Beyond the Caves of Solitude: The Gift of Mining Together
When our 2020 cohort of Comparative Literature and Critical Translation came together in Oxford for the first introduction meeting back in October, everyone thought we would resume in-person meetings soon. The program is a nine-month period of study in the field of literature with a comparative ethos in methodology. We took the core course seminar once a week with a lecture preceding it, and one optional course in each of the first two terms (the academic year in Oxford is separated into three terms, respectively called Michaelmas, Hilary, and Trinity). In the last term, we focused exclusively on writing the dissertation with support from our respective supervisors. It is a very short and intensive course, so we must make the most out of it. However, the second round of lock-down hit us by surprise; apart from the first class, the rest of the sessions were all conducted online through the fuzzy screen of Microsoft Teams.
The switch to online learning presented me with new difficulties, not to mention the inherent challenge of transitioning from undergraduate to graduate studies itself. If undergraduate years feel like exploring the internal structure of a given cave, graduate studies compel me to do the work of mining, dig into the hard rocks, and hollow out a cave myself. The physical presence of my cohort, I thought, would be indispensable for building trust and a sense of belonging together in this liminal transition. Talking across the computer screen could never afford that level of bonding. The virtual learning setting made me realize the solitude of academic research more than ever by externalizing it in the physical space of study: although we were on the same screen, our bodies remained isolated in the three-meter cave of our little bedroom cells. For the first few sessions, I was indeed frustrated with the anticipated state of laying backward and passively listening, rather than making an active effort to join the conversation.
Gradually, however, that passive state faded away. Despite the physical distance from each other, despite the surreality of the computer screen that made the inherently slippery communication more difficult, I was struck to see how much everyone in the cohort endeavored to bond with each other, treasuring and holding onto every point of view we brought forth. Moreover, it was not that we articulated these points with assured perspectives and finite conclusions. Quite the opposite, we presented our ideas at stake and taking the seminars felt like a process of collective mining where we invited each other into our crude little caves in the making. Notably, the fourteen students in my cohort have very different academic backgrounds, from the more traditional literary studies to other areas such as religious studies, history, and linguistics. We have also grown up in different geographical and cultural contexts. These differences created many variations in our responses to a topic not only in the content but also in rhetoric, style, and most fundamentally, the grasp of a particular language. It requires some courage to discuss topics that we might not be familiar with, let alone discussing them without mastering the language in which a topic has been articulated and debated.
Nevertheless, we were not afraid of putting a rough and unpolished idea out there on the table, knowing that at some point someone would pick it up and give it a new life. I could still recall the dissertation workshop we had in Trinity term, where we shared the progress of our respective dissertation projects. I was working with an aesthetic concept called “the sublime,” denoting a feeling of awe at something grand and magnificent in the European context. My dissertation looks at how the sublime aesthetics was translated into early modern China by late-Qing scholar Wang Guowei, with the larger question of the translatability of philosophical concepts in mind. After the presentation, my classmates generously offered their feedback without any prior encounter with the primary text. One of my classmates commented, “From what you shared, it seems interesting that Wang’s writing embodies a sublime form of writing that echoes the content of his argument…” Another classmate noted, “What you said reminds me of the Greek rhetorician Longinus who also describes the sublime as sometimes beyond language, and I wonder how Wang’s translation of the sublime deals with that sense of ‘the unspeakable’…” “You may also want to think about how studying Wang’s case compels you to reflect on your own methodology, that is, how you are translating Wang to the contemporary audience…”
The process of writing up a dissertation was quite challenging during lockdown. However, I found care, trust, and generosity in the intellectual sparks my classmates had ignited in our virtual classroom. These qualities arose from the fervent work of thinking my peers put into my 10-minute presentation, trying to immerse myself in the intellectual debates I struggled with myself. They bridged my case with the intellectual discourses scattered elsewhere, and helped me connect Wang Guowei’s translation of the sublime to universal questions of how we perceive, experience, and articulate the world in writing. The comment about contemplating my research methodology further inspired me to reflect on my own position as a critic, and how the things I inquire about can retrospectively enlighten and impact my critical inquiry practice. The input from my classmates enabled me to mine the topic of the “sublime” deeper, and it also made me see its porous linkage to other mines of texts, cultural histories, and lived experiences.
In a way, I think this collective mining resonates with the ethos of comparative literature itself, that is, why we adopt a comparative method in studying literature. The ultimate goal of comparison is not to prove the similarity and/or difference between two literary pieces, but to discover shared human experiences and the variety of their manifestations via the mutual illumination of discrete texts. Our course convener Matthew’s words recurred in my mind: it is important for us to share and learn from the specific cases that we might not be familiar with. Such learning might look intimidating, but they are the precise starting points for us to move beyond the canons and established loci of inquiry of our academic discourse; they are the positions from which we begin the comparison. In other words, the comparative subjects are always at stake, but putting these uncertainties together might form new threads for us to hold onto. Similarly, the way we understand our own topics might be preliminary and in rough forms, but sharing our doubts and confusions with one another might allow us to dig up new findings.
The courage to put forward unformulated thoughts in a virtual classroom, even though we cannot grasp the subject matter fully, is the most precious gift my cohort has brought me as the pandemic continues its impact in Oxford. To some extent, mining together was more urgent during these virtual meetings, for we could have stayed silent completely and left the job of facilitation to the class conveners themselves. And yet, we were so generous in giving ourselves to each other. It all turned out, so close and so far, that we made it with the twelve seminars over Zoom calls and Microsoft Teams. We became familiar with clicking on the “raise hand” button, using the sign-posting language of “building off of that” and “this is a point to,” muting and unmuting ourselves……This sense of community despite (and thanks to) the virtual classroom setting has inspired me to see the power and beauty of collective work more than ever and compelled me to pass this gift on as we mine together into new caves of knowledge.
Haitian Ma graduated from the University of Oxford with a Distinction in Mst in Comparative Literature and Critical Translation. A 2020/21 Clarendon scholar, Haitian previously studied in New York, Amsterdam, and Shanghai and received a B.A. in Humanities with honors in Humanities from NYU Shanghai.
