Rethinking Dichotomised Comparisons

Abstract

This paper examines how two contemporary Chinese ekphrastic poems respond to an era characterized by visual media and globalization. It analyses how the poets connect their engagement with visual art to their explorations of complex cross-cultural encounters. These inter-art-form and inter-cultural engagements question the self-other dichotomy that operates in many simplistic imaginings of the relationship between art forms, between China and the West, and between so-called cultural centres and peripheries. Building on the example of these two poetic works, I propose a networked framework as an alternative to dichotomised conceptions of world literature and as a way to rethink global cultural politics and contemporary sociohistorical experience.