Productive Comparative Angst: Comparative Literature in the Age of Multiculturalism

Author(s): Linda Hutcheon

Source: World Literature Today , Spring, 1995, Vol. 69, No. 2, Comparative Literature:
States of the Art (Spring, 1995), pp. 299-303
Published by: Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40151140

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Productive Comparative Angst: Comparative Literature in the Age of
Multiculturalism

By LINDA HUTCHEON The current explosion from the Americanization of the work of those post-
of interest in the state
war European emigre philologists and literary histo-
of the discipline called rians, through to the domestication of what was
comparative literature may be a sign of institutional called "theory" when it was housed in comparative
anxiety or intellectual excitement - or perhaps both. literature departments, to the current questioning of
The rapid publication of the book Comparative Lit- the centrality of the "Lit" in CompLit. Tellingly,
erature in the Age of Multiculturalism^ edited by perhaps, the first two were called reports "on stan-
Charles Bernheimer,1 is more than a tribute to the dards"; the most recent one has been amended by
efficiency and publishing savvy of the Johns Hop- the ACLA to bear the title of a report on "the state
kins University Press; it is a sign of the urgency feltof the discipline."
by comparativists to rethink and even to reconfigure The second section of Comparative Literature in
their affiliations in the light of recent intellectual the Age of Multiculturalism contains the three re-
and academic realignments. Within a year of the sponses to the Bernheimer Report - by K. Anthony
December 1993 Modern Language Association Appiah, Mary Louise Pratt, and Michael Riffa-
convention, at which the newest public debate for- terre - that were presented for debate at the 1993
mally began, this collection of essays has made MLA convention. The third and largest section is
available for even wider discussion the American given over to thirteen "position papers" from re-
Comparative Literature Association's 1993 Bern- spected comparativists of several generations, re-
heimer Report entitled "Comparative Literature at sponding in turn not only to the reports themselves
the Turn of the Century." Following on books like but also to the very different stances taken in the
The Comparative Perspective on Literature: Approaches three MLA papers. Chosen for the "diversity in crit-
to Theory and Practice? this volume joins a host of ical perspective and institutional affiliation" (xi)
others3 in examining what it calls the "anxiogenic" they represented, these scholars offer a wide range
state of comparative literature in the United States of opinion and position. In short, if you come to
(and elsewhere) today. Comparative Literature in the Age of Multiculturalism
This state of anxiety may well feel familiarlooking
to for a single answer to any of your worries
those who recall Rene Wellek's 1958 worries (in about the discipline, or if you are not comfortable
"The Crisis of Comparative Literature")4 about thewith the postmodern-ly plural and contingent, you
lack of both subject matter and methodology in will not find your anxieties lessened by your read-
what many refer to by the contraction "CompLit." ing. This is not a book for the faint of (metanarra-
Indeed, as Bernheimer notes in his introduction, thetive) heart.
various shifts in the discipline's focus "since World It is, however, a book for provoking thought,
War II can be viewed as a series of attempts to cure,specifically thought on four major areas of concern
contain, or exploit the anxiety of comparison" (3).for comparativists today, as reflected in the Bern-
The most recent in this series of attempts was heimer Report: 1) the historical Eurocentrism of the
brought about by that new ACLA document: just CompLit tradition and its relation to the multicul-
like the Levin Report of 1965 and the Greene Re- tural reality of the present; 2) the continuing con-
port of 1975, the 1993 Bernheimer Report is un- cerns about the desirability of reading - and com-
avoidably the product of a particular generation of paring - literatures in their original languages and
comparativists.5 The reprinting in this volume of not in translation; 3) the position of theory in the
these three reports makes possible the kind of com-discipline today; 4) the debate between what might
be called the "formalists" and the "contextualists" -
parison that clearly reveals the generational shift
or, in institutional terms, literary studies versus cul-
tural studies.
Linda Hutcheon is Professor of English and Comparative Lit- Few would deny that the history of comparative
erature at the University of Toronto. She is the author of eight
books, the latest of which is Irony's Edge: The Theory and Politics
literature in North America is the history of its Eu-
of Irony (1995). ropean emigre founding fathers; for some, that past

