How (the) Inscrutable Chinese Led to Globalized Theory

Abstract

In literary studies, our current use of global is often implicitly or explicitly invested in the notion of an ever-widening network of communications, of unprecedented linkages among previously disconnected or distinct cultural units. Where things were formerly separate and unrelated, they are now believed to be increasingly connected through multiple contacts, in processes that are rendered cosmopolitan, international, and cross-cultural. The underlying assumption in much of the talk about globalization is that of inclusionism—of the possibilities of including, of incorporating things into a kind of coexistence that was once out of the question. If we translate this state of affairs into religious terms, globalization would probably appear in the form of the command “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”