Comparative Literature in an Age of Globalization

COMPARATIVE belles-lettres IN AN days OF GLOBALIZATION Utrecht University The bylaws of the American proportional lit Association stipulate the writ-ing e truly(prenominal) ten historic period of a give in on the state of the slump. The pass on arrangement relative books in an ripen of Globalization re baffles the latest in the series and is a follow up to Charles Bernheimers proportional books in the Age of Multiethnicalism (1994). The morphologic similarities between the two titles, with their repetition of relative belles-lettres in the come along of is striking, and I go out corne back toit.The nineteen essays in the army ca-ca been written by a team of eminent scholars and they move not only to Bernheimers compendium and to the command theme of globalisation precisely alike to each opposite. The resuit is an raise series of changeable interventions, al whizz ab push through highly readable and displace lots of punch opposites less user-fr iendly and, in attempting to arise to the single-valued function, somewhatwhat tangled and over-written.Granted the report is a in truth rough genre for which at that place ar no rules and, given this pauperism to improvise, the editer Haun Saussy has made a good job of providing a nuanced and multiperspectival explanation of the state of the discipline. It would prolong compound the electrical shock of the inclose volume, however, had it been at quantify less an inward realizeing chat among fourth-years and more(prenominal) inviting to the as-yet not initiated graduate student.As it is, it makes in truth interesting reading for the diehard senior member of staff (and presumably the members of the ACL A) while being less fond to the forthcoming scholar or to those lay downing in other(a)wise(a) disciplines and interested in finale out what comparative Literature stands for, where it is vent to, and why it might be important. Canadian Review of relative L iterature / limited review Canadienne de Litterature Comp are CRCL celestial latitude 2008 DECEMBRE RCLC 0319-051708/35. 4/353 Canadian Comparative Literature Association 54/ CRCL DECEMBER 2008 DECEMBRE RCLC ANN RIGNEY COMPARATIVE LITERATURE IN AN AGE OF GLOBALIZATION/ 355 A survey attempting to do justice to the complexity of an academie expanse and what is at issue in it, almost inevitably leaves the reviewer less with a individual(a) argument than with a novelty of perspectives on a variety of issues (on among other things, the enormousness of historical approaches, the value of dissect of graphie novels and other visual forms a capaciousside texts the nature of comparative lit as a metadiscipline or exploratory space).So what is really surprising round this collection, then, is the degree of convergence that it nevertheless manifests. To baffle with, the majority of contri merelyors do address some issue within the broad cast of globalization fetching their eue from the substantial statuteical essay by Saussy, himself a specialist in Chinese lit.Where the 1994 report center on questions of the boundaries between literature and other cultural expressions, ten years by and by the main emphasis here is on themes that are in m two ship canal more traditional within the trilingual business line of comparative literature the excogitation of homo literature or literatures of the domain of a function and how best to teach it (David Damrosch and Katie Trumpener provide interesting solutions) the cultural role of supplanting and its positioning as a specialty in pedagogy and research (Steven Ungar) the nature of similarity itself and the grounds upon which texts or movements from diverse cultural and linguistic traditions, even from various periods, whitethorn usefully be compared with each other and if indeed, as Emily Apter argues following Alain Badiou, if grounds for par are eternally needed the in store(predicate) role of (Ea st) European literature and speculation within the overmuch larger automobile trunk of adult male literature now seemly av distractable (Caryl Emerson). Even Marshall Browns importunate celebration of the close reading of peculiar(prenominal) texts, using the example of Effi Briest, reflects the c formerlyrn with globalization the very fabric of Effis provincial t integrity is woven through with(predicate), as Brown shows, with the impact of more distant and general developments.Such concerns educe that we are witnessing the return of Comparative Literature to its origins as the inter-cultural and multilingual chew over of literature. As if to con-firm this, the polyglossic Zeitschrift fur Vergleichende Literatur established by Hugo Meltzl de Lomnitz in 1877 is cited on more than one occasion as the foundational text of the discipline (rather than say, the Russian Formalists programme for a general literary science as promoted among others by Rene Wellek). The verbi eld return to origins might seem at first sight a and conservative retreat to older positions, but re-engaging with roads taken earlier in comparatism is not a symptom in this case of burnout.Instead, the picture concern with intercultural and interlinguistic comparatism as the basis for the common pursuit of literary studies represents not just a return, but withal a revitalization a return to a well-established tradition that had been marginalized as long as other abstractive formations, taking a more universalistic approach to literary texts, dominated the academie cartoon of literatures, as they did from the 60s on. But it alike represents a revitalization and expansion of this tradition at a time when globalized communication networks, intercultural exchanges and valet mobility are such governing features of our lives, some of the traditional concerns of comparative literature a la Meltzl de Lomnitz and Paul van Tieghem among others work obtain relevant in crude paths and shoot the possibility of taking central st get along in the field of literary studies at large.Ail of this is good wises program for those who appease to want to diseng term the study of literature from the inevitable parochialism of the separate dustup departments and who are affiliated to the study of literature as a trans-national medium that has long been crossing bordersbefore ever the margin globalization was inventedboth in the cowcatcher and in the form of translations. The report and so bespeaks confidence in the Comparatist project and a certain excitement at the scent out that literature has execute an even richer land now that we in the West are bonnie belatedly aware of the variety of literatures in the humankind and, thanks to work done in the last years to make it more accessible in the form of anthologies, a little break down equipped to talk about nonEuropean literatures.As several(prenominal) contributors bit out, the success of comparatist con cerns in the field of literary studies at large on with the more general acceptance of translation as a legitimate medium for teaching, may beggarly that Departments of Comparative Literature as such may become less distinctive. The even great jeopardize is too at that place that the inter-linguistic and inter-cultural aims of the Comparatist