Diversity, Inclusion, and "Othering": Methodologies for Comparative Literature

Abstract

Diversity, Inclusion, and "Othering":Methodologies for Comparative Literature Sabujkoli Bandopadhyay The Task of the Comparatist Comparative Literature has remained an elusive discipline of inquiry, as it has been perceived as "a subject of study, a general approach to literature, a series of specific methods of literary history, a return to a medieval way of thought, a methodological credo for the day, an administrative annoyance, a new wrinkle in university organization," and much more (Weisinger and Joyaux vii). Amidst these infinite possibilities, a comparatist must identify the key responsibilities of the discipline as a field of intellectual inquiry. The difficulty in defining the field, or at least the difficulty in coming to an agreement about the definition, is not essentially a crisis for the discipline. The field can and has accommodated the study of a wide range of literary works from varied geographical, historical, linguistic backgrounds, and engaged with other disciplinary modes of inquiry. Scholars have argued that the search for definition is ultimately a futile exercise for a field that resists categorization of knowledge into discipline-specific fields of inquiry. For example, Haun Saussy has shown that scholarly attempts in defining Comparative Literature "through its objects of knowledge or methods" remain inefficacious, and proposes to understand the discipline "as practice, a way of constructing objects" (340). Harry Levin, one of the founders of the discipline in the North American context, characterizes it as "an attempt to pool the resources of the variously related literature, to cross the linguistic barriers that confine them within the framework of national histories and provide an area for the consideration of their common features and underlying forces" (22). Levin's proposed attempt to transcend the boundaries of national histories in the study of literature has been echoed in the works of René Wellek, another founding figure of the American school of Comparative Literature, [End Page 180] who notes that "'Comparative' literature has become an established term for any study of literature transcending the limits of one national literature" (167). In the same essay, Wellek argued that it is entirely possible for single literature departments to engage in comparative studies of literature and proposed opening the study of literature beyond the association with a particular language; this approach would have eradicated the practice of dividing the teaching and scholarship of literature according to languages and instead embrace literature as a field of artistic expression and critical studies. An emphasis on the "literary" rather than the national and/or linguistic would have established literature as a unique cognitive entity driven by its own theories and methodologies; such an approach would have destabilized the monopoly of former colonial languages and their cultural empires could be forced to engage with other languages as equals. However, this approach has not been widely appreciated, and thus very few universities have merged their language-specific literature programs in order to create a "Literature" department. Paul de Man was aware of the challenge of self-identification that haunted the field, and in his 1967 "notebooks," he proposed that "comparative literature is an important auxiliary to the history of ideas, with obvious relevance for international studies" (230). This articulation of an "obvious" relationship between the fields of Comparative Literature and International Studies indicates the importance of locating Comparative Literature within a framework of internationalism and interdisciplinarity. Contemplating the discipline's definition and scope in early 1980s in "Comparative Literature as a Cultural Practice," Mary Louise Pratt welcomes the opportunity for Comparative Literature to work in "cooperation" with International Studies programs. Such endeavours promise to focus on the immediate cultural lives of the readers and students, allowing them to engage in intellectual inquiry about the world they inhabit. In the late 1980s, Earl Miner observed that "the least studied issue in comparative literature is what is meant by 'comparative' and […] what are the canons of comparability" (135). In the same essay, Miner elaborated that the "comparative" element in the study of literature allows us to understand how "critical systems" emerge by connecting the world, the poet/author, the poet/author's work, a text (the physical coding), a reader and the reader's perception of the poet/author's work. Rey Chow...