Sinophone Studies

My hope is for Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Japanese studies to disappear

And fuse together, albeit loosely, into something like

Sinophone studies.

The Sinophone world should not be thought of as a civilizational sphere of exclusivity à la Samuel Huntingon's terrible book, Clash of Civilizations,

But rather an interface

Or a series of interfaces, interlocked and dispersed,

Very diverse and full of discrepancies and difference,

With a common but very divergent root, both real and imagined,

Sometimes unacknowledged or psychologically repressed,

That is the Chinese language,

Understood not just as linguistic conventions, like the Chinese characters,

But also values, shifting across time and space,

Power (political, economic, spiritual), a source of understanding

And misunderstanding, also of PRIDE and PREJUDICE.

The Earth as of now is largely Anglophone,

Whether one likes it or not,

And soon enough, it will turn largely Sinophone,

Although of course,

There will always, always be other worlds

On earth, as it is ....

Addendum (May 24, 2010)

Now that I think of it, I disagree with myself. Sinophone influences have existed and do still exist, but they are not the only, or even central, currents driving us along in East and Southeast Asia. Better just to have "Literature" with a provisionally capitalized L, or better yet, "literatures" - Department of literatures (or Literatures, is that's visually more pleasing) - or, how about just "Litty Depp"?

You: Hi Litty.

Litty Depp: Hello, my name is Litty Depp.