If we remember that theories are simply tools that allow us to describe and work with particular artifacts, then it really doesn't matter where the theories come from. And since theories are just tools, any user is justified in modifying the tool for the task at hand (eg using so-called western theories for so-called post-colonial applications). When we do this, we just have to remember that one

tool may not fit the task, but maybe another tool will. In addition, we routinely borrow theories from other disciplines for application in literary scholarship - and the traffic goes both ways. So, for example theory of institutions seems to have a new life these days - originally developed as a tool for sociology, now used by literary scholars. Systems theory has had its moments in many disciplines, including literary scholarship and translation. No one has the market on good ideas. Borrow, modify, synthesize - we await your innovation!!

Dear Nazir Ali It seems at first sight difficult, if not impossible, for writers and literary researchers to dismantle themselves from the influence of Western theories and approaches in the near future. Even if there are attempts to formulate local literary theories addressing different issues, they derive much from Western theories in their literary creations and their critical contributions.

Best regards

It's not always about the validity of Western theories, it has also to do with the system of disseminating these theories. Most non-Western researchers are unable to crack the publication game in high-profile western journals. Publication is media. It is the West who puts the rules of publication in their own media or journals.

Allow me to add this:

The Western culture encourages cooperation and team spirit (culturally, and technologically).

The Eastern culture values individuality more. Individuality requires the availability of resources and academic freedom and a well developed system of disseminating the results of intellectual endeavor. Things which are not accessible for many non-Western intellectuals and theorists.

Dear Hasan Mohammed Saleh, I am happy you say that evolving indigenous theoretical concepts are "seemingly" difficult, implying if sufficient intellectual labour is expended on it, even if it is by group of scholars, it can be done. We have a vibrant set of creative writers, talent deservedly recognised even by the West. The evaluation of this talent must emerge from a theoretical value system born out of the soil from which the creative writing emerged. This alone will be able to do interpretive justice to our writers. I would also like to point out that unbeknown to English language, there is a luxuriant growth of vernacular writing whose creative dynamics can be fully mapped only by interpreters and scholars familiar with the customs and cultures of these people. Given the linguistic diversity of India, a diversity which is enriching as well as abrasive, non-native theories appear absurdly far-fetched when used by comparative literature scholars.

Best wishes.

Muthana Makki Mohammedali Dear sir, It is true that frequently theories of questionable validity are superimposed on our own literary works, a kind of critical straitjacket, if I may say so. Literature by nature is local, born out of issues pertinent to a nation or culture, unlike, for example, science which has universal application. A literary theory that is sensitive to these differences, perceptive and knowledgeable about them - it alone can render these writings in the proper light. I believe we agree on that. Family, love, faith have notions here which are at variance from their counterparts in the West. It is these differences that one must take cognizance of to arrive at a balanced interpretation. Whle conceding that it is the publications in the West which set the standards, and also help in disseminating ideas, I am also confident that writings of persistently good quality cannot be ignored for long.

Very true.

Some Marxist, Post-colonial, and Indigenous approaches to cultural and literary studies do this, or at least pose your question as a starting point.

Daniel Knauss True, but Marxism with its emphasis on the proletariat will have to be suitably hybridized to take the landless peasant as the lowest denominator in the agrarian economies of the East. And one of its sharpest pitfalls has been its failure to account for the caste differences in India, a pitfall Arundhati Roy exposes in her God of Small Things. Postcolonialism, with its key text being Said's Orientalism, has been effective in the way Western imperialism marginalizes the Orient but when it comes to explaining how dominant power structures are maintained by a particular caste or class, it is virtually useless. Subaltern Studies offers some hope. Along with these theories with their inherent political bias, what I would like our scholars and critics to evolve would be an aesthetics and rhetoric of homegrown vintage because languages like Tamil, Persian and Sanskrit have got poetics of their own centuries earlier.

Good answer! (to your own question.) :-)

Would peasant studies be relevant? Are you familiar with James C. Scott? (The Moral Economy of the Peasant, Weapons of the Weak, Domination and the Arts of Resistance, Seeing Like a State, The Art of Not Being Governed, and Against the Grain.)

Thank you, no, I am not familiar but the provocative titles kindle my curiosity!

Ref. Nazir Ali first response.

Language models are a complexity themselves. Many mistakes have been made throughout history, mistakes that have been taken to be true, but were in fact not so, due to the difference in language, and the construct and pronunciation of words in specific languages. Syntax itself can be more than enough to confuse the interpretation of different language sentence structures and there meaning. That said, theories of literature are a description of the underlying principles we use to understand something. In that sense, the underlying principles may be a useful tool to have and or may present another way to examine a subject. Cultures differ and so does language. Language is dependent on culture. Ultimately, there is a dependence, on what you are trying to accomplish evaluating/interpreting literary texts.

