too broad vs. too narrow

Anne Donadey with Francoise Linonnet have written in their article "Feminisms, Genders, Sexualities" that "The boundaries among 'feminisms, genders and sexualities,' 'race and ethnicity,' 'migrations,' diasporas,' and borders," and "cultural studies" have become more and more porous"(225). I would argue that this is to the extreme. In this article they bring in almost every type of person. By the end of the article, the authors bring in "women, LGBTQ, people, people of color, post colonial people, women with disabilities, etc." The subject matter that they cover in this article is simply too wide to be of much use. I recently watched a television show that covered the MTF sexual reassignment as well as the FTM sexual reassignment and that itself can't just be thrown in with modern feminism or people of color. That each of these different cultural communities have scholars is important and informative but that is not to say that they all belong in the cultural stew Donadey has dreamed up. She would argue that, "transnational, comparative perspective has become central to indigenous studies." That in itself begs the question: are MTF and FTM scholars indigenous to anywhere? If not, are they marginalized? I don't see how all the different types of people named in this article are being brought together and I don't feel that they can all be fairly analyzed or compared one to the other. The only common denominator that I can see is that of liminal living...people who are perhaps between worlds, although Donadey does not actually say that. If I had written this article I certainly would have included the liminality that each of the written about communities share, and investigated the influence their scholarly writing.

On the other hand, I found Venuti's article "Translation Studies" too narrow, simply because the whole book containing this article could be based on translations. I've learned through the duration of this course that translation is everything. It seems to be the most important factor in a thorough scholar's work. Venuti gives a nice overview of the practice, but the variety of people involved in translating works over the years as he mentions it leaves out so much of what translation does to a piece of work, to the translator, and to the readers. It isn't his fault, as I am sure he meant for this essay to be an overview, as he himself states that he has been "necessarily selective" (308). I understand that he is focusing on key problems. Nevertheless, his focus is too narrow for my tastes.

good vs. bad in today's reading

The article “Race and Ethnicity” by Kenneth W. Warren dovetails and compliments that article which comes after it, “Migrations, Diasporas and Borders” by Susan Stanford Friedman. The first article is replete with examples of racism but also brings up the topic of race itself. An important question here is, “Might we not want to have race if racism didn’t come along with it?” I personally think the races are fine the way they are, and it’s fine if we mix them up, and I am truly sorry that the human race ever started thinking in racial terms to begin with. Another very important question brought up in “Race and Ethnicity” is the question of “whether or not the forms of collective identify compatible with race can be understood as necessary to our humanity” (249). It is most definitely necessary to our humanity! If we were all the same color and the same size and had the same culture, think of how boring life would be. I don’t want to live in a world where there are no different cultures. I enjoy the reading of different cultures in books, the different cultural foods; different cultural music… all of it is important to me and makes my life richer.
Meanwhile, we have the problems of people having to leave their native land where their own personal culture is at the forefront, and come to a new land where there are other predominant cultures. This leads me back to my original statement about race… the races are a good thing and should not be melted into one. The writing and the culture and the heritage of people who have to emigrate or immigrate for whatever reasons are important to all of us as humankind. We will lose all of the richness and the glory of what it is to be human if we in any way disparage or undervalue that which peoples from other lands bring when they leave their homeland and relocate.

Holquist et al compare/contrast

Holquist certainly gives us a lot to think about. I did not know that comparative literature was it's own field. It seems that all the work we do in the master's program is in some way related to comparing "this" to "that" in terms of what others have said about something and what we have to say about something. As it says in this weeks TSIS reading assignment, we have to make sure our sentences are related. But what is related in Comparative Lit? I do not actually see the need for a special comparative literature department or chair, but then again, I do not know a whole lot about what goes on in the inner workings of college administration. Based on all I know about high school administration, I don't even WANT to know what the head honchos at our campus or any other campus are coming up with. Holquist does present the point that "better comparison depended on deeper analysis of textual components (210). That is what we do in all the classes I have taken as a master program student! For me, Holquist does not succeed in convincing me that Comparative Literature is different than what any English major does.
Comparing literary works is a form of interpretation, and as Jerome McGann says, "The ideal interpreting agent can know the presence of the whole but never the sum of the parts." This is in direct opposition to Holquist, who seems to feel that comparing the parts is the way you find the whole. All in all, comparisons are a form of interpretation, and interpretation is the bigger issue, in my view.
Comparing and contrasting what a person reads over time is more than likely a natural occurance. Reading Siddhartha makes me think of certain parts of The Odyssey, so does that make me a comparative scholar? I don't think it does. I believe we compare what we read automatically, even if it is as simple as "I liked this book and I didn't like this one." That is still a valid, if oversimplified, comparison. But to interpret the book you liked AND THEN compare it to the book you didn't like is scholarship, therefore I think interpretation is more important than comparison.

Interesting opportunity

I am doing my research on John Updike and it just so happens he will be speaking at UCLA this Thursday. Here is the link.
http://www.calendar.ucla.edu/event_detail.cfm?MeetingID=173671
I would thrilled to go, since I am a huge fan, but I don't know if I can make it to LA Thursday night. I was just casting around for ideas on what you guys think I should do.