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Literary Research/Recherche littéraire 21.41-42 (2004): 317-323 Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek, ed., Comparative Literature and Comparative Cultural Studies. West Lafayette: Purdue UP, 2002; 356 pp.; ISBN: 1557532907 (hbk.); LC call no.: PN863.C584 For the “printed material fetishists,” selections from the online journal CLCWeb. Comparative Literature and Culture: AWWWeb Journal have come out on paper. The essays oscillate between traditional fields of enquiry for comparative literature (national approaches and overviews, the concept of world literature, the concept of literariness, postcolonialism, Romanticism) and areas of the yet-to-be-founded discipline of comparative cultural studies, as described programmatically by editor Tötösy de Zepetnek (popular culture, book theory, internet). The collection opens with an excellent essay by Kwaku Asante-Darko. In “Language and Culture in African Postcolonial Literature,” the author challenges established discourses on postcolonialism, and suggests to view the invasion of Western values as an “opportunity to choose between different options” (3). In our age that relishes the conventional binary of domination and servitude, it is refreshing to see that the indignant can be [end page 317] constructive – and not as a recourse to misery written on another page of history. Asante-Darko's acknowledgment of change is not some shallow optimism either: rather, for him history is the emergence of potential differentials. Asante-Darko elegantly reverses the usual interpretation of the colonized discourse, and suggests that the “imitation embodied in the retaliation or vituperative vengeance of the negritude writer was not wantonly destructive,” but rather “sought the restoration of the truth of racial equality”; in turn, the language of denigration became an “instrument of revalorization” (3). By talking over and using the language of the colonialists, that is, the very tools of subjection, the African set up an antithetical power that resisted the colonialist synthesis; thereby “[t]he inferiority attributed to him by imposition is thus rejected by imitation” (3).This is an incredible statement: although the language of dominance is imposed as a method of affirming cultural superiority, to speak in the foreign tongue and to imitate foreign ways do not show integration nor even subservience to the dominant authority. Asante-Darko challenges the idea that to think and speak in another language means to be at a continual disadvantage towards the native. Instead, he argues that to learn how to write in the dominant discourse gives the ability of engaging in a conflict with authority; by taking away a primary tool on which the autonomy of the colonial power maintains its superiority, imitation denies the autonomy of authority, and subverts the dialectical synthesis implicit in colonial power. Thus, the African continent is able to take “its destiny into its own hands” (4). By using these subversive tactics, the Other's culture does not assume a position of inferiority, since “political decolonization” was brought about through a combination of the very same instruments of colonial oppression. Language as the conveyer of culture itself, Asante-Darko argues, is highly contentious, since “these same foreign languages have been the cementing factor for communication and the spread of ideas among countless African societies” (5) – thus leading to a unity which had previously not existed. The models of mimesis are shattered when, instead of being subsumed, the African continent became a rival and antithetical power by developing into a new hybridization (6). This perspective has far reaching implications for the view of history and the analysis of time in the age of globalization, which generally still sees the contingent possibilities of a global-dynamic in a binary: glory for the world that will be, on one hand, and on the other hand, the lament for the seemingly irretrievable loss of the past. Asante-Darko goes on to explore the consequences of his thesis with energy and insight; his essay is not only a forceful political statement but also a source of sheer scholarly pleasure. [end page 318] Other essays map the field of regional comparativism. In “Comparative Literature in India,” Amiya Dev advocates diversity without sacrificing individuality, and suggests that, through the opposition of commonality and self-referentiality, the latter should not designate the position of a superior intellect. While scholarship has often approached nations in a binary, followed by a dialectical move, Dev concentrates on the notion of national “situs,” from which scholars should try to understand the interrelated sub-systems which are constantly in the making. The essay, however, lends itself easily and suspiciously to the revelation of the betterment of criticism, which would have at last arrived. Kritof Jacek Kozak's “Comparative Literature in Slovenia” gives an overview of the departmental history and the changes that have occurred in the theoretical approaches under different department chairs. Manuela Mourăo's “Comparative Literature in the United States” describes the various attempts to integrate the discipline within university. Most noteworthy is the example of Brown University, which sought to launch comparative literature as a subject in secondary school, which would have lead to the introduction of the discipline in teachers= colleges and would have also provided an adequate background for university students entering the field. Thus enticing the secondary school boards or the respective government through the promotion of multiculturalism (via political correctness agendas and lobby groups), comparative literature could gain a stronger foothold in North America. Xiaoyi