As far as countries language trying to free themselves from the Western hegemony, they have already done it. There are many cultures and established languages that are much older than English or the Romance languages. Ultimately, the native language would present the best interpretation of a writing better than a translation or the incorporation of another basis of language not related to the original.

You have to create it. What has happened with African American literary criticism is that critics from the home cultures have had to critique from their cultural reference spaces. I think of Jacqueline De Weever’s Mythmaking and Metaphor in Black Women’s Fiction as a model of how black women in particular have first created their own myth systems based upon their cultural frameworks inspiring a cultural critical framework of their own. Sometimes in critiquing while using European critics you can use them to juxtapose against what you are not doing to set a historical framework in a journal that may cater to that audience. It would be useful if you have journal access to critical reviews in your culture/country to provide a springboard upon which to build your base. Someone has to start it first.

@Harold Lattin You have rightly pointed out the interdependence of language and culture. Extending this link a little further we can say that similar complementarity exists between literature and literary theory. The penetration of Western literary theories is such, especially in the academic space, and the prestige they enjoy is so much, no non-Western literary theory has the slightest chance of institutional acceptance. I feel like Barbara Christian who wrote "Race for Theory."

@Conrad Pegues Certainly. But we need something of literary collective to attempt a project of this kind and scale and enough leisure and funding. Once I retire from my academic teaching, which is not in the too distant future, I intend to take up this job. We do have limited journal access to bounce our ideas across, and perhaps, thinking rather wishfully, the West can help in this endeavour!

Sometimes your collection of friends and associates can bring yourselves together. I think of the Combahee River Collective or Kitchen Table Press, both started by grassroots efforts of minds on the same page. They didn't wait for the stamp of approval from academia, men, the West, established literary orders. Is it work? Yes.

Literary theories had their evolution at western location. But, when the theories had their introduction to different places of the world, they underwent changes according to the location. Indian culture can be understood by Indian standards and they can only be compared to the Western culture. No theory is in the form of its birth. The base can be the theories of the "West" but not the content. It is what recommended by Derrida himself while dealing with Deconstruction. Every theory will change with its language, location, people and history. Hence, using the theories of the "West" is not the way to evaluate literary texts but the native version of the literary theories.

Christober Jacob Marxism had its origin in the West but its strongest impact, paradoxically, was on countries collectively and also pejoratively dubbed as the Third World. Theories do travel and while travelling undergo changes. There has been a generally voiced complaint, that while the West stipulates the theories, the East produces texts commensurate and compatible with them and so, in a way, western models continue to hold sway. Barbara Christian registers a similar grievance against them and makes her strongest case in "The Race for Theory." If we think of theories as not only reflecting the current trends in philosophy and culture studies but also as instruments of quality control, it is time that we in the east evolve our own theoretical tools rather than allow our literary productions judged by alien standards.

If we remember that theories are simply tools that allow us to describe and work with particular artifacts, then it really doesn't matter where the theories come from. And since theories are just tools, any user is justified in modifying the tool for the task at hand (eg using so-called western theories for so-called post-colonial applications). When we do this, we just have to remember that one

tool may not fit the task, but maybe another tool will. In addition, we routinely borrow theories from other disciplines for application in literary scholarship - and the traffic goes both ways. So, for example theory of institutions seems to have a new life these days - originally developed as a tool for sociology, now used by literary scholars. Systems theory has had its moments in many disciplines, including literary scholarship and translation. No one has the market on good ideas. Borrow, modify, synthesize - we await your innovation!!

Most likely we do not have litetaryVC theories rather than the western theories.

Evelyn Ellerman If only theories are as flexible and impersonal as a mechanical tool is! Alas, we find it is not so, and quite often they come with prejudices loaded onto them! Theory as a tool seems to be metaphorically overworked. Take for example, bharatha natyam, a classical dance of Tamil Nadu and a visual art, and applying on it the norms and criteria of Russian ballet, and how miserably it will be inadequate in bringing out its excellence and nuance. I believe so is the case with literary productions. To the English audience of Dryden, the French plays appear to be pathetically bound by the classical unities and the English plays of Elizabethan dramatists must have seemed unruly and chaotic to the Frenchman. If countries within the same continent follow different norms of theatrical excellence, how very farfetched the Eurocentric norms will be to a novel or play written in India or Middle East. Postcolonial and subaltern theories of literature are precisely concerned with modifications of the kind you mentioned and insofar as they acknowledge the inherent bias of postimperialist theories masquerading as forces of globalization, they do pass muster.

Yes. All cultural products, including theories, carry a cultural bias and that may preclude their use by scholars from other cultures - but many theories or parts of theories can still be of use or adapted as useful tools for new purposes. If not, then, of course, don't use them. However, as scholars, we need to make sure that we are not re-inventing the wheel.

