Comparative Literature and Hegel's Historical Thinking

Abstract

Haun saussy opens his influential discussion of past and present conceptions of comparative literature, “exquisite cadavers Stitched from Fresh Nightmares,” by linking them in an apparently historic claim to victory: “Comparative literature has, in a sense, won its battles” (3). The ambiguous nature of that claim, and the real subject of Saussy's ensuing discussion, is indicated, however, by the qualifying phrase “in a sense.” Inanothersense, Saussy implies, the achievements of comparative literature remain open to debate. For, despite the widespread adoption by national-literature departments of comparative literature's theoretical methods of inquiry, comparative approaches to literature continue to be considered inessential or secondary to the defining aim of national-literature departments—investigating and describing the reality of historically grounded national traditions and identities. Saussy's “sense” of victory is thus snatched from the jaws of an unapologetic sense of defeat:What needs propagating is the comparative reflex, the comparative way of thinking, not the departmental name; and if those are to spread at the cost of identity and institutional reward, so much the worse for identity.—It so happens that identity is the pivot of our triumph—and our wraithlikeness. (5)