Content uploaded by Doris Hambuch
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Doris Hambuch on Aug 24, 2021
Content may be subject to copyright.
Content uploaded by Doris Hambuch
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Doris Hambuch on Aug 21, 2021
Content may be subject to copyright.
5
Special Issue
Bridging Divides via Comparative Literature
Créer des ponts par la littérature comparée
Introduction
Canadian Review of Comparative Literature / Revue Canadienne de Littérature Comparée
CRCL MARCH 2021 MARS RCLC
0319–051x/21/48.1/5 © Canadian Comparative Literature Association
Doris Hambuch
United Arab Emirates University
Japanese-German author Yoko Tawada’s crosslingual homonyms are excellent sym-
bols for the kind of bridges this special issue is invested in. In Beyond the Mother
Ton g u e , Yasemin Yildiz discusses a few particularly original examples (133-34),
including the Japanese Ramen noodles associated with the German “Rahmen”
(frame), or the French “vie” (life) in the German “Klavier” (piano). ese examples lay
bare the extraordinary potential for storytelling to establish bridges between cultures,
genres, and contexts that may not be self-evident. Bridging Divides via Comparative
Literature combines articles that oer the same kind of leaps between communities,
their languages, forms of creative expression, and disciplines such as philosophy and
media studies. With two exceptions, all of the articles are based on presentations given
at the 2020 annual meeting of the Canadian Comparative Literature Association/
Association Canadienne de Littérature Comparée. e meeting was intended as part
of Congress 2020, to be hosted by the University of Western Ontario, but had to move
online as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. e Program Chair cannot thank
enough those members of the executive whose encouragement to go forward with the
virtual meeting laid the groundwork for this issue. Without their technical expertise,
we would have missed out on the urgent intellectual exchange, and distraction from
the unfolding crisis, that included the initial introductions of the research gathered
here. e selected nine articles were peer-reviewed, revised, and extended from the
original conference presentations, all of them revolving around the theme, “Bridging
CRCL MARCH 2021 MARS RCLC
6
Divides via Comparative Literature.”
Anglophone etymology traces the term bridge back to the Old English word brycg,
and dictionaries oer the general denition of a structure carrying a pathway over
a depression or obstacle, before listing more specic uses in the contexts of music,
dentistry, billiards, and ship construction. It is not surprising that such a practical
structure, at times bearing the signature of a famous architect, has inspired a consid-
erable amount of art as well as criticism. In literature, famous stories about bridges
include Zhang Ji’s () (Mooring by the Maple Bridge at Night),
Katherine Paterson’s Bridge to Terabithia, Ivo Andrić’s Ha Дрини ћyприja (Bridge
on the Drina), Markus Zusak’s Bridge of Clay, Leos Carax’s Les Amants du Pont-
Neuf, and Ezzedine Choukri Fishere’s (Embrace on Brooklyn Bridge).
Some of these stories revolve around existing bridges, at least to some extent; others
use the concept of the bridge in more abstract ways. Paterson’s tale, for instance,
employs it to realize its fantastic elements. Besides valleys and rivers, bridges may
metaphorically cross eras and dierent realities.
A German group of early twentieth-century expressionists chose the name Die
Brücke to suggest connections across time. Maybe the best-known appropriation of
the symbol in cultural studies is that of Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa in their
feminist anthology is Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color
(1981). Twenty years aer the publication of Moraga and Anzadúa’s groundbreaking
collection, which has seen four editions by four dierent presses, most recently the
State University of New York Press in 2015, Anzaldúa wrote in the preface to the
sequel is Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation:
Bridges are thresholds to other realities, archetypal, primal symbols of shiing con-
sciousness. ey are passageways, conduits, and connectors that connote transitioning,
crossing borders, and changing perspectives. Bridges span liminal (threshold) spaces
between worlds, spaces I call nepantla, a Nahuatl word meaning tierra entre medio.