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300 WORLD LITERATURE TODAY

has lived on as a kind of cosmopolitan, "poetic parative literature, by its very nature, is already a
Euro-chic"6 that may still be worn as a " 'classy' de- particularly "hospitable space" for what Mary
signer label" today.7 While even the 1965 Levin Re- Louise Pratt calls "the cultivation of multilingual-
port stressed the need to transcend that cultural ism, polyglossia, the arts of cultural mediation, deep
limitation and the 1975 Greene Report emphasized intercultural understanding, and a genuinely global
the "global" nature of literature, the discipline has consciousness" (62). This Utopian view of CompLit
nonetheless largely remained based in European lit- as the "site for powerful intellectual renewal in the
erary and historical traditions. The essays in this study of literature and culture" (62) is part of its
volume thoughtfully combat any knee-jerk rejection history too, in a way: in the nervous postwar years
of this fact, however. K. Anthony Appiah urges: of its North American founding, it was seen as rep-
"Study these interconnected European literatures, I resenting "the spirit of peace, sincerity, reasonable-
say. They make sense together. They were made for ness, and hope."11 Inherently pluralist, CompLit is
each other."8 However, he goes on, study as well argued to be "aware of but not defined by Differ-
other interconnected bodies of writing that cohere ence in all its powerful forms: language, religion,
around other cultural notions in other parts of the race, class, and gender."12 This idea of the discipline
world. David Damrosch also reminds us that, in the as "a theoretical free space and a more cosmopoli-
face of the enormous scope of comparative litera- tan environment for multilingual and multiaccentu-
ture's "mission," working within only the European al community"13 goes a long way toward making
languages may have been, for European-trained comparative literature into the "humanities counter-
scholars, "less a matter of cultural imperialism than part to international relations."14
it was a melancholy acceptance of unbridgeable lim- The dissenting view in the volume is that of those
its."9 like Emily Apter who suggest that CompLit's day
The early constructions of the field - like those of may in fact have passed, that now is the time for
other fields of literary study - have now been called postcolonial and not comparative studies: "With its
into question because of their omissions, omissions interrogation of cultural subjectivity and attention to
made more evident through the increasingly diverse the tenuous bonds between identity and national
demographics not only of North American society language, postcolonialism quite naturally inherits
but of the North American academy itself. As an in- the mantle of comparative literature's historical
ternationalist discipline, comparative literature legacy."15 While Apter and others reject that implied
could not remain untouched by the pluralistic de- consensual or Utopian model in favor of a dissensual
mands for canon revision and the ethical considera- one that would confront First with Third World
tions vis-a-vis minoritized groups that were part cultures,
of Rey Chow offers an important reminder:
the contested academic and intellectual climate of "Instead of being a blank space ready to be adopted
the 1980s. In fact, it has faced particular and or assimilated by comparative literature, non- West-
partic-
ularly troublesome problems because of its compar- ern language and literature programs have been sites
ative function. These included problems as different of production of knowledge which function along-
as accusations of implied universalism, on the sideone
United States State Department policies vis-a-
hand, and, on the other, charges of essentializing vis thein particular nations and cultures concerned"
the face of the mimetic imperative that often accom- (108). From another angle, David Damrosch stress-
panies notions of authenticity. There have been es the need to historicize and contextualize imperial-
problems caused by geopolitical complexities and ism. Empire is not a recent phenomenon; it is not
the historical processes of globalization, democrati- only a European one (126).
zation, and decolonization that are collectively Postcolonial work is, of course, being done in na-
changing how literature and culture have been un- tional literature departments as well, largely because
derstood and studied.10 And, of course, there have of its frequently unilingual focus: the cultural power
been problems caused by the image of the compara- of colonialism lives on in language. This brings me
tivist as colonizing imperialist taking over individualto the second source of anxiety for comparativists -
linguistic and literary domains. the familiar one of linguistic competence and of the
The Bernheimer Report's advocacy of "a plural- pedagogic and ethical issues involved in "engaging"
ized and expanded contextualizing of literary stud- two or more literatures adequately in their original
ies" (11) is one response to these diverse problems, languages. The question of the use of translations
one to which I will return shortly. But a number ofhas provoked a predictable "elitist versus populist"
the contributors to this volume suggest that com- debate.16 However, multilingualism, as we are re-

