Words on Comparative Literature

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Words on Comparative Literature

III.
What I propose can be understood as part of a methodological contemplation. It can also be understood as a way that Comparative Literature faces several modern literary and cultural realities.
So, the game of the borders of literature nowadays does not stop varying and being recomposed in a broader way.
It is enough to say that globalisation and its conversion, which is also as real as globalisation – multiplication of the nation states and multiplication of the affirmations of identity, often inseparable from the geographical and cultural areas. It is here that it should be concluded that the hypothesis of a possible cultural homogenisation does not go without multiplication of the borders of cultures, literatures.
There is a literary translation or explanation to all of this. It is enough to think of Africa and ask the question – what is, under these circumstances, an African comparative literature? We could give many similar examples. I will only give one more. It is obvious that the comparative literature of the European literatures should be partially reviewed again, after Europe is constituted into one (European) community and maybe constituted in a federation. Geopolitics can suggest a different image of mutual border of literature here than the previous one.
As far as Africa or Europe is concerned, this reorganisation of our knowledge is a reorganisation that does not cancel previous knowledge. This reorganisation is first of all a research of the new possibilities of contextual reading. These new possibilities assume this common knowledge that excludes the reification of knowledge, design of cognitive contexts.
As a matter of fact, I have the intention to indicate a function of the comparative literature: to mark the literary contexts today, in the paradox that I indicated – globalisation and multiplication of the nation states, nation states and multiplication of the regional connections inside the frames of the nation states –, in a way that these borders will be mutually readable, but without causing reification of the globalisation, or reification of the difference. There is a critical function of the comparative literature here – this mutual reading I talked about.
I will conclude these items with a small comment starting from Derrida. Derrida once said that comparative literature is an indeterminate discipline. It was of course a condemnation of comparative literature. The condemnation is strange because it comes from the one who has developed the philosophy of l’indécidable. But maybe he criticised the comparative literature for making the wrong conclusions – for example, for making quasi-essences of literature. We should recognise that comparative literature in the past did not hesitate reifying its objects – whether it was thematic research or abuse of the references of nations, which were often turned into a kind of a nationalistic criticism.
Nevertheless, it sib worth reviewing again the terms indetermination and indefinition. Comparative literature is indeterminate if it tries to reify its objects, its methods, because it that case it will miss the game of the borders of literature and the mutual introspection of the cognitive contexts. Comparative literature is indeterminate, not in the meaning of deconstruction, but in the meaning where Comparative literature knows that it can construct indetermination, valid models of literatures and cultures. Its efficiency is therefore completely in this indetermination which is a dynamic indetermination. This means a indetermination and unfinishing that does noes stop throwing out the conclusion of the intersection of cognitive contexts again, and via it, the co-operation that means mutual knowledge. We do not have the need of radical indetermination or reification of the knowledge and literary and cultural objects.
I give these explanations to indicate, finally, two things. The first one is related to the way literary variety can be treated. The second one is related to the way Comparative Literature, literary studies, humanistic research can be situated.

First Thing.
Against various positivisms and against various reifications, that I stressed, against a hierarchical vision of literatures – whether it is domination or resistance to domination – against the reflexive movement that is matched by an approach to literature per se, which finally closes the reflexive game and leads to paradoxes, against the thought endlessness of the deconstruction that has destroyed the pertinence of each contextualisation of an analysis, it should be said that each literature, each culture, each literary object and each cultural object constitute a fixed point and if one starts from these fixed points, there can be a change (variation) made of the critical models. The expression fixed point indicates ‘reasoning that is not monotonous’, that is part of the logic. A fixed point is a value that the logical and cognitive operations can not alter, whatever the norms of the operation are. Assimilating the literary and cultural objects in the fixed points, diversification of the critical models does not ignore and does not alter these objects. It marks these objects and transfers them to the cognitive area we laid down. This type of understanding and conclusive characterisation of the critical models are a feature of the open cognitive procedures/approaches.

Second Thing. To redefine the indeterminate in this way offers another benefit: to be able to give Comparative Literature an appropriate place in the current critical debates. What is at many places called crisis of literary research or crisis of humanitarian disciplines is but a progressive erasing of the model of literary research established in Europe in 19 century. This model was, symbolically and ideologically, a mixture of tradition, universalism, nationalism and positivism. Most of the modern critical schools still work on this heritage. To modify it, to try and destroy it – we should deconstruct it.
The crisis of the humanistic disciplines corresponds to the fact that they can no longer decide on their coherence, after the organisation of their parts, ideological, symbolic and cognitive is no longer functional. The selection of the inconclusiveness by deconstruction is just a response to this situation. One of the possible ways of getting out of the crisis is to preserve our many and varies objects of research, is to promote the idea of a dynamic indetermination. This dynamic indetermination that knows it is not separable from the general knowledge, from research, by obtaining as broad as possible contexts. It is the dynamic indetermination that knows it is inseparable from the way Comparative literature treats literatures and cultures – keeping the borders of literatures and cultures.

Translation from Macedonian to English: Elizabeta Bakovska

AuthorJean Bessiere
2018-08-21T17:23:36+00:00 October 1st, 2002|Categories: Reviews, Literature, Blesok no. 28|0 Comments