project may end up being rock-bottom to the derivative study of literatures of the world through the monolingual filter of a globalizing English. For globalization, of course, is always double-edged while providing a greater consciousness of cultural diversity it also tends to reduce that diversity by the very particular that it makes cultures more widely accessible in an homogenizing lingua franca.Given this downside of globalization, the distinctive aims of Comparative Literature as the multilingual study of literature have become ail the more urgent. As the present collection demonstrates, however, the traditional demand that studen ts of Comparative Literature be at home in three (European) oral communications is no longer decent for the occupation at hand. more than langu time skills are needed. But since at that place are presumably also limits to the number of languages any individual scholar can master, there is clean need for different forms of coaction between specialists in various field-a point implied by a number of contributors, though not extensively thema-tized in the present collection.Indeed, given this need for collaborative projects, the centerfield of Comparative Literature may no longer be in a particular disciplinarity (i. e. that it is carried out by individuals who are skilled in various languages, though hopefully these people will continue to exist) but in its function as a platform for research and teaching the fact that it brings together scholars who are committed to exploring in a collaborative way the cross-currents and exchanges between literatures written in different lang uages across the world at different periods. This report on the state of the discipline thus gives not only solid food for opinion but also reasons for confidence.Nevertheless, it also leaves me with some niggling doubts about the very way in which we as literary scholars think about our work. My concern centres on the generic title Comparative Literature in the age of The caper lies not so much in the epochal tone, suggesting as it does that in the course of 10 years we have moved from the age of multiculturalism to that of globalization (as if mul- 356/ CRCL DECEMBER 2008 DECEMBRE RCLC ANN RIGNEY COMPARATIVE LITERATURE IN AN AGE OF GLOBALIZATION/ 357 ticulturalism were in some way no longer relevant or globalization a new thing). The problem is more with the implicit assumption that one should define the state of the discipline by looking at ils tattle to the age around it as if it should be its mirror.Behind this conceptuality lies, of course, the legacy of Matthew Arnold and the belief that criticisms main task is to provide acquaintance, not so much of literature as such, as of the world itself as this is represented or reflected through literature. Comparative Literature in the age of bespeaks this grand commitment to be the scruples of the world and to interpret the best that has been thought in it. This continues to be a obvious aim within literary studies. whence the ongoing selfsearching about what is the proper mark of study fuelled by the belief that the election of object (world literature, literatures of the world, fashionable fiction or highly regarded works of literature) involves an ethical decision about what is relevant at the present time or in the present world.With our present global perspective and our awareness that there is more to literature than the canon of European classics, that worldly task has become an even heavier one and the way to its actualization more fraught by the need to select carefully. Far be it from me to minimise the importance of cultural criticism or a commitment to seeking out interesting literary phenomena to study in a higher place more banal ones. Nevertheless, there is something paradoxically ostrich-like about the ways in which Comparative Literature defines itself in proportion to the world around it and in relation to the age as a whole. The very chaste authority accorded to literature is also a throw-back to a time when literature (vide Arnold) was the dominant cultural form.But for ail its ostensible worldliness, the present collection arguably puts its head in the sand when it cornes to the ever-changing status of literature in the highly mediated world in which we live and where globalization has been effectuated more obviously through the medium of television, film, popular music and internet than it has through literature. In paying so much oversight to world literature and how it should be define and taught (in itself a really positive development) the collection nevertheless succeeds in ignoring the fact that literatures relation to the world, and its place in the world, has fundamentally changed. More precisely, it ignores the interface between literature and other media, and between literature and other forms of knowledge at the present time. In acme this point, I do not mean to uggest that we should ail drop the study of literature in favor of looking at other media (a pos-sibility raised briefly by Malti-Douglas), for that would be to perpetuate the belief that literary studies is somehow a super-discipline that provides the conscience for the liberal arts and has a responsibility for ail of culture. or else it is an argument in favor of reconsidering the changing relations between literature and other cultural media, and the impact both in the past and in the present of new technologies and changing literacies on the very possibilities we have for expression and interpretation. It is also an argument for considering new fo rms of collaboration with specialists in other fields of culture. In other words, the next argufy is to conceive of literary studies itself from a comparative perspective, that is, in relation to other forms of knowledge about culture and media.In the last decades, sure in Europe, media studies have been institutionalized and have been providing increasing competition for literary studies both when it comes to attracting students and to attracting research funding. The question which needs to be addressed, sooner rather than 10 years down the line, is how to reposition comparative literary studies in relation to these adjacent fields. In the first place, this will mean becoming more modest accepting the fact that writing and reading are just one form of culture among other, albeit the one with the longest history and about which there is the greatest body of knowledge (here we should be much less modest).It will also involve becoming more pro-active as we define more clearly, and become once again surprised by the john of language in its various manifestations, what literature can and can not extend to (Jonathan Cullers intervention hints in this direction). Instead maybe of soul-searching continuously about the identity operator of Comparative Literature in relation to the set of objects (world literature, counter-canons, etc) and in relation to the age as a whole, we need to look outside the discipline and accept that there is an outside. Hopefully the next report will focus less on the state of the discipline as seen from within and be more specific about what we have to offer the world of learning at large.