Barbarism as Method

Anyone who knows anything about "translation studies" would know the distinction between domesticating and foreignizing translation, or translations that purportedly try to close cultural distance by rendering cultural otherness illegible (for example through the use of fluent sentences) and those that emphasize instead the other-ness of the source text. For some theorists the former can…

The Ancient, the Modern, the (Thankfully) Not-Yet-Modern

It is well-known that the most basic schema of historicity in Chinese thought is the Ancient-Modern (古今) pairing. The pair is almost always invoked as a complaint of the latter or the status-quo: anciently people had good music, nowadays people only care about opera; anciently people behaved properly toward kings and elders, nowadays all sorts…

More on Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin 34981 ROA: The Curriculum

Recently I have written a blogpost about vols. 10 and 11 in Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin 34981 ROA, a 20-volume manuscript falling under what I call the "literary miscellany" genre of Manchu-Chinese bilingual manuscripts. On a separate occasion and for the Manchu Studies Group blog I wrote about a grammatical text in a student's notebook in…

The Preface of Manju nikan-i yangsanggai acamjaha ucun

The search for Manchu "autochthonous" poetry, which preoccupied the late Professor Giovanni Stary, was destined to be a herculean task, it being clear that the historical Manchus were (pace Herder) much more interested in the creative possibilities afforded by cultural multiplicity rather than in an "authentic" expression grounded in linguistic purity. But the dive into…

Otherwise than Comparison

I wrote a few paragraphs on WeChat in light of the recent deadly fire in Ürümqi and protests that have since broken out throughout the People's Republic, in university campuses and in the streets. As it likely won't live on the platform for very long, I copy it here as well, without translation. 我的导师夫妇二人（加一狗）每个月会在自己家里组织一次茶话会，邀请比文的十来个博士生参与。每次的话题都不太一样，但大多是从大家的研究课题出发，逐渐进入更深更广泛的话题。上次我们讨论到了他一直很关心的一个比文最基本的，关于可比性的问题：what is…

The Poetics of Pure Experience

Rhythm and rime, in other words, is thought, plain and simple. The sound-image that solidifies in the “blooming, buzzing confusion” is a miniature of this process wherein the intelligible reveals itself in its sensibility and the sensible, its intelligibility.

Russell’s Dharani

One of the things I read for pleasure nowadays is the collected works of Chao Yuen Ren 趙元任 (1892–1982), a man known for many things: Gwoyeu Romatzyh, language textbook, Alice in Wonderland, musicology, Chinese topolects, Tibeto-Burmese languages, and that ridiculous essay written entire with shi. He is less known, however, for the work he produced…

The Perfect Fifth and Cosmogenesis; or, Comparative Cyclology

"Musicalischer Circul," in Johann David Heinichen's Neu erfundene und grundliche Anweisung zu vollkommener Erlernung des General-Basses (1711). Note that this is a circle of keys--not pitches--hence a moll (A minor) is placed next to C dur (C major) as they are enharmonically equivalent. I was talking to Dustin during lunch today when the topic of…

An Autodidact’s Guide to Teaching Yourself Manchu for Academic Purposes (if you know English and Chinese)

I had been an autodidact of the Manchu language, a lineage-less student in a field where it seems one cannot enter without being initiated by an established guru of sorts. So I wanted to write something like a guide to studying Manchu by oneself today, just to show, if nothing else, that it can be done.

Numbers for Names

Those who open the collection of "common sayings" in Manchu and Chinese titled Manju gisun-i sonjofi sarkiyaha bithe duin hacin (滿漢合璧清語擇鈔四種, Manchu-Chinese Bilingual Excerpts in Four Categories) in four juan, or rather, those who happen upon their covers, are likely to notice a few black-and-white seals printed on the white paper labels mounted on individual…

Manchu Literati Names in the 19th Century

Giovanni Stary's A Dictionary of Manchu Names (Harrassowitz, 2000), based on the Jakūn gūsai Manjusai mukūn hala be uheri ejehe bithe (八旗滿洲氏族通譜, "Comprehensive Genealogies of the Manchu Clans and the Families of the Eight Banners," prefaces dated 1736 and 1745), is an impressive and handy inventory of Manchu names, but also a list frozen in…

Unclean data

To procrastinate I put a bunch of papers I recently wrote into a word cloud generator just to see what would show up. Well, instead of learning about keywords of my research I learned more about the few turns of phrase that I use way too often, and a few verbs I should really know…

The Fieldification of Thinking

A propos of nothing, I confess with pleasure that I've always had trouble taking the idea of an academic "field" seriously. That someone genuinely interested in a topic--say, materiality in the 18th-century Chinese novel--could peacefully sleep at night having deliberately chosen not to read--and to lose themselves in the methods of--some dozen of other academic…

The Natures of Language in Ming China

I've been reading Nathan Vedal's excellent monograph The Cultures of Language in Ming China, whose title I deliberately misconstrue (as a low-commitment nod to recent anthropological theory) in the title of this blog. It's, in short, a must-read for everyone working on literature, history of ideas, comparative thought, "theory" of various traditions and inclinations, and…

Pontification, Enumeration, and Retribution

In Bujilgen Jakdan's (fl. early 19c.) translation of the "Mural" story in the Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio (the Chinese original was the basis of a famous 2011 film) we find the following words describing what the protagonist Zhu Xiaolian 朱孝廉 sees immediately after he is absorbed by the magical painted mural: Tuwaci, deyen…