Turn to the Planet: Literature, Diversity, and Totality

In 1983, I was in Seoul to present paper. The occasion was conference on East Asian literature, topic not too different from the one assigned to me for another event last year in the same city. This seventeen-year interval may not seem to be long time in normal phase of history. Between 1715 and 1732, for example, or even between 1918 and 1935, the change was certainly not trifling, but still the sense of continuity was quite strong. The difference between 1983 and 2000, however, is so immense that we can barely grasp the magnitude of the changes and transformations that occurred between these years, and in fact the phrase a normal phase of is itself beginning to lose meaning. It looks as if we are heading toward future where the pace of change will accelerate to such an extent that the trace of history may be erased as time hurries along through our everyday life. In this essay, I'd like to recall the ideas that were crucial, or that I considered crucial at that 1983 conference, and then set those ideas against what seems crucial now and reflect on the intervening events. Such comparison might also reveal what has survived unchanged and suggest what may remain intact in the future. I will discuss the changes and continuities both inside and outside what has been known as literature