Transformations occur in this in-between space, an unstable, unpredictable, precarious,
always-in-transition space lacking clear boundaries. Nepantla es tierra desconocida, and
living in this liminal zone means being in a constant state of displacement—an uncom-
fortable, even alarming feeling. Most of us dwell in nepantla so much of the time it’s
become a sort of “home.” (1)
e discipline of Comparative Literature, for better or worse, continues to reinvent
and redene itself. Comparative Literature in Canada: Contemporary Scholarship,
Pedagogy, and Publishing in Review (2020) is an excellent testimony to the process
at hand. Comparatists are cursed and blessed with the task of contributing to the
resulting transformations because their discipline is the kind of nepantla Anzaldúa
describes in the quotation above. While it is easy to welcome Jerry White’s emphasis
on the importance of crucial scholars for the discipline, the inactivity he laments in
the closing of “e ree Cities of George Steiner” may be due more to certain parts
of the globalized world, rather than to comparatists making unique contributions
to it (239). To use the metaphor of the bridge, its construction does not guarantee
DORIS HAMBUCH | INTRODUCTION
7
its general use; neither does it guarantee its safety and perseverance. e discus-
sions gathered here, it would seem, make this a risk worth taking. e articles in
this issue illustrate the crucial signicance of bridges for inquiries in Comparative
Literature, as well as the various kinds of divides such inquiries can attempt to over-
come throughout a globalized world. ere are bridges between dierent art forms in
the articles by Elena Siemens, Shlomo Gleibman, Lee Dylan Campbell, and Ioannis
Galanopoulos Papavasileiou and myself. ere are bridges related to theatrical per-
formance and mixed-cultural identities in the discussions of Mai Hussein and Jack
Leong. Susan Ingram and Laurence Sylvain cross divides between disciplines, and
Joseph Pivato those between languages.
Ingram outlines intersections between media and urban studies in her compre-
hensive analysis of the Veronica Mars franchise. With a focus on the fourth season,
she pursues the development of both the show’s protagonist and her environment
along vectors of gentrication and generation throughout the TV series, the movie,
and the two novels that precede Season Four. Oering a feminist angle on the famous
female private detective’s coming of age, Ingram investigates the changes of the c-
tional Californian town of Neptune that has, so far, served as setting for the show but
will not do so in the future. Neptune changes in ways, Ingram argues, that prompt
the mature detective’s departure. e article provides crucial parallels between these
changes and those of the character whose departure ends the season.
Like Ingram’s, Siemens’s study is concerned with the visual arts, though lm
plays much less of a role than photography in the latter. “‘It’s You Plus It’s…Art’:
e #Artsele Debate from Douglas Coupland to Tolstoy” features an original inter-
play between textual criticism and the author’s own photography for its investigation
of viewer reception. Case studies of Alex Prager’s La Grande Sortie, Martin Parr’s
Playing to the Gallery, Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, and Anton Chekhov’s e Seagull
illustrate the various crosscultural ways in which viewers interact with art. Relying on
a theoretical framework informed by Johan Idema and Michel de Certeau, Siemens
entangles “interaction between art and the viewer.” She argues that the collecting of
artseles leads the way to viewer introspection, and that this benet outweighs accu-
sations of art devaluation.
While Siemens’s scope is crosscultural, Gleibman zooms in on one particular cul-
tural context, though also intermedially, in “Bodily Citationality and Hermeneutical
Sex: Text, Image, and Ritual as Tools for Queer Intimacies.” Drawing on queer theo-
ries, for example those of Judith Butler and José Esteban Muñoz, Gleibman provides
close analyses of traditional Jewish clothes and objects as represented in contem-
porary literature and visual art. Discussions of ction by André Aciman, Michael
Lowenthal, and Evan Fallenberg, as well as photography and lm by Oscar Wolfman
and Benyamin Reich, allow the article to illuminate the intersections of Judaism and
male-male desire. Gleibman provides examples of subversive citationality “through
particular modes of intertextuality and cultural translation.” His study uncovers
bridges between the sexual and the religious, as well as between the personal and the
CRCL MARCH 2021 MARS RCLC
8
collective in its careful investigation of hermeneutics.
Hermeneutics is also a key concept in the fourth contribution to this issue.
Following three contributions concerned primarily with visual art, Sylvain guides
readers into the more abstract realm of a philosophical inquiry of literature in its
most general sense. Departing from Louis Althusser’s concept of the encounter,
Sylvain proposes to view literature as “downpour” in order to see it “not as an object
or as a tool for interpretation, but rather, to interpret literature as a manifestation
of encounters, operating an important shi in any form of hermeneutics.” Reading
ancient philosophers such as Plato and Epicurus alongside twentieth-century French
intellectuals such as Pierre Klossowski, Sylvain concludes that the act of text inter-
pretation itself can propose a bridge, a bridge that may engender others deliberately
or accidentally. Although that process may be practical or meaningless at any given
point in time, Sylvain argues, it is both unavoidable and useful in order to assess
reading practices.
