Abstract
In his article “Overlappinig Scriptworlds: Chinese Literature as a Global Assemblage,” Wai-Chew Sim offers a globalist vision or understanding of Chinese literary studies/Sinophone studies. Deploying the notion of scriptworld (Damrosch), he examines how the Chinese, English, and Malay-language scriptworlds interact in the Southeast Asian context. He traces the rhizomatic connections between Joo Ming Chia’s Exile or Pursuit, a Singapore Sinophone text that explores multiple belongings, and two novels: M. L. Mohamed’s Confrontation (originally published as Batas Langit), and T.H. Kwee’s The Rose of Cikembang (originally published as Bunga Roos dari Cikembang). Tracing the sinophonicity of the latter two works opens up a relatively untrodden domain for Sinophone studies while the comparative optic establishes “assemblages” (Deleuze) between different scriptworlds, avoiding therein enervating debates over compositionality while fostering “South-South” or “Bandungist” knowledge production and exchange. For Chinese literary studies/Sinophone studies, a set of such ensembles would make up a global assemblage.
Recommended Citation
Sim, Wai-chew.
"Overlapping Scriptworlds: Chinese Literature as a Global Assemblage."
CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture
21.4
(2019):
<https://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.3206>
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