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 HUTCHEON 301

minded in this volume, is in itself torical,trans-ideological

gay and lesbian (and queer) theorists to
in the sense that it can "as easily makeserve
ideologythe agendaissue
an unavoidable ofin literary stud-
reactionary politics as it can serve progressive ies, comparative or otherwise. One of the results of
ones."17 Thus., its intrinsic positive value (assumed this shift of focus has been the rise of a North Amer-
in the Levin and Greene Reports) is called into ican version of what in Britain had been dubbed
question, even as the limits of unilingualism are rec-cultural studies. The Bernheimer Report expresses
ognized: not all literary concerns can be satisfactori-this shift in quite cautious terms as a broadening of
ly investigated through translations. Elizabeth Fox-the field of inquiry that "does not mean that com-
Genovese takes a strong stand on this issue, urgingparative study should abandon the close analysis of
the seeking of alternatives to the use of translationsrhetorical, prosodic, and other formal features but
with its implicit throwing up of hands because "wethat textually precise readings should take account
are too limited (read imperialist) to appreciate it in as well of the ideological, cultural, and institutional
the original" (135). A sensible and attractive alter- contexts in which their meanings are produced"
native is the one offered by Damrosch: collaborative(43).
work for scholars and collaborative training for stu- This may sound like a safe-enough compromise,
dents (132). but the strong reactions of contributors would sug-
The issue of translation merges with that of Euro- gest otherwise. While accepting that formal and
centric critique in the third area of common con-contextual studies are necessarily complementary,
cern among the contributors to Comparative Litera-Michael Riffaterre asserts the need to "decontextu-
ture in the Age of Multiculturalism. The ready alize" and focus on the esthetic features of litera-
availability of English versions of the European ture.18 Peter Brooks protests the "abjectly apologic
structuralist and poststructuralist theorists' work has tone" of the Report which suggests that the teaching
threatened CompLit departments' housing of theo- of literature is "an outmoded mandarin practice"
ry: national literature departments of all kinds can (99) instead of the study of the "processes by which
now "do" theory. There is little doubt that the rise meaning is made, the grounds for interpretation"
and fall of the institutional power and cohesion of (101). Warning of the dangers of interdisciplinary
the Yale Comparative Literature group has left its amateurism, Brooks eloquently argues that "real"
mark on the discipline and, many would argue, interdisciplinarity "comes when thought processes
upon the very process of reading. The compara- reach the point where the disciplinary boundary one
tivists who write for this volume, however, are divid- comes up against no longer makes sense - when the
ed in their views of the continuing importance of internal logic of thinking impels a transgression of
theory to CompLit's self-definition. Yale's current borderlines. And to the extent that this is teachable
chair of Comparative Literature, Peter Brooks, feels at all, it requires considerable apprenticeship in the
theory is still the lingua franca of the discipline discipline that is to be transcended" (102).
(103), and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese feels it would Many contributors attest to their belief in what
"be difficult to imagine comparative literature with- one calls the "valuable specificity" of literature.19
out theory, not least since the mere posing of the For some, this is a reason for remaining, in Brooks's
comparative problem is inherently theoretical" terms, a "viable interlocutor to cultural studies,"
(139). Appiah, on the other hand, while agreeing one that can insist that "contextualizations of litera-
that theory has been important historically to ture in ideological and cultural terms remain aware
CompLit, does not see it as either the goal or the of literature's institutional definitions and of the
defining uniqueness of the discipline (53). uses of poetics and rhetoric in understanding the
The theories of textuality that the Yale School ways in which literature creates meanings that both
represented are not, of course, the only components resemble and differ from those produced in other
of what we lump together these days as "theory," discourses" (103). But need CompLit's position
and that comes through loud and clear in the posi- here merely be one of interlocutor? Has any com-
tion papers published in this book. With the increas- parativist, even the most formalist, ever really read
ing importance of feminist theory in North America, literature outside of some context, as not inextrica-
a major interest in context - social, cultural, histori- bly embedded in a vast set of cultural practices?
cal, political context - was added to the concern This is not a rhetorical question; nor is it an utterly
with textuality. The impact of feminist work dove- naive one, despite appearances. It points to my gen-
tailed with the theories of Foucault, Bakhtin, and uine puzzlement over what feels like a false dichoto-
Benjamin, and of Marxist, postcolonial, New His- my.

