PAMLA 2024 Standing Panel: East-West Literary Relations
The distinction between East and West once held significant influence in knowledge production, ranging from voluminous travelogues from Western authors to the prosperity of Oriental Studies in academia of the 18th and 19th centuries. Postcolonial scholarship since the 1970s, including Said’s Orientalism and Spivak’s subaltern studies, sheds new light on the East/West distinction as a dynamic relationship, instead of two settled categories. As globalization significantly boosts the movement of humans, material goods, cultural products and texts, it gives rise to a wide range of imaginations, potentials, intellectual tools but meanwhile crises, conflicts and unequal distribution of power in the constantly changing geo-political landscapes.