I.
In what I have heard at various meetings of AILC I feel that there are four topics present in the studies of comparative literature:
– cultural and literary identities and transfers;
– synchronous readings of various literary periods, various language areas (regions), various cultures;
– literary and cultural history of various regions;
– meta-criticism.
I will specify the position of each of these topics with an aim to determine their specific features.
(1) When we speak of cultural and literary identities and transfers, the issue is not the doubt in identities, but the mutual relations of identities. Therefore, the cross-cutting within a certain culture is just a type of an existing identity, and not un-recognition, as it is usually said, of identities. Thus, literatures can be representing of the relations of identity. The crossing appears as something that carries within and illustrates in itself the relations of identities.
(2) As far as the synchronous readings of various literary periods, various language spheres, various cultures are concerned, the issue is not to reach conclusions that will have positive or empirical character, but to create categories that will provide a common reading of those periods, those cultures. Virtual models that are means of this common reading are elaborated.
(3) Concerning the literary and cultural history of various regions, there is the question and need to overcome the sharp national divisions to regions with an aim to understand literary histories as histories of regional communities. These regional communities manage the design of the new critical, cultural and sociological paradigms. These literary histories are necessary because the reality and our perception of the regions are changed. A comparative literary history is the best introduction to a really updated literary thought of these regions.
(4) As far as the meta-criticisms are concerned, it is known that our epoch is no longer inclined to develop the heart of the literary theory. This does not mean that there should be no meta-criticism at all. The issue is double. Is there a theory that is really a transversal of various literatures? Is it possible to pay attention, within the same theory, both to literary artefact and the recognition of the literary artefact? We know that these two questions surpass the field of the contemporary aesthetics. Aesthetics does not offer clear answers. We can see what the answers to these questions are in various cultures and literatures, to mark the common knowledge that these two questions give us: knowledge that allows us to review various answers to these questions.
What I just said imposes an initial conclusion. We have constituted transversal, cultural, historical and meta-critical models of literature, of literatures. We know that these models are subject to revision to an extent that they should allow us to move from one to another difference. To see the difference as such has no point. It would be as if it was treated outside of any co-relation, and subsequently, to destroy the conclusion on the difference itself. Thus, is there anything more difficult than shaping the literature of travel (travelogue literature), unless its characterisation of a tautology is reduced: the travel literature is the literature that speaks of travel and the banalities of the discourse of meeting the other. Despite this, it is possible to avoid this banality. This tautology and this banality can be avoided, but only if we understand the travel literature as a presentation of a mutual knowledge that the travellers should acquire in their meeting with the other.
If we move in this direction that I propose, three false generalisation, that are usual these days will be avoided, and for which I will give you three examples:
1. The construction of the critical model and the consideration of the model, when used for their own goals, become a movement of thought that eventually marks only itself. This is illustrated in all deconstructivist theses. These theses express a generalisation only by the endlessness of their own demonstration;
2. The construction of a critical model can lead to reification of the model. The critical models that introduce the terms power and alienation should be cited, as they lead to reification of these terms. In this perspective, several examples can be given. I will only take and point out one of them. The identification of the modernity with the power of reason itself turns us into heirs and cognitive slaves of 18 century. This is a reification that makes the contemplating of the cognitive, aesthetic and literary rationality nowadays more difficult. Such a criticism of rationality, when it becomes support of the literary criticms, is, indeed, another false generalisation.
3. It is difficult to deny the interest and importance of literary formalisms, the approach of literature per se. But is should be stressed that these formalisms, to the degree they are reified, lead either to positivism – what I call, for example, literary narratology positivism – or towards subjectivism – once the formal conclusions are placed, literature is studied subjectively. Gerard Genet is a good illustration of this double movement, which ends in the no-way-out/blind alley of subjectivism. This reification and this paradox of an approach per se, of literature, has its origin: the difficulties to consider literature when there is a simple conclusion made: we don’t write any more, we don’t read any more, we don’t research the literature inside the fixed traditions and homogenous absolutes. We should decide what a literary subject is, and what the way we read it is. The reification and false generalisation are the consequences of the fact that this contradiction of the formalist literary criticism and its reasons are not researched enough.