Lexington Books
Pages: 240
Trim: 6½ x 9½
978-0-7391-0500-9 • Hardback • October 2007 • $128.00 • (£98.00)
Eugene Eoyang is professor emeritus of comparative literature and of East Asian languages and cultures at Indiana University, Bloomington and professor emeritus of humanities at Lingnan University in Hong Kong.
Part 1 Polar Paradigms
Chapter 2 Thinking Comparatively: Orienting the West and Occidenting the East
Chapter 3 Canon Fodder: The Challenge of Non-Western Literatures
Chapter 4 Agon vs. Ritual: East-West Perspectives
Chapter 5 The Ethics and Aesthetics of Literature: A Comparative Perspective
Part 6 Post-modern Perspectives
Chapter 7 Being Familiar and Being Strange: The Subjective Experience of Globalization
Chapter 8 Post-Modernism and Traditional East Asian Literature
Chapter 9 The Modern and the Postmodern: A Cross-cultural Perspective
Chapter 10 The Advent of the Traditional Future: Global Imaginaries
Chapter 11 "History," "Herstory," "Theirstory," "Ourstory": Gender, Genre, and Cultural Bias in Accounts of East Asian Literature
Part 12 The Globalization/Glocalization of Knowledge
Chapter 13 The Globalization of Knowledge: Comparative Literature as Interdisciplinary and Multilingual Discourse
Chapter 14 The Glocalization of Knowledge: Tianya—The Ends of the Earth or the Edge of Heaven
Two-Way Mirrors is by an eminent cross-cultural comparativist at the top of his game. The book reveals a breadth of vision and depth of knowledge that can be obtained only through a lifetime of reading and reflection on widely different literary traditions and cultures. In twelve lucid and detailed chapters, Professor Eoyang explores the complex and multi-subjective awareness gained from looking at cultures through two-way mirrors: one sees oneself partly reflected as one sees what is on the other side; at the same time, one is seen in the same manner by the subject on that other side. The term 'Glocalization of Knowledge' in the book's subtitle combines 'global' and 'local' into a neologism which describes how the 'glocal'?which is usually displaced to the periphery but a periphery that Eoyang, adapting a Chinese text, praises as 'the edge of heaven'?can lead us to new questions and perspectives and thus to new insights about ourselves and the world..
— Michael Palencia-Roth, University of Illinois
Two-Way Mirrors is by an eminent cross-cultural comparativist at the top of his game. The book reveals a breadth of vision and depth of knowledge that can be obtained only through a lifetime of reading and reflection on widely different literary traditions and cultures. In twelve lucid and detailed chapters, Professor Eoyang explores the complex and multi-subjective awareness gained from looking at cultures through two-way mirrors: one sees oneself partly reflected as one sees what is on the other side; at the same time, one is seen in the same manner by the subject on that other side.The term 'Glocalization of Knowledge' in the book's subtitle combines 'global' and 'local' into a neologism which describes how the 'glocal'—which is usually displaced to the periphery but a periphery that Eoyang, adapting a Chinese text, praises as 'the edge of heaven'—can lead us to new questions and perspectives and thus to new insights about ourselves and the world.
— Michael Palencia-Roth, University of Illinois