Heyman Center Common Room
Meeting 1
Peter Chen, East Asian Languages and Cultures, “Thinking Dialectically with Zhang
Taiyan”
Abstract: This paper investigates the forms of dialectical thinking embedded within the syllogism
through the writings of the late imperial Chinese anarchist and philologist Zhang Taiyan. It seeks to
understand the relationship between how Zhang conceives of logical practices and its relationship to
the government of self and others. I end with a brief consideration of Zhang’s philosophy in relation
to Foucault and contemporary analytic philosophy.
Julia Bannon, English and Comparative Literature, “Black Murphy, Kid Irish, and the Zulu
Chief: ‘Transplantation’ as Comparison in the Novels of Claude McKay and James Joyce”
Abstract: This chapter identifies and theorizes a novelistic strategy for comparison that I term
transplantation in Banjo by Claude McKay and Ulysses by James Joyce. I argue that transplantation
is the creation and placement of an anomalous character—an Irish peasant in Black Marseille, and a
Zulu chief in Dublin—as a narrative resource to broaden discursive horizons and challenge the
insularity of ‘national literatures’ that were solidifying for Black and Irish writers in the interwar
period.
