RESIL MOJARES AND THE CRISIS OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE IN THE PHILIPPINES

Abstract

After its heyday from the 1950s until the early 1970s, a crisis in the field of comparative literature was declared present by its practitioners during the 1980s. The effects of the perceived crisis were felt not only during conferences but also through brutal budget cuts and the downsizing of comparative literature departments across the world. In the decades that followed, various attempts to address the crisis were made by critics such as Franco Moretti, Pascale Casanova, Alexander Beecroft, among many others. As a result, methods and concepts such as “distant reading,” “evolutionary literary history,” “literary ecologies,” and “world republic of letters” easily became the theoretical and methodological bulwark of numerous comparative literature departments against the perceived effects of the crisis. Incidentally, in his seminal Origins and Rise of the Filipino Novel, Resil Mojares deployed similar ideas and concepts, however, to different ends. This paper, then, is first an attempt to analyze Mojares’ deployment of the said concepts and methods vis-à-vis to that of Beecroft, Casanova, and Moretti’s. Finally, the paper also seeks to identify and elaborate on specific implications and possibilities made visible by Mojares’ methodological interventions in the field and practice of comparative literature in the Philippines.Keywords: Crisis, comparative literature, literary history, Mojares, methodological intervention, Philippines.Cite as: Mendoza III, A.A.G. (2018). Resil Mojares and the crisis of comparative literature in the Philippines. Journal of Nusantara Studies, 3(2), 80-91. http://dx.doi.org/10.24200/jonus.vol3iss2pp80-91