The Complexity of Difference: A Methodological Issue in Cross-Cultural Studies

Professor Zhang Longxi (City University of Hong Kong)

Abstract

Difference is a basic fact in life and in our understanding of life, as people are all different as individuals and as social groups and communities. In humanities and social sciences, however, differences are often ignored on the individual level, while emphasized on the collective level. This is particularly true in understanding different cultures. By examining some recent works in East-West cross-cultural studies, the lecturer will argue that we should pay attention to the complexity of difference and what Geoffrey Lloyd calls the “multidimensionality” of things so as to avoid the mistake of subsuming individual differences under collective categories, and to go beyond the simplistic claims of universalism as well as the relativist dilemma of cultural incommensurability.

ZHANG Longxi holds an MA from Peking University and a Ph. D. from Harvard. He taught at the University of California, Riverside, before moving to Hong Kong, where he is currently Chair Professor of Comparative Literature and Translation at the City University of Hong Kong. His research area is East-West comparative studies, and his major book publications include The Tao and the Logos: Literary Hermeneutics, East and West (Duke University Press, 1992), which won honorable mention for the Joseph Levinson Book Prize; Mighty Opposites: From Dichotomies to Differences in the Comparative Study of China (Stanford University Press, 1998); Allegoresis: Reading Canonical Literature East and West (Cornell University Press, 2005); Unexpected Affinities: Reading across Cultures (University of Toronto Press, 2007), and most recently, 《比較文學研究入門》[ An Introduction to Comparative Literature ] (in Chinese, Fudan University Press, 2008). He was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities in 2009.