“Citation, Otherwise,” a special issue of Diacritics on the politics of citation, is now in the world thanks to incredible efforts of special issue editor Annabel L. Kim. I am very grateful to have my essay “Points of Reference: Citing Kamau Brathwaite Decolonizing Citation” included in the issue alongside a wonderful lineup of scholars and …
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Against Global Literary Studies
Literary studies has taken a global turn through such institutional frameworks as global romanticism, global modernism, global anglophone, global postcolonial, global settler studies, world literature, and comparative literature. Though promising an escape from parochialism, nationalism, and Eurocentrism, this turn often looks suspiciously like another version of Anglo-European imperialism. This essay argues that, rather than continue the expansionary line of recent decades, global literary studies must allow other perspectives to draw into question its concepts, practices, and theories, including those associated with the terms literature, discipline, and comparison.
Comparative Iterature: Michael Leong reviews Make It the Same
I am deeply grateful to Michael Leong for his detailed and enthusiastic review of Make It the Same in Contemporary Literature. One of the many things that I love about his review is its prospective outlook. Building on the ideas and examples in Make It the Same, Leong considers, for instance, “what it might look …
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Making It News in Contemporary Poetry
To pick up a print newspaper today, let alone to turn it into a work of literature, is increasingly an act of nostalgia, a reference to a time long gone. And yet, poets and writers continue to turn to the texts and collage-like structure of the news because they provide a vital means for negotiating a world of proliferating media.
Poetry and Breath: Resuscitating Literature, Reimagining the World
Last week, I delivered my inaugural professorial lecture in Dunedin. Here, in addition to sharing the recording, I also reproduce the text of the opening part of the lecture. Tihei mauri ora. The sneeze of life. The phrase is used to claim the right to speak, as I do this evening. The phrase looks back …
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World Literature in Stereo: Magnetic Tape and the Media Futures of Global Literary History
My essay on the lessons that the tape recorder offers for the future study of literature on a global scale is just out in a special issue of SubStance on “The Postlingual Turn.” My sincere thanks to the editors of the special issue, yasser elhariry and Rebecca L. Walkowitz, for including my piece and to …
Poetry and breath: Resuscitating literature, re-imagining the world
Hā ki roto, hā ki waho. Breathe in, breathe out. It’s the simplest thing, the in- and outflow of breath that keeps us alive, so automatic that, most of the time, we hardly notice it. And yet we ignore breath at our peril in an era when the struggle to breathe has come to symbolize …
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Make It the Same reviewed by Yanhong Zhu
I am once again extremely grateful for the time that a reviewer has put into my book. Yanhong Zhu has published an extensive and thoughtful review of Make It the Same in Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews (CLEAR). The review concludes: Edmond’s engaging and exciting book merits a wide readership by scholars and students across …
In Memory of Hilary Chung
Earlier this year, my incredible former PhD supervisor Hilary Chung died after a long struggle with cancer. Now Ka Mate Ka Ora: A New Zealand Journal of Poetry and Poetics has published a series of tributes to her and her work. I reproduce my tribute below. Twenty years ago, a new door in my life …
Make It the Same Makes MSA Book Prize shortlist
I’m delighted and stunned that Make It the Same has made the shortlist for the Modernist Studies Association Book Prize. I’m very grateful to the judges, Gayle Rogers, Leah Flack, and Elizabeth Sheehan, for placing my book in such wonderful company and for what they have written about Make It the Same: To praise the …
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Make It the Same: Poetry in the Age of Global Media 