Zhou's and Q.S. Tongs “Comparative Literature in China” is remarkable for its critical rigor in identifying why the discipline has continued to flourish in China. As the two scholars argue, this is due to China's resistance to postmodernism, i.e., the destruction of the ever questionable foundation of a constructed discourse. Indeed, even when a field is only literature and nothing but comparative literature, this “limitation” does not destroy the discipline's ability to thrive. Although such a position might seem somehow behind the times, the continuance of comparativism in China, as opposed to the North-American crisis, makes such criticism self-defeating. Shifting to another area of research, William H. Thornton discusses the policies behind the politics in the last ten or fifteen years, in his well-argued and informative essay “Analyzing East/West Power Politics in Comparative Cultural Studies.” He critiques the U.S. foreign policy with China and some of the negatives from Kissinger's approach to world politics. The essay ends a little too abruptly, with the promise of a subsequent article, which would develop the “via media between Fukuyama's dialogic liberalism and Huntington's undialogic realism” (222). Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek's “From Comparative Literature Today toward Comparative Cultural Studies” puts the complete into CompLit, and [end page 319] suggests an expansion of the field of study. The proposal is however difficult, as it admits that the discipline is already “fragmented and pluralistic, non-self-referential and inclusive” (235). If comparative literature has had significant problems gaining acceptance in the university, it is questionable that an even greater expansion could give it more credence. For Tötösy de Zepetnek, it is necessary to gain an understanding in comparative literature throughout the world by outlining what methodology is at work in each national institution (238) – an ideal that informs both the present collection and the online journal. However, the awareness that comparative literature has varying degrees of success throughout the world reads very much like an attempt at justifying the field, at creating the appearance of a discipline, by giving it a history – at a point where comparative literature faces its demise at institutions throughout Canada with the appropriation of theory by English, cultural studies becoming its own discipline in Media studies, and comparative literature retrogressing into something little more than its once and probably future Modern Languages home. Yet, when disciplines gain success, their histories are footnotes to their scholarship, not the scholarship itself. In discussing the principles that should be at work in comparativism, Tötösy de Zepetnek scolds Steiner for ignoring “alterité” with its related ideology and methodology; and Didier for ignoring minority literature and the East, and sadly acknowledges the rampant Eurocentric trend. Alternatively, he stresses the discipline's initial claims to all-inclusiveness performed by a scholarly elite. Yet, at this point in academic history, one may wonder if such expectations did not prove to be unrealistic: all too often did the level of scholarship suffer from haphazard reading, from the demand of covering a great number of cultures and the impossibility of covering them in depth. Would this be anything but a superficial gloss or a flamboyant flash of a visionary methodology which would bring as many problems as it solved? The complaints against university institutions, the “ludities” of scholarship, the comparative literature's esoteric place in the humanities and the grant council SSHRC settle old scores, yet, even if they are justified, are not overtly constructive. After a brief discussion about the possibility of approaching the Other, in which he repeats an argument form a previous paper (namely, that the allegation that the Occident were unable to study the Orient is just as harmful as colonizing discourse), Tötösy de Zepnetek concludes with ten principles for the future discipline of Comparative Cultural Studies. As the proposed name already suggests, the sketchy Decalogue combines fundamentals of comparative literature and cultural studies, with a focus on the issue of globalization. [end page 320] Peter Swirskis “Popular and Highbrow Literature: A Comparative View” promotes the study of a phenomenon that transcends borders and indicates global trends. In an extremely humorous section of his text, he rejects the notion that the author is dead with the irrefutable evidence of Rushdie, who has been taken off the hit-list for assassination and is now free to be photographed alongside “bunnies.” In a more serious vein, he claims that the novel is not dead either, since statistics show that mass-production of the novel is increasing. Swirski refutes pop-myths, such as uniformity, poor quality, dependence of the public (as opposed to the much more fantastic “independence” of Highbrow), and the idea that pop culture is morally dangerous – it is so exceptionally, perhaps with the exception of Faulkner's lack-lustre success in Hollywood. Ernest Grabovzski's “The Impact of Globalization and the New Media on the Notion of World Literature” continues the discussion on global aspects of culture with a focus on book theory and the infinite of the Internet (51) representing a new democracy. That the Internet is infinite may be one of the strangest repetitions of aesthetic history in modernity yet, since Verchucci, and later, Burke and Lessing had already approached the disembodied element of the word. Grabovzski lays emphasis on the object of the book as opposed to the free-floating words – yet the so-called disembodiment of Internet ignores the existence of a very concrete computer and of a very concrete Internet fee-bill, which