Hussein’s “Incendies de Wajdi Mouawad: un carrefour traumatique” shares with
Sylvain’s inquiry the reliance on twentieth-century French philosophy. Guided by
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s theory of the rhizome, Hussein analyzes the
Lebanese-Canadian writer, actor, and director’s Incendies as theatrical manifestation
of trauma that results from a mixed-cultural family background. With a focus on
details regarding character psychology, Hussein argues “que la mémoire mouawa-
dienne dans Incendies se ramie en de multiples directions et croît en accord avec
les agencements qui se créent en fonction d’une logique non hiérarchique n’ayant ni
début ni n.” Bridges in this contribution appear at their most precarious. Readers
are reminded that not all obstacles allow for crossings, and that a theatre stage may
appear as suitable setting to reveal insurmountable challenges.
e second article concerned with theatre, however, oers a more positive angle
on the impact of cultural diversity. Leong’s “Bridging Cultural Identities through
Cantonese Opera in Canada” shis not only to a dierent cultural context, a Chinese
Diasporic one, but also to a dierent genre of performance. Highlighting Cantonese
opera, Leong discusses the history of Chinese cultural activities in a Canadian
context, and foregrounds an intercultural studies perspective. Examples from per-
formances primarily organized for Chinese Canadian communities illustrate the
bridges between locations in China and in the Diaspora, between generations of
Chinese Canadians, as well as between the various culturally diverse communities
in Canada. Cantonese opera in Canada becomes a site for transcultural identities,
and for the transcendence of linguistic boundaries. It also serves as a marker of geo-
graphic distance.
Geographic distance plays a signicant role for the subject of the seventh contribu-
tion, as Campbell takes readers into the world of Julio Cortázar in an investigation
of musical elements in Rayuela. Argentinian-born Cortázar wrote Hopscotch in
Spanish while living in France in the early 1960s, and even the image of the game
that lends the novel its name evokes the idea of bridges, as one needs to jump between
DORIS HAMBUCH | INTRODUCTION
9
numbered boxes when playing it. Following Cortázar’s declared passion for jazz,
Campbell identies “para-audible, incantatory cadences shaped to reach the read-
er’s ‘internal ear.’” Where Sylvain’s philosophical investigation of reading practices
invites readers to consider literature as “downpour,” as a manifestation of encounters
that emphasizes our sense of touch, Campbell encourages reading as “deep listening,”
thus stressing our sense of hearing. His analysis succeeds in presenting literature, or
at least Cortázar’s texts, as primarily a rhythmical performance.
Music is also at the centre of Hambuch and Papavasileiou’s study of collaborations
between Bob Dylan and Martin Scorsese, but instead of connections to prose, though
Dylan’s memoir features prominently, this inquiry highlights connections to lm.
e article argues that cooperation between Dylan and Scorsese rests on a shared
blurring of boundaries between fact and ction, as well as on a resulting fascination
with performative storytelling. While live concerts provide the kind of interaction
essential for Dylan’s sense of creativity, lm versions like No Direction Home (2005)
and e Rolling under Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese (2019) preserve
this interaction for future audiences. As they record the qualities of bridges estab-
lished between a performer and an audience, these lms establish potential bridges
to subsequent audiences at the same time.
While Dylan and Scorsese both work in English, the current global language,
Cortázar’s Rayuela appeared rst in Spanish in France before an English transla-
tion became available three years later. Mouawad’s play, which Hussein discusses in
this special issue, was published in one of Canada’s ocial languages, but the opera
at the centre of Leong’s investigation was not. Disregarding the specic status of
languages used in creative expression, many readers and viewers depend on transla-
tions. e nal essay is, therefore, dedicated to literary translation as a construction
hub of the most vital bridges in Comparative Literature. Tracing debates that revolve
around translation in the arts over the past decade, Pivato, co-editor of Comparative
Literature for the New Century, oers a Canadian perspective in “Untranslatable
Texts and Literary Problems.” To illustrate this perspective, Pivato provides case
studies of Nancy Huston and Arianna Dagnino, and further touches on special chal-
lenges related to the translation of Indigenous writing.
Works Cited
Anzaldúa, Gloria. “Preface: (Un)natural Bridges, (Un)safe Spaces.” is Bridge We
Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation, edited by Gloria Anzaldúa and
AnaLouise Keating, Routledge, 2002, pp. 1-5.
Anzaldúa, Gloria, and AnaLouise Keating, editors. is Bridge We Call Home:
Radical Visions for Transformation. Routledge, 2002.
De Gasperi, Giulia, and Joseph Pivato, editors. Comparative Literature for the New
CRCL MARCH 2021 MARS RCLC
10
Century. McGill-Queen’s UP, 2018.
Ingram, Susan, and Irene Sywenky, editors. Comparative Literature in Canada:
Contemporary Scholarship, Pedagogy, and Publishing in Review. Lexington, 2020.
White, Jerry. “e ree Cities of George Steiner.” Canadian Review of Comparative
Literature/Revue Canadienne de Littérature Comparée, vol. 47, no. 2, 2020, pp.
230-40.
Yildiz, Yasemin. Beyond the Mother Tongue: e Postmonolingual Condition.
Fordham UP, 2013.
Copyright of Canadian Review of Comparative Literature is the property of Canadian
Comparative Literature Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple
sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission.
However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.