How to Reform Comparative Literature’s Paradigms in the age of Globalization

Abstract

The basic paradigms of Comparative Literature studies still presuppose the unity of literature(s), which allows the study of literary differences. Those paradigms do not disassociate that unity of literature(s) from an obsession with the past and an inability to set up a vital relation with it whereas the future seems to remain as untouched as the past. That structure of the discipline is inherited from the 19th century, whatever the current changes in the practices of Comparative Literature appear to be. Contrary to that structure of Comparative Literature and the view of history it presupposes, the current tenets about globalization point out the ambiguities of history and offer the opportunity to alter Comparative Literature’s paradigms. Literary works of art should no longer be defined as philological pieces, which are both their own manifestation and the manifestation of historical continuity, whatever the definition of continuity may be. They exhibit the paradoxical conjunction that globalization makes in history. Three main characterizations of globalization can be offered. First characterization. From a historical, economic and sociological angle, and considering the current state of economic and political international relations, globalization can be defined as the overall interdependence of countries. Specifically, that interdependence does not suppose a negation of the current hierarchy of power among states and nations. But it characterizes the economic and political international relations, on the one hand, as ‘top down relations’ – from the dominant to the dominated culture or nation – and, on the other hand, as ‘reciprocal relations’ between dominant and dominated. Suffice it to refer to one commonplace exemplification of those reciprocal relations: the political and economic crises of the dominated endanger the dominant’s political stability and prosperity. That interdependence suggests a distinct view of history. The historical process supposes that the dominated belong to dominant’s world, in one way or another. A structure of economic, social or political power always generates its own difference and makes any dominated the token of that difference and a part of the dominant’s world at large. The concept of