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302 WORLD LITERATURE TODAY

The disciplinary training of a comparativist, like

precisely what the emerging field of cultural studies
could or
that of any scholar who studies English most profit from.
French or And the seeming expansion
of theus
Korean or Nigerian literature, teaches scope
allof the discipline
that in- to include not only
high art but that
terpretation does not happen in a vacuum, also popular
it is culture is maybe more ap-
always relational and dynamic. Our parent than real:disci-
literary minimal historicizing is needed to
remind wisdom,
plines may well traffic, not in political us that Shakespeare's
but plays were not what
we would now
in "metrics, narrative structure, double, call high
triple andart for the entire audience
of thehas
quadruple meanings," as Stanley Fish Globeargued;20
Theater, and that writers like Rabelais
deliberately chose
but the analysis of, say, narrative structure just to write in the vernacular, not in
might have to deal with the fact that stories are writ- and often parochial nature
Latin.24 The monolingual
of much
ten - and read - in certain ways for cultural-studies
certain reasons work in the recent past
(conscious or unconscious reasons)need
in not stand as the
certain con-final definition of this emerg-
texts at certain times. These are the ing field. Thethat
insights addition
ourof the work of comparativists
formal training allows us to carry forward to the in-in significant ways.
could serve to expand it
terpretation of other cultural artifacts Comparative
or other literature's
dis- major disciplinary
strength and major intellectual attraction have al-
courses. We never stop being comparative literature
ways seemed to me to lie in a positive version of
trainees; our "deformation professionnelle" is per-
what Emily Apter considers its "unhomely" quality
manent. At least it is if we have had that training.
(90) and what Bernheimer calls its "quality of dis-
possession - a kind of haunting by otherness" (12).
The ACLA document is not only a report on the
I remain as worried as ever, both in pragmatic and
state of research in the discipline as it now stands; it
in political terms, about its vast scope - even vaster
is a provocative challenge to broaden the scope of
in this new definition "charged with the study of
what we teach in CompLit departments. Like many
discourses and cultural productions of all sorts
of us, the Report's authors were formed and "de-
throughout the entire world."25 1 also share many of
formed" as comparativists; they have that to build
the contributors' worries about the possible institu-
upon and to deploy in new areas. The inevitable tional consequences of a move outward from the lit-
danger for our students in broadening what is al- erary: in these days of financial constraints, unstable
ready an impossibly broad discipline is the loss of disciplinary boundaries can mean unstable fund-
any useful and distinctive training, even in skills of ing.26 Of course, the inherent versatility of compara-
interpretation. The result, laments Appiah, may not tivists can also mean the kind of institutional flexi-
be interdisciplinarity but "an unstructured post- bility that could spell survival.27
modern hodge-podge" (57). This is a warning we as If you have ever taught or been taught in a Comp-
teachers must heed - for our students' sakes. But I Lit program, you will know that comparatists may
still do not think the institutional or pedagogicappear an- to have little in common with one another:
swer is to leave cultural studies to the national lan- "As a discipline with no common body of knowl-
guage and literature departments - where cultural edge other than literary studies, and without a cen-
specificity may indeed make such a focus logical. tral purpose except to carry out its astringent or
This is Jonathan Culler's solution, one that would stimulant motions, comparative literature appears to
leave comparativists to study "literature compara- invite misunderstanding even from its own family of
tively" and attempt "to attend to its global manifes- scholars."28 But what Comparative Literature in the
tations."21 But the question of cultural specificity Age of Multiculturalism reveals is that any such mis-
will not go away so easily - either as a problem or understanding
as is part of the intellectual vitality of
the field and part of the continual self-criticism of a
a temptation - for those engaging more than one lit-
erary or cultural tradition.22 Culture is no moreprotean or discipline that has never been willing (or
able)
less "translatable" than literature. Culture, like liter- to fix its self-definition. That is what is frus-
ature, is a matter of form as much as of content.23 trating about CompLit, but it is also what attracted
The Bernheimer Report had advised caution for many of us to it. The ACLA, as an important pro-
comparative literature vis-a-vis cultural studies, fessional voice for comparativist studies, has pro-
"where most scholarship has tended to be monolin- voked productive and continuing debate on the fu-
gual and focused on issues in specific contemporary ture of the discipline through the Bernheimer
popular cultures" (45). But the historical commit- Report. This is not the last word, of course. There
can, luckily, be no last word on this subject.
ment of comparative studies, conjoined with the
archival work of historians themselves, might be University of Toronto

