Teachers of literature around the world are confronted with a stark reality: shrinking reading public of literature in society, and dwindling enrollment of literary majors in colleges and universities. The diminishing interest in literature is an undeniable fact recognized in both Western and Eastern literatures. In a way, as most people in society today are likely to read almost anything but literary works on iPhone, iPad, and online, we may even fear that in the foreseeable future, literary studies is likely to become an endangered species among the institutionalized academic disciplines, as Derrida somberly predicted in the 1980s. The apocalyptic vision imagined by Derrida has not yet come true, but the “technological regime of telecommunications” has already prompted many thinkers and scholars to speculate on the present-day fate and future of literature. Some of them have raised these thought-provoking questions: Is literature today what it used to be? Is it able to survive in the age of telecommunication? Is what we have taken for granted as literary being migrating from literary works to virtual spaces generated by computers, iPads, iPhones, Twitter, WeChat, Blogs, and online websites? Whatever answers one may provide, the reality is that literature in its traditional sense is being challenged and is struggling for survival in schools, colleges, and society. It is under these not so rosy circumstances for literary studies that Dr. Ming Dong Gu was invited by J. Hillis Miller to read his newly co-authored book, Thinking Literature across Continents (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2016) and participate in discussing the fate of literature in our time. Inspired by the book, Dr. Gu offers his own observations on the current conditions of literature and suggests practical strategies to cope with the predicament faced by literary studies in the age of globalization and telecommunication.