If you think about it, theories are generally constructed to answer one or a limited number of questions. They cannot be stretched very far past their original intent. This is one very good reason to see if parts of theories can travel further, answering even more questions, or can be applied to similar questions in other disciplines. With this in mind, I think that readers of this thread may be interested in the work conducted on travelling concepts - these are theoretical concepts that prove useful, even when detached from their parent theories. For an introduction to this notion (which is not new), you might want to read "Travelling Concepts for the Study of Culture" edited by Neumann and Nunning.

I really go with the idea of Gabriel Andres with a slight differentiation. Every culture has its own way of interpreting itself. Hence, theories do not evaluate the culture, but, the culture changes the theories.

I am persuaded about the relativity of litterary categories, particularly the "litterary genders", not only between differents cultures, also between the distincts periods of the same culture. We have inherited of the gender's pattern greek and latin: tragedy, poetry, satire, epopey, alexandrine novel, etc. In my field of competance, we find pieces that not fit with this model: "fabliau" (humor's short tale"), "dit moral" (religious poetry), "knight's chronicle", "sirventés, poem of satire and individual offence", religious or marvelous novel", as Graal''s cycle), etc.

Another field well studied is the semitic, biblical gender's system. In the past, the authors had given conscience that the biblical system was different of the greek-latin system.

In matter of genders relativity, I can recommand the studies of Jauss, but his interest goes to the genders system changes inside the same culture, at differents periods, not between different cultures. For Jauss the low and populars genders puts out the high and aristocratic genders, in a manner of a marxist "fight of classes", for example the novel in prose that trumphs against epicals books versifated.

I agree with your suggestions about the relativity of genre, both within and across cultures. Although it is helpful to have discrete categories of genre (like epic), in reality, across time and across cultures, these genres are quite plastic. As I mentioned earlier in this thread, the tools we use to describe and explain literary phenomena can be used across cultural lines and can be altered to suit the scholar's purpose. You have just underlined that the object of study (the literary text) is just as malleable. What this discussion demonstrates is that, as scholars, we should not feel compelled to use or not use any particular theoretical approach based on non-literary parameters. We should, instead, consider our own goals and choose the descriptive and analytical tools most appropriate to those goals.

In times when literary studies looks for integration with culture studies, in times in which every conceivable discipline has contributed to the study of literature, how do we separate the literary from what is not?

Well, the field of Comparative Literature is about 150 years old. So, the trend is hardly new. The department where I was a grad student used to recognize preoccupations such as literature and theory, literature and the other arts, literature and history, etc. This approach encouraged creativity in thinking, which is not a bad thing. All you have to do is define what you mean by literature - which is obviously the $64,000 question, but refreshingly flexible. I have always admired our department's unofficial motto: "You name it, we compare it!"

The context, the environment, like axioms (and their quantity of information) in a math theory, is usual involved in the results of a text generator (whatever it will be, anthropological speech or literature writing) . The results of a text generator (based on axioms of a theory) do not include more information than those provided by axioms plus a limited extra quantity produced by the combination methods. Back to the question: If the socio-cultural context of the Western societies completely included the s-c c of the others, then the answer may be Yes. But this is not a rule: Other cultures may have diferent s-c c . Simple example: Japanese culture. Even the Japanese language offered more context (in some areas) like Western languages, remember the kore-sore-are triad of spatial positioning of the speaker (here, near me or there, there near the interlocutor, or otherwise at distance of both speakers) Such differences, if many, can force Western literature theories to import new notions and concepts in order to process and explain non western pieces of literature. So, it is possible to find mithology or literature of other cultures which did not match the Western models. Reducing the literary text to a single word you can also point a clear answer : Pieces of literature composed by non-traductible words (like linguistic gaps) are not even translatable, so not analyzable by literature theory from an other country. We even may use an algorithm of constructing this kind of longest artificial stories, called in mathematics as diagonalyzation. So we have at least two kind of stories which are not analyzable by western theories. An there should be more. (c) by Dan Popa 2019

At XIX century, with romanticism, begins a new sensibility to the productions and genders of anothers cultures. Occidental authors found inspiration fromt the japanese "haiku" or the arab "qasida" (García Lorca). More complexe is the case of spanish-arab "zajal", being as a part of researchers considers that it influenced already, in medievals times, the song wit refrain of troubadours.

Two things are to be distinguished: theories or interpretations versus litterary gender's system. The first are, more or less, generals, but he seconds variates in times and culural espaces.

I agree with your suggestions about the relativity of genre, both within and across cultures. Although it is helpful to have discrete categories of genre (like epic), in reality, across time and across cultures, these genres are quite plastic.