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 HUTCHEON 303

1 Comparative Literature in the Age ofquestions

Multiculturalism, ed.
whether such a worthy social aim, however, is an ade-
Charles Bernheimer, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins
quate orUniversity Press,
even appropriate foundation for a discipline.
1995. Most page references to this volume12will Ed Ahearn
appearandin
Arnold
paren-
Weinstein, "The Function of Criti-
theses in the text. Subsequent references in the
cism notes
at the will
Present use The
Time: thePromise of Comparative Litera-
abbreviation CL. ture," in CL, p. 78. They go on to note: "There is no period or
place of artistic production which is not similarly mixed, cross-
2 The Comparative Perspective on Literature: Approaches to Theory
and Practice, eds. Clayton Koelb and Susan Noakes, Ithaca, cultural, cross-pollinated. Virgin literatures, like the virgin land,
N.Y., Cornell University Press, 1988. are a myth. Comparativists are the people trained to bring us this
3 See Borderwork: Feminist Engagements with Comparative Liter- news" (79).
ature, ed. Margaret R. Higonnet, Ithaca, N.Y., Cornell Universi- 13 Mary Russo, "Telling Tales Out of School: Comparative
ty Press, 1994; Building a Profession: Autobiographical PerspectivesLiterature and Disciplinary Recession," in CL, p. 189.
on the Beginnings of Comparative Literature in the United States, 14 Ahearn and Weinstein, p. 81.
eds. Lionel Gossman and Mihai I. Spariosu, Albany, N.Y., State 15 Emily Apter, "Comparative Exile: Competing Margins in
University of New York Press, 1994; and the recent translationthe History of Comparative Literature," in CL, p. 86. Further
by Cola Franzen of Claudio Guillen's book The Challenge of Com-page references will appear in parentheses in the text.
parative Literature, Cambridge, Ma., Harvard University Press, 16 See Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, "Between Elitism and Pop-
1993. ulism: Whither Comparative Literature?" in CL, p. 134. Further
4 Rene Wellek, "The Crisis of Comparative Literature,"page in references will be in parentheses in the text.
Concepts of Criticism, ed. Stephen Nichols, New Haven, Ct., Yale
17 Chow, p. 110.
University Press, 1963. 18 Michael Riffaterre, "On the Complementarity of Compara-
5 For a detailed consideration of these generational changes,
tive Literature and Cultural Studies," in CL, pp. 67, 70.
see Roland Greene, "Their Generation," in CL, pp. 143-54. 19 Francoise Lionnet, "Spaces of Comparison," in CL, p. 172.
6 Peter Brooks, "Must We Apologize?" in CL, p. 97. Further
Further page references will appear in parentheses in the text.
references will be in parentheses in the text. 20 Stanley Fish, "Why Literary Criticism Is Like Virtue," Lon-
7 Rey Chow, "In the Name of Comparative Literature," indonCL, Review of Books, 10 June 1993, p. 12.
p. 107. Further page references will appear in parentheses in the
21 Jonathan Culler, "Comparative Literature, at Last!" in CL,
text. p. 121.
8 K. Anthony Appiah, (iGeist Stories," in CL, p. 54. 22 See the important points made by Marjorie Perloff, "'Litera-
9 David Damrosch, "Literary Study in an Elliptical Age," ture'in in the Expanded Field," in CL, p. 180; Damrosch, p. 123.
CL, p. 130. Further page references will appear in parentheses in Siebers, pp. 196-97.
23 See
the text. 24 Lionnet, p. 172.
10 Mary Louise Pratt, "Comparative Literature and Global25 Cit-
Culler, p. 117.
izenship," in CL, p. 59. Further page references will appear 26in
See Perloff, p. 182.
parentheses in the text. 27 Russo, p. 193.
11 Tobin Siebers, "Sincerely Yours," in CL, p. 195. Siebers 28 Greene, p. 145.

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