All the Difference in the World: Postcoloniality and the Ends of Comparison by Natalie Melas

Abstract

II00 Reviews or Indian mysticism or socialism (or subliminal eroticism, a theme alluded tobut not much) resonate in our own era of late capitalism, where spiritualities are commodi ties and the rump churches employ human-resource management and advertising agencies to remind us, and perhaps themselves, that they still exist. Today, we may have forgottenwhat we have lost but we still have a crisis of existential meaning for individuals whose one public shared commitment is acted out in the chain stores of shopping malls and the sporting colours ofBarcelona FC. Should the reader then find in these exemplars of the literaryelite of a hundred years ago lessons of contemporary relevance? This may be one ofZiolkowski's purposes, but I cannot find itclearly and persuasively stated. UNIVERSITY OF STIRLING TIM FITZGERALD All the Difference in the World: Postcoloniality and the Ends ofComparison. By NATALIE MELAS. (Cultural Memory in the Present) Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 2007. XVi+278pp. $21.95. ISBN 978-0-8047-3I98-0. The dialogue between postcolonialism and comparatism has been long in prepara tion, and at last appears to be bearing critical fruit. In the I98os, with Comparative Literature inapparently terminal decline and postcolonial theory in a rapidly expan sionist mode, it seemed that the extended globalization of the literary canon would forget its (albeit distant) roots in the nineteenth-century philological, comparatist project ofWeltliteratur. Some critics even presented postcolonialism as compara tism's natural successor, refusing to believe that Comp Lit's apparently inherent Eurocentrism could ever realistically be steered innew postcolonial directions. The situation changed radically, however, in the following decade: postcolonial criticism, increasingly self-referentialand reliant on anthologization, began to sufferfrom itsan glophone monolingualism, while Comparative Literature in landmark publications, such as theACLA's I993 Bernheimer report-signalled a willingness to rethink it self in often radical ways. Such a development was, of course, wholly unsurprising. A number of pioneering 'postcolonial' critics, including most notably Edward Said, were themselves comparatists by training, and transcultural comparison remains in herent in any critical or theoretical activity that seeks to attenuate the general (or even universal) with themultiply specific circumstances inwhich such overarching categories are inevitably grounded. It is in this institutional and intellectual context thatNatalie Melas situates her book, toyingwith the ambiguous meanings of the 'ends of comparison' in order to suggest both the conclusion of one tradition and a simultaneous rediscovery of new critical purpose thatwould allow the comparatist project tomake 'a robust entrance into the twenty-firstcentury' (p. 35). Her opening chapter outlines thehis toryof Comparative Literature, especially in theUnited States, tracking the shifts in relation towhich her own critical practice has evolved. Each subsequent chapter uses thework of one central author to develop a critical and conceptual vocabulary forpostcolonial comparatism, based around six key literary-theoretical figures: 'the foil', 'dissimilation', 'com-paraison', 'Relation', 'ruinedmetaphor', and 'catastrophic miniaturization'. An opening discussion ofConrad explores, throughHeart ofDark ness and Lord Yim, the novelist's unsettling ofmutual recognition among listeners (and, by extension, readers) on which community and identity depend. This is fol lowed by a discussion ofConrad's postcolonial reception,most notably inAchebe and Naipaul, read in the light of Segalen, Glissant, and Nancy. The two final chapters focus specifically on Caribbean literature: Walcott's Omeros is interpreted not only in relation to itsnow predictable Homeric intertext,but also-in what might be seen as MLR, 103.4, 2oo8 I 0I a triangulatingmanceuvre-in the lightof the critical awareness of the role of tourism inCaribbean culture; Aime Cesaire and Simone Schwartz-Bart are explored illumi natingly through the spatial optic of scale and of a resistant irreducibility related to this, a novel approach which allows Melas to posit 'a schema of inferiorization and, correlatively, the articulation of thegrounds fora collective response to it' (p. 175). Melas's overarching thesis is that a postcolonial comparatism worthy of thatname must distance itself from the critical legacies of equivalence, and explore instead fi gures of incommensurability. Drawing inparticular on Edouard Glissant's concept of 'Relation' and Jean-Luc Nancy's of 'com-paraison', she posits 'a ground of compari son that is common but not unified' (p. xiii). There is thereforenothing celebratory about this study,whose author acknowledges from...