Abstract
"Our Philological Home Is the Earth…" How Do “American” Comparative Studies Imagine Citizenship?
 In 1952, Erich Auerbach, an exile and author of a seminal comparative project, announced that our philological home is the earth: it can no longer be the nation. His words seem both valid and timely in the contemporary global rise of neo-nationalism, anti-democratic movements, as well as the backlash against women’s and minorities’ emancipation. Since its beginnings, the comparative literature has been envisioned not only as an academic discipline that studies literature beyond national borders, but also a remedy against xenophobia and intolerance. This paper presents how the contemporary comparative theories depict citizenship, one of central identities in modern multicultural societies. Adopting a postcolonial approach, I examine three projects developed within “American” Comparative Studies: Mary Louise Pratt’s “comparative cultural practice”, Gayatri Spivak’s “planetarism”, and Jessica Berman’s “trans critical optic”.
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