Re-Thinking Europe: Literature and (Trans)National Identity. (Studies in Comparative Literature, 55) by Nele Bemong, Mirjam Trywant, Pieter VermeulenPerforming National Identity: Anglo-Italian Cultural Transactions. (Internationale Forschungen zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft, 114) by Manfred Pfister, Ralf Hertel

Abstract

MLR, 105.1, 2010 199 Re-Thinking Europe: Literature and (Transnational Identity. Ed. byNele Bemong, Mirjam Trywant, and Pieter Vermeulen. (Studies in Comparative Li terature, 55) Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi. 2008. 268 pp. 54; $81. ISBN 978-90-420-2352-9. PerformingNational Identity:Anglo-Italian Cultural Transactions. Ed. byManfred Pfister and Ralf Hertel. (Internationale Forschungen zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft, 114) Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi. 2008. 328 pp. 65; $98. ISBN 978-90-420-2314-7. Re-thinking Europe explores themanifold connections between literary compara tive studies and the idea of Europe, starting from the assumption that a clear-cut correlation between the two disciplines is no longer self-evident. The book is divided into three thematic sections, each of which presents short, sharp, and meticulously researched essays. The first group highlights the tension between universalism and particularism in European literature; the second stages a con frontation between the European and the non-European (other') dimension; the third section returns to Europe to survey a number of literary cases and events of the past whose reassessment might be able to envisage opportunities for future renewal' (p. 16) of Europe's cultural identity.The range of theoretical references is impressive, although at times applied rather too hastily and uncritically (as in the case of the equation Hegel = Eurocentrism). The overarching approach of all seventeen essays, more than half ofwhich are penned by academics at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium), is in line with themain tendency within contemporary Cultural Studies in that it empha sizes the necessity to revisit, deconstruct, and correct the literary canon through a strong injection of non-Eurocentric criticism. The underlying intention of the essays, despite the variety and specificity of their single topics, is to highlight how early comparative literature (which first emerged in nineteenth-century Europe) invariably ended up neglecting other narratives?minor, non-(central-)European literatures?consequently promoting theEuropean political status quo in the form of the very divisions among nation-states that the discipline itselfhad set out to transcend. Once this founding contradiction in literary comparativism is identi fied,the critical taskwould seem to follow logically, corroborated by the increasing interest in the study of non-European, decentred literatures,which has matured gradually since the first 'report on standards' issued by the ACLA (American Comparative Literature Association). The editors of the book are quick to under line that this rightful demand for pluralism does not entail theweakening of the discipline and its 'dream of universalism' (p. 11), but it rather calls for a more tolerant approach in the attempt to transform the tradition of comparativism from within. What is unmistakable about this book is that the complex question of the relation between theEuropean literary legacy and the idea ofEurope is fullyframed within thewell-known dictates of the postmodern agenda. With regard to both European literature and Europe as a geopolitical entity, the articles contained in thisvolume start from the presupposition thatwe are facedwith self-differentiated, 200 Reviews non-identical notions, and that, consequently, the role of literary criticism is to draw attention to these fractures in the name ofmulticultural openness, plural ism, and diversity. The problem with this anti-Eurocentric attitude of respect for the others diversity, and its concurrent rejection of traditions seen as paralysed by their elitism and ideological closure, lies not, of course, in the substance of the criticism itself. It is rather to be found in its short-sightedness towards its own hidden presuppositions: that is, in the inability to problematize the ideologi cal co-ordinates fromwhich this criticism is levelled. The continuous references throughout the collection to the need to restore the diversity of other literatures, narratives, and so on very often function in subtle ideological terms, as a kind of 'fantasy screen', an unquestioned fascination with the other qua fetish object which allows the gaze of the critic-observer to preserve the unproblematic identity of his or her own subjective position. While in itself a more than legitimate operation, the determination with which the critic sets out tohistorically relativize traditional preconceptions towards the other risks concealing themore profound ideological stakes inherent in the critic's own position. The point is that insisting on the other's...