaced by Prof. Fredric Jameson, another American critic and theorist who has lectured many times in China and is widely known in Chinese academia. Prof. Jameson highly praises the book and summarizes its core ideas in these pithy words: “The heart of the work remains the new and urgent contemporary problem of not what literature is but whether it can survive in any recognizable form in globalization, a problem that promises to tell us as much about globalization as it does about literature.”3 Indeed, although Prof. Miller's new book employs multiple perspectives, macrocosmic worldview, and microcosmic analyses, and covers English literature, comparative literature, world literature, literary theory, and cultural studies, its emphasis is laid on addressing and exploring the impact of globalization, new media, and new technology upon literature and literary studies. It focuses on his reflections of how the human sciences can adequately deal with the encroachment and impact. Some lectures in the book were those designated by the Chinese institutions of higher learning which invited him to lecture; some others were on topics chosen by Miller himself, and still others were his reflections arising from his interactions with Chinese scholars and students during his visits. All of them contain his observations of and insights into the great changes that have taken place in China as a result of Chinese academia's responses to economic development and technological advances, and at the same time reveal the evolution of his own thinking and the deepening of his critical vision. As a whole, Lectures in China places literature in the large context of globalization and brings forth new perspectives and deep thoughts on literary studies. This article will briefly introduce the major ideas of each chapter, continues with critical comments on the characteristic features and assessment of its value for cross-cultural literary studies, and finally attempt to provide suggestions for reading the book.The book consists of an author's preface, Jameson's foreword, an introduction, fifteen chapters, and a list of Miller's lecture trips and lecture titles in the years from 1988 to 2012. It has a total length of 305 pages and a detailed index. The “Introduction” tells about the origins of each chapter and the criteria in selecting them. It also narrates how he experienced a personal transformation from a scholarly informant to an observer who has witnessed the tremendous changes of Chinese Reform, and how he became an active participant in the creation of literary theory with Chinese characteristics and in the reestablishment of comparative literature discipline in China. What follows are the fifteen chapters selected from among thirty-odd lectures, arranged according to their chronological appearance. The chronological order has the advantage of affording the readers an easy way to follow Miller's lecture trip and an overview of the book's content. We will first of all give a synoptic account of each chapter with brief comments.Chapter 1: “The Role of Theory in the Development of Literary Studies in the United States” is the first Chinese lecture presented at a plenary meeting of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing in May 1988. It reviews the origins and subsequent development of literary studies in the United States since the last quarter of the nineteenth century, with a focus on the changing role of literary theory in the development and practices of literary scholarship. This chapter is not a mere survey, but a thoughtful account which reflects on the vicissitudes, outcome, topical, and long-term impact of theory on the development of literary studies in the United States. As the author thoughtfully updates information of latest developments, it is an indispensable introduction not only for students of literature in China at the time of the presentation, but also for students of literary studies anywhere who are interested in American literature in particular and English literature as a whole.Chapter 2: “Black Holes in the Internet Galaxy: New Trends in Literary Study in the United States” is a lecture on the origin and development of research universities in the United States and their impact on the institutionalization of literary studies, especially the structural organization of English departments in American universities. The focus is on the developing trend in literary studies informed by theory and by the advancement of communication technologies. As a comprehensive and highly informative account of the rise of English literature and American literature, this chapter goes in tandem with the first lecture. But this chapter is by no means an introductory survey; in fact, it investigates the changing status of literature in the global age, as he asks a question: “Why did the massive shift to cultural studies from language-based theory begin to occur just when it did, that is, around 1980?” He provides a thoughtful answer: “The shift was no doubt over-determined. Many factors accompanied it.” Nevertheless, he identifies the crucial force as the growing impact of new communication technologies. He shows how technologies have changed readers' reading habits: “The critics of this new generation have been to a considerable degree formed as what they are by a new visual and aural culture that is fast replacing the culture of the book…. At the same time the new communication technologies are rapidly transforming the way research and teaching are carried on in the humanities.” This chapter marks the book's first entry into “hot” topics generated by the theoretical and cultural turns in the last quarter of the twentieth century.Chapter 3: “Effects of Globalization on Literary Study,” as the title indicates, addresses the effect of globalization on literary study. It discusses what has contributed to the worldwide process of globalization and how it in turn changed the nature and function of literature and literary studies. To begin with, the author discusses the impact of technology on humanistic sciences and the relationship between the two areas which used to be unrelated. His discussion focuses on these fundamental questions: What has brought about the comprehensive development of globalization around the world? How has the worldwide process of globalization altered the nature and function of literature and literary studies? Then, he speculates on the future role of literary study in the new technological and instrumental university, and raises these questions: What is happening to literary study as a result of globalization? Can we still study literature today? What purpose does literary study serve in the new globalized world? Instead of looking backward, the author looks forward by siding with the “digital young” or netizens and celebrating the appearance of the new mode of literary studies.Chapter 4: “Will Literary Study Survive the Globalization of the University and the New Regime of Telecommunications?” examines Jacques Derrida's prophecy about the death of literary and humanities discourse, and offers the author's meditations on what it would be like to live beyond the end of literature, whether literary studies will survive the new and unprecedented situation created by new technologies, and what we should do to continue its existence. Miller agrees that “New communication technologies are making a quantum leap in the generation and imposition of ideologies,” but “They do this by a kind of hallucinatory hypnotic conjuration.” Citing Marshall McLuhan's famous or notorious saying, “the medium is the message,” he reinterprets it along the Derridean line and suggests that a change in medium will change the message it imparts. The appearance of new media will surely change the message which used to be imparted by the old media. He further argues by varying McLuhan's saying and puts forward his own view that “the medium is the ideology.”Chapter 5: “Promises, Promises: Speech Act Theory, Literary Theory, and Politico-Economic Theory in Marx and de Man” is a theoretical essay that relates Marxist aesthetics to Paul de Man's literary theory and offers a paradoxical thesis that while Marx's Capital is a work of literary theory, de Man's critical work is a critique of political economy. He argues that Marx resembles de Man in a number of ways, the most significant of which is that “Marx is not just concerned to describe the capitalist sign system, any more than de Man just wants to show how tropological systems work in literary texts, political texts, or texts in general. Each wants to investigate how the sign systems in question got established, how they function, and how they might therefore be changed. Both want to ‘deconstruct’ the systems they study, or to show how they deconstruct themselves.” He also argues that both Marx and de Man are concerned with the goal of “theory,” which, whether in economic theory or in literary theory, is “to suspend the taking for granted of the sign system in question and even to displace attention away from straightforward description of the way the system operates.” He further argues and proves Marx's and de Man's relevance today when Marx's theory is regarded as obsolete, his reason being: “Marx … already saw commodities as disembodied, insofar as they embody exchange value. They are just so much socially generated ‘value,’ that is, they are forms of information communicated by impersonal speech, as when that linen speaks or when that table dances and expresses the metaphysical subtleties embodied in its wooden brain.” This chapter is replete with fascinating and original ideas. It eloquently confirms that the book is not exclusively meant for the Chinese academia. This is the most original and most fascinating chapter in the whole collection.Chapter 6: “On the Authority of Literature” starts with a series of question centering on what gives literature its authority in our culture. By exploring why and how poets are “unacknowledged legislators,” the author examines to what extent this idea is still true in view of an embarrassing reality in which fewer and fewer people nowadays read literary works. Reminding us of the eloquent defenses of literature throughout Western history, Miller employs speech act theory to emphasize forcefully the necessity of reading literature for literature to exercise its authority: “Literature has been granted enormous authority in our culture, but though that authority may still be tacitly or even explicitly acknowledged, for example by the media, it is no longer so pragmatically operative, no candid observer can doubt. If the books just stay there on the shelves their authority is only potential. They must be read to be performatively effective.” What is most interesting in this chapter is that the author integrates theoretical explorations with his own personal experience with literature. It is a profound and interesting chapter to read.Chapter 7: “The (Language) Crisis of Comparative Literature” identifies two central issues in the so-called crisis of comparative literature: