Failures East and West: Cultural Encounters between East Asia and Europe

## Examines why and how cultural encounters between East Asia and Europe are framed as failures * Opens up fresh perspectives on intercultural encounters by focusing on failures as a paradigm * Argues that a focus on failure helps to uncover the normative perspectives and expectations of intercultural encounters * Establishes that intercultural encounters add a valuable new perspective to the emerging field of failure studies Often, the story of encounters between Asia and the West has been told as one of success, of cross-fertilization, reciprocal stimulation and an exchange of commodities and knowledge. Yet, the history of East-West encounters is riddled with prominent examples of misunderstandings, ignorance, unrealistic expectations or unbridgeable cultural differences. Bringing together scholars working across Chinese Studies, Japanese Studies, English Studies and French Studies, this book presents new perspectives on such instances by theorizing epistemologies of failure. Providing examples from different periods and disciplines, it reveals how culturally informed expectations and biases, performative and linguistic practices and imaginative horizons specific to the cultures involved shape notions of failure and success. Case studies range from first encounters in the early modern period to contemporary novels and focus on actual or imaginary encounters between East Asia and Western European cultures. Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction: Failures East and West – Cultural Encounters between East Asia and Europe Part I Travellers and Failures 1 Imagining East Asia: The Failure of National Knowledge in Richard Hakluyt’s The Principal Navigations of the English Nation (1589–1600) 2 Fact and Fiction in the Writings of Wilhelm Joest about His Journey on Formosa in 1880 3 ‘An Honest Failure’: Simone de Beauvoir in China 4 Lost in Laos: Failure in Henri Mouhot’s and Stephen Greenblatt’s Travel Writing Part II Encounters at Court 5 Louis XIV and the Kingdom of Siam: The Development and Failure of a Particular Example of Diplomatic and Intercultural Relations in the Colonial Era 6 Gender, Genre and the Truth Condition: Failure in Anna Leonowens’s The English Governess at the Siamese Court 7 Chinese Kotow and European Handshake: Episodes in the History of Intercultural Etiquette in China around 1900 Part III Contemporary Failures 8 Barthes and Bouvier in Japan: The Difficult Dialogue between Semiotics and Intercultural Communication 9 Between Failure and Empowerment: Historicity, Genre and Cultural Clashes in David Mitchell’s The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet 10 Marx between East and West: The Karl Marx Statue in Trier as an Example of Intercultural Failure? Index