largely demonstrates the tangibility of this mode of information. And although the Internet has somehow extended the concept of library, the advent of a new democracy of information is constantly held in check by new copyright laws (recently, for music). For better or worse, there is still a humongous amount of books that can be freely circulated by a public library, but not freely posted on the public space of Internet. Marko Juvan's “On Literariness: From Post-Structuralism to Systems Theory” is a account of various theoretical developments of the concept, and the essay ends with literariness being subsumed into a social construction/convention, stressing the importance of the institutional and canonical aspects of the aesthetic phenomenon. Very interesting is his discussion on the significance of art acting as an exception to normal linguistic codes (83) – which might remind of Stanley Fish's theory – and, following the analysis of “The Tree” by Edvard Kocbek, the description of the literary word as “capable of the evasive excess of meaning (87). The concept of literariness is extended in Marián Gálik's “Interliterariness as a Concept in Comparative Literature” is a solid and convincing presentation of the study of influences which may have informed genres and styles across cultures. He views cultures to be in continuity and yet also in dialectical tension; as such, scholars should [end page 321] learn how to read between traditions. Following the lead of Duriin, Gálik looks towards meta-language by which interliterary poetics may establish greater structural-typological affinities. In “The Culture of the Context: Comparative Literature Past and Future,” Walsh Hokenson looks at some of the first approaches of comparative literature and proclaims for the future a world discipline where borders will be blurred, translations will take prominence, and the old order of literary terms will crumble. The essay announces the coming age of global thinking, where tradition disciplines on national studies will dissolve; it ends by identifying infinity as implicit in the discipline, which would echo the infinity in the world of computers and of the cybertext. In another venue of research, Antony Tatlow's “Comparative Literature as Textual Anthropology” suggests a certain type of criticism based upon anthropology, in which the process of artistic creation would be, to a large extent, similar to Totemic thought. Tatlow refers to the scientific “objectivity” of Malinowski who, through a “schizophrenic” act, divested his cultural values in order to place them within Western knowledge. Choosing examples from Brecht's “iconographical zoo” (211) and Gaugain's reinvented Tahiti, he shows how the Other is constructed in the wait for a self-encounter, the animal becoming a “self-questioning self-portrait.” Through similar (totemic) processes, the artist may reveal “the monstrous unconscious of their cultures” (212). It is ironic however that, while anthropologic quotes abound, the necessity of a self-critical method, so important to Lévi-Strauss, disappears. The Other becomes just a pretext for the artist to give himself a thrill, and then to calm down in tranquil self-recognition – which might well be the case for many artists, but which seriously undermines the advantages of introducing the anthropologic discourse in literary criticism. Karl S.Y. Kao's “Comparative Literature and the Ideology of Metaphor, East and West” discusses the Chinese figures of speech bi, xing, fu. Xing, which is not meant to signify but to stir a particular affection or mood (as defined by Owen), is appealing to the Western search for metaphoricity behind the concepts. Written on the mode of the simile, the essay parallels the Chinese poetic terms with deconstruction, and ultimately, with Ricoeur's analysis of the metaphorical process, hoping to elucidate the ever-spinous issue of the cognitive in Chinese poetics – “ever”meaning at least since Zheng Xuan (127-200). Three essays relate Romanticism and comparativeliterature. Slobodan Sucur's “Theory, Period Styles and Comparative Literature as Discipline” reads modernity as a repetition of history from Romanticism and Biedermeier, and ends by explaining the worlds of discourse through geometrical models, which might be the most bizarre theoretical [end page 322] proposition since Kepler and the Neo-Pythagorean world-geometry he followed. Jola kulj delivers a strong argument on Bakhtin's “principle of dialogism,” claiming that Otherness is needed in order to understand culture; dialogic relativism reveals “the infinite diversity of cross-cultural influences” (149). However, kulj's argument surrounding Romanticism runs aground at several points, since aesthetic texts on the sublime and Nature could suggest counter-arguments to her thought. Yet the most troublesome comparison is the highly dubious conflation of Heidegger with Bahktin, with respect to “historical consciousness,” which credits Heidegger with a merit he does not deserve. Hendrik Birus' “The Goethean Concept of World Literature and Comparative Literature” shifts the focus from theory to the definition of world literature. Birus looks at Goethe's late writings, which lead the way to the modern concept of comparative literature. Goethe stressed the importance of translations to achieve global communication, hinted at a certain sensibility by which world literature should be read, and stressed the importance of popular literatures – which provides also a fair summary for the present collection. The one fault of this essay is that, exactly when Birus stresses the importance of translation, he actually gives an incomplete translation of the German text, which should have continued: “But the great use is...”; this is criticism is, however, not that useful.
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