Are We Comparing Yet?: On Standards, Justice, and Incomparability (BiUP General) - Softcover

Saussy, Haun

Softcover

ISBN 10: 3837649776 ISBN 13: 9783837649772

Publisher: Bielefeld University Press, 2019

Synopsis

Debates about the possibility of an open culture – or indeed about the possibility of an open debate about the openness of culture – often turn on questions of standards. But since no benchmark can be absolute, judgement is a proliferation of comparisons.
Through a series of case studies in everyday and academic comparison (literature, history, politics, philosophy), Haun Saussy calls out the typical vices of comparison and proposes ways to unseat them. For however much it is abused, distorted, and manipulated, comparison retains an essential link to the idea of justice.

About this title

About the Author

Haun Saussy, born in 1960, is University Professor at the University of Chicago, where his courses range among classical Chinese literature, comparative poetics, translation, and the history of knowledge. His books include The Problem of a Chinese Aesthetic (1993), Great Walls of Discourse (2001), The Ethnography of Rhythm (2016), and Translation as Citation (2018) for which he received the American Comparative Literature Association's Wellek Prize in 2018.

Edition details

• Publisher: Bielefeld University Press
• Publication date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 3837649776
• ISBN 13: 9783837649772
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 112