Words on Comparative Literature

II.
These reminders and this small disagreement with several dominant courses in the modern literary criticism have the aim to enable us to see what can the construction of the Comparative Literature models be.
One of the features of the four topics of research that I characterised is that they treat literatures starting from the borders of literatures, identities starting from the borders of identities, critical thesis – starting from their (critical) borders. Borders are understood as distinctions between objects, as limitation or bordering in a logical sense. It is a limitation because we can not round up a single analysis of out literary subjects of research, which is fully turned towards itself.
This game at the borders of literatures, cultures and critical thesis, should not be mixed up with what is called inter-literature, inter-culture, inter-criticism. Practices that are close to this “inter” often correspond to the way of critical syncretism. In many works, the Bakhtin references are limited to numberless citations of the words inter-discourse and inter-culture.
In our construction that starts from the borders we already mentioned, we being from a certain assumption on the contents of our model and we try to find the appropriate context. The context that will match the model is the one of the borders of literatures, cultures and the one of recomposing of these borders.
Comparative literature marks in essence the cognitive areas that have mutual common points (intersections) and which, via these intersections, indicate the possibility for a mutual knowledge of literature. This mutual knowledge is, eventually, the cognitive context that allows taking into consideration simultaneously different literatures. This cognitive context is a subject to revision if it is followed by a new intersection of the cognitive areas, the ones that are typical of the various approaches to literatures, cultures.
The construction of the inter-literary, inter-cultural and inter-linguistic critical models has no other function but to determine the borders of our knowledge, the insights of our cognitive areas and propose a figure of general knowledge, which allows us to return to the various literatures in a specific way again. The validity of the model is in the range and scope of its applications, its contextual effects; the context, it is at the same time the various literary and cultural objects, as well as various researchers.
I am in a situation to desert the term comparison. I prefer to say that the comparative literature is a method that constructs models that give the biggest number of contextual implications, starting even from the borders of the contexts.
So, it is possible to specify the term mutual knowledge: knowledge that we share; knowledge that makes us be able to share contexts in an epistemic (paradigmatic) way; knowledge that leaves contexts to their differences.
Of course, this common knowledge is constantly a subject to revisions, because of two reasons: the first that is already mentioned – the new borders of the objects, new matches (intersections) of the cognitive areas that should always be marked; the second reason will be specified now: this mutual knowledge can not be valid/confirmed by thoughts. If we undertake such a confirmation, it would return us to the false generalisations that I have already mentioned. This mutual knowledge, is thus opposite its own check and its own reform. I propose, as a matter of fact, a wise solution so that the researches of the comparative literature become valid. It is now only about checking Comparative Literature via a positivist approach, nor refusing it for that, because only it can not return to the objects in a strict way typical of any more local research. This is about confirming via its power (of the comparative literature) to contextualise and with a wider co-ordination of the literary studies that it consequently implies.
I would give a wider formulation on what I said before: to contribute that every critical model allows that a bigger number of literary contexts are read; to provide that the various contexts are constituted by a reinvestigation of the mutual knowledge. To make our critical models, that come from this movement, to provide us, by induction, to open new contexts – as broad as possible.