College Literature

As one of a series of decennial reports by the American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA), Comparative Literature in an Age of Globalization offers itself as a “report on the state of the discipline” in 2004; but unlike previous ACLA reports it is conceived of by its editor, Haun Saussy, as “a multi-vocal report” in which nineteen authors present their arguments on the development of comparative literature in the contemporary era of globalization (viii). A common thread is provided by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's Wellek Library lectures, published as Death of a Discipline (2003), and the nineteen contributors were invited to impress, alarm, delight, and stimulate their readership by disagreeing with Saussy and each other about the significance of Spivak's text for the discipline. The collection thus offers the reader an opportunity to synthesize perspectives and develop their own points of view on the state, history, and future of comparative literature.

In Death of a Discipline, Spivak contends that the Euro/US-centric discipline of comparative literature must not merely transcend national borders, but also its location within disciplinary boundaries. Stressing the potential hazards of comparative literature practiced as a single discipline, Spivak predicts its demise. She argues that globalization makes the project of a discrete and integral discipline of comparative literature unsustainable; instead, she concludes, it must collaborate with other disciplines in order to move beyond its current limitations. The discipline must transcend borders, including those between languages, peoples, nations, and “self ” and “other,” while embracing interdisciplinary studies, area studies, cultural studies, multicultural studies, and globalization studies. Each contributor echoes or confronts Spivak's notion of the “death of a discipline” in developing their own perspective.

The book therefore consists of divergences from a set theme, and it is written in a variety of styles. By challenging each author to confront others' arguments, Saussy has created what the German Idealists termed “a unity of difference and non-difference” (i), rendering disagreement desirable. Saussy's preface and his introductory essay, entitled “Exquisite Cadavers Stitched from [End Page 157] Fresh Nightmare: Of Memes, Hives, and Selfish Genes,” surveys the development and process of comparative literary studies not merely by representing its triumph in an age of globalization (5), but also by making a metaphorical comparison with “genetically modified crops”(4).While Saussy acknowledges that “all literature has always been comparative, watered by many streams” (5)—that is, where there is literature, there is comparative literature—some genetically modified genes escape into nature, changing the “makeup of wild and cultivated plants” through pollenization (4). Like modified plant genes, comparative literature invades other fields, changing their new surroundings (4-5); in other words, comparative patterns of thinking seek to replicate themselves and influence every other department and discipline (5).

Saussy stresses that our age of globalization makes comparative literature the actor here, and in ways that are not always so easy to register. For example, with the great increase in literacy in China, Chinese literary texts are being translated into many other languages, with more and more comparatists focusing on comparisons between Chinese literature and other Asian literatures