Toward “Glocalized” orientations: Current literary and cultural studies in China

Abstract

Globalization has indeed exerted strong influence on China’s literary and cultural studies. The present essay first of all deals with the controversial issue of globalization with the author’s reconstruction of it from a Chinese perspective on the basis of his previous observations. Then it discusses cultural studies, including studies of elite culture and its products challenged by popular culture, in China. It lays particular emphasis on the currently prevailing Cultural Studies introduced from the West into China at the beginning of the 1990s. The author addresses the following issues: how Cultural Studies is introduced into the Chinese context, how it is integrated with domestic elite culture studies and literary studies, how it is institutionalized in the Chinese context, and how it is developing into the phase of carrying on equal dialogues with the Western scholarship in the age of globalization. To the author, Cultural Studies has a lot in common with literary studies, especially in the Chinese context, so these two branches of learning should not necessarily be opposed to one another. A sort of dialogue and complement rather than opposition between literary and cultural studies could be realized. Even in the age of globalization, when many of the other disciplines of the humanities are severely challenged, comparative literature, merging with cultural studies, is still flourishing as it is closely related to the debate on the issue of globalization. Although both the two disciplines are closely related to the advent of globalization and have travelled from the West to China, they have after all been “glocalized” in the Chinese context with certain Chinese characteristics. That is why they still survive the age of globalization.