the problem of language and the rise of new media. The author puts the focus on the second issue. By reconsidering René Wellek's famous article “The Crisis of Comparative Literature,” the author argues that the crisis arises not from methodological or theoretical disagreements but rather from the question of translation in its broad sense. He points out that comparative literature in the West is Euro-centric, excluding literatures of non-European languages. This exclusion came into existence to some degree because unfamiliarity with non-Western languages brought about translation problems. Citing problems arising from translating European poetry as examples, he demonstrates the linguistic difficulties in translation involving European languages belonging to the same language family, not to mention translation involving non-European languages like Chinese. This chapter is truly comparative in the sense that it directly brings Chinese and Western literature into consideration.Chapter 8: “The Indigene and the Cybersurfer” was sparked off by two Chinese scholars' call to confront the destructive effects on indigenous communities by global capitalism, American popular culture, and new communication technologies. The lecture then embarked on a reconceptualization of the ideas of “indigene,” “community,” and “cybersurfer.” He offers an interesting definition for “cybersurfer” and distinguishes it from “indigene: A cybersurfer is homeless, rootless, without privacy, exposed in all directions to invasions of his or her home enclosure by various techno-telecommunication devices.” By contrast, “The indigene, however, is as much a Western concept as the cybersurfer is a product of Western cultural capitalism.” What is so fascinating in this chapter is that it not only grapples with conceptual issues but also reconceptualizes these issues by analyzing literary texts.Chapter 9: “Material Interests: Modernist English Literature as Critique of Global Capitalism” sees the author return to what he does incomparably well: literary criticism and textual analysis. It focuses on Conrad's Nostromo and offers a reading of that novel in relation to global capitalism and contemporary world politics. Unlike Said and Jameson who read the novel as, among other things, “an eloquent and persuasive indictment of the evils of military and economic imperialism,” Miller reinterprets it as a parable which prophesizes what will happen to global capitalism. Although Conrad's work was composed a hundred years ago, he points out its relevance for the global age. His answer is simple: Conrad's novel is “one of the best ways to understand what is happening now in our time of globalization.” It also provides a good answer to the question of literature's “usefulness.” He views Conrad as a prophet whose novel explains “the way military intervention by the United States is necessary to secure and support its world-wide economic imperialism.” Conrad “foresaw the movement of global capitalism's center westward from Paris and London first to New York and then to Texas and California.” Miller goes a step further and discusses what Conrad did not foresee: “What Conrad did not foresee is that it would be oil and gas rather than silver or other metals that would be the center of global capitalism. Nor did he foresee that the development and use of oil and gas would cause environmental destruction and global warming.” He comes to an interesting conclusion that Conrad's novel is “not so much about history as about alternative ways to narrate history.” The chapter is an exemplary specimen of textual analysis which all students of literature should read.Chapter 10: “Who's Afraid of Globalization?” examines the anxieties, concerns, and fears aroused by globalization and the consequent effects on literary and humanistic studies. He rephrases his question as “Who ought to be afraid of globalization?” He does not think it a good state of mind to fear globalization. Instead, he advocates a positive way to deal with a “planetary change of unprecedented scope and rapidity” by understanding it, taking advantage of it, and deflecting it in constructive ways. By meditating on the direct effect of globalization on world economics, geopolitics, higher education, scholarship, as well as ethical and political life, Miller explores the possible skills needed for cultural studies in the global age. Although he cannot tell exactly what those skills are, yet he predicts that they will “marry, in an unlikely alliance, the research procedures and protocols of ethnography with the analytical acumen and resistance to old-fashioned hermeneutics of so-called deconstruction.” As a senior scholar in his eighties, Miller is by no means siding with mossback professors who frown upon students who prefer online sources to traditional libraries. This chapter as a speech delivered in 2006 predicts the advent of a new humanistic discipline. His prediction is correctly confirmed by the rise of a new discipline: “digital humanities.”Chapter 11: “A Comparison of Literary Studies in the United States and China” offers an in-depth comparative study of literary studies in the United States and China based on his dozen trips and direct encounter with Chinese literary studies. It identifies both similarities and differences and subtly points out the inadequacies of the prevalent approaches to humanistic studies in China, including the penchant for historical determinism, time-honored knowledge, and abstract comments, as well as insufficient attention language use, critical methodology, and textual analysis. This chapter is of the most direct relevance to literary studies in China. There is an appendix with a list of readings for English majors in Chinese universities and colleges.Chapter 12: “Globalization and World Literature” is a concentrated effort to promote the idea and institution of World Literature in the global age. Miller is a staunch advocate and promoter for World Literature. He discusses how the present-day world literature differs from its predecessor since Goethe's time. He perceptively identifies a pattern of inadvertent reversal of those forms of globalization and examines a series of challenges faced by World Literature in the age of globalization. Although he recognizes the negative influence brought about by globalization, he nevertheless maintains that the global age has offered a precious opportunity to establish a truly comprehensive World Literature. In a critical analysis of Nietzsche's opposition to Goethe's idea of world literature, he has convincingly proved that national literatures of countries all over the world will invariably move toward the system of World Literature.Chapter 13: “Cold Heaven, Cold Comfort: Should We Read or Teach Literature Now?” recalls the “good old days” of literary studies in the period of 1950s–1970s, examines the dire situation into which literary studies in the U.S. lands and its various causes, and voices a passionate plea for the need to recognize the usefulness and power of literature in the globalized age beset with problems on a global scale. After investigating the unfavorable environment for literary studies, analyzing its various factors and demonstrating the necessity and importance of literary studies in the global age from the ethical and humanistic perspectives, the chapter reaffirms the role of literature as a powerful and indispensable tool to expose ideological aberrations in the present-day dominated by mass media and technologies, and to enhance the human condition and the spiritual world of humanity. At a time when literary studies have been pressurized by technologies and are operating on the margins of high education, this chapter sounds a clarion for the fight to gain a worthy position for literary studies in today's universities across the globe.Chapter 14: “Mixed Media Forever: The Internet as Spectacle, or the Digital Transformation of Literary Studies” examines the interconnections between verbal and visual media and argues that the two have always been mixed in various ways. The chapter starts with close analysis of two pictures with words using Guy Debord's, Jean Baudrillard's, and Maurice Blanchot's theory of visual culture, and attempts to bridge the gap between the two ideas stated in the title: “The Internet as Spectacle,” and “The Digital Transformation of Literary Studies.” Invoking ideas of three theorists on spectacle, simulacra, and image, he argues for the time-honored existence of mixed media, and how digitalization changes literary studies. He points out that “multimedia in different forms and mixes have characterized verbal texts from the beginning. That means it is a mistake to think of a radical change in the twentieth century from print media to graphic media, from printed novels, say, to films, with each requiring different disciplines and methodologies of interpretation.” In his opinion, with the appearance of the Internet literature has been transformed along with literary studies. The chapter is filled with terms, concepts, and ideas of visual culture, and its discussion of the interactions between different media is so dazzlingly rich that it effectively conveys his thesis both in content and form: “Verbal and visual media have been from the beginning mixed in various ways at various times.”Chapter 15: “Literature Matters Today” has a central thesis that addresses the question of whether literature matters today in the twenty-first century, both in and outside of the United States. He ardently believes that literature still matters today. The chief reason for the conviction is that though printed literature is gradually becoming a thing of the past, something like literature lives on in other media. Moreover, printed literature will go on being read more and more often in e-text form. If literature still matters in our time, what is the strategy to teach it? He suggests “Teaching how to read in the light of the distinction between poetics and hermeneutics is a way literature can still be brought to matter.” Based on some in-depth analysis, he draws the conclusion: “The migration of ‘literarity’ is certainly happening, but this movement happens at the expense of literature in the sense I think the word is normally meant, as in the phrase ‘Does Literature Matter?’” This chapter may be viewed as a sister chapter to Chapter 13. What differs from Chapter 13 is that while in that chapter, the author apologetically reaffirms the use of literature in the traditional sense of printed books, this chapter passionately demonstrates why literature is still valuable today from both conceptual, personal, practical, and global perspectives.Prof. Miller's book has many remarkable features which cannot be adequately presented in an article, but we will focus on a few distinctive aspects. First and foremost, it is broad in scope and highly informative. It covers miscellaneous fields of the humanities, and is filled with remarkably fresh insights into each of them. The new insights provide a great deal of food for thought which should help us contemplate how to revive humanities under the onslaught of globalization and technologization. The second feature lies in its astute integration of theoretical concerns with critical practices. Miller was a renowned critic of English literature in his early career. He made a turn to literary theory in his mid-career and a second turn in his late career to cultural studies, new media, digitization, and globalization. The various turns in his career, and even his whole scholarly development are traced in this book. Whichever of the theoretical issues is under discussion, he will never forget to employ literary analysis to expound the conceptual issues. Reading the book, a reader will be able to learn his distinctive literary methodology that combines conceptual inquiry and close reading. The third feature is its rich methodological value. With his extraordinary critical skills and conceptual acumen, he probes deeply into the various attitudes upheld by people from different fields toward the new trends in literary studies as a result of communication technology and globalization. His analyses should help us clarify our thought on many complex issues in literary scholarship, find our way to an adequate understanding of the dazzling array of developments of cultural knowledge, and adopt a rational attitude toward the impact of scientific and technological advances upon literary studies and cultural studies as well as the entire discipline of humanities. As an erudite who makes masterly excursions into various disciplines and fields, he has produced his own views, thoughts, and scholarship, which would make nonliterary scholars feel at home in his humanistic studies and feel the power of literature.The fourth feature is his remarkable vision and creative spirit. As a scholar in his late eighties, Miller is never conservative in these essays. Though he feels pained by the diminishing role of literature in the age of globalization, he nevertheless understands and sides with the “digital young” or netizens who listen to music, watch TV, websurf, and play video games more than read books. Instead of bemoaning the passing away of the “good old days” of literature, as many senior scholars tend to indulge themselves in doing, he contemplates strategies to deal with the onslaught of digital technology and new media of communication, and celebrates the appearance of the new mode of literature which is global in nature, comparative in perspective, and interdisciplinary in approach. Miller does not share the attitude of mossback professors who frown upon students who do not use libraries and instead use online sources. As he puts it, “I can see no particular virtue in slogging around the library, as in the days when ‘scholarship was mostly legwork,’ as my doctor-father, Douglas Bush put it. He meant scholarship involved walking up and down miles of stacks in a research library looking for the books you want.” What is even more intriguing is that he is willing to probe into the mind of the computer savvy young people and think in their shoes: “What is the actual effect on people's personalities in different specific situations of playing computer games, or of using email, or of creating their own podcasts? That, in my view, is the frontier of a globalized comparative cultural studies today.” What merits a special note is the fact that in Chapter 10, Miller predicts the advent of a new field of humanities. The chapter is based on a lecture delivered in 2006, while his ideas appeared even earlier. By now, the new field, which is called “digital humanities,” has been firmly established across cultures. In a way, this chapter anticipates much of what is being done today, such as empirical investigation of the ideologies promulgated by video games and by other mass media like Facebook and Twitter.The fifth feature is its reader-friendliness. Although it is broad in scope, rich in information, and strong in theory, each chapter is based on a public lecture and still retains the thoughtful considerateness for the reader. Reading the chapters, we feel as though we were having a face-to-face meeting with Prof. Miller and engaging in a dialogue with him on conceptual as well as critical issues. In a friendly and stimulating atmosphere, the reader can leisurely learn and understand difficult theoretical issues and master techniques of literary scholarship.As the subtitle indicates, this is a book growing out of a series of lectures which initially targeted audience in Chinese academia. The innocent (pun intended) title of the collection may prompt one to think that this is an introduction to literary studies and a propagation of Western literary criticism and theories for the benefits of scholars in a third-world country. This impression is a total mistake. For in spite of the modest title, the collection is by no means an introduction to literary studies at the rudimentary level, but a sustained effort to reflect on the nature, value, function, and fate of literature and literary studies in the global age as well as to reflect on the impact of history, politics, ideology, and such technological advances as the Internet, web page, iPhone and new media of communication upon reading, writing, literary studies, and cultural studies, from a global, intercultural, and interdisciplinary perspective.The book is, among other things, an adequate review of the historical development of literary theory in the United States, a passionate defense of literature and literary studies against myopic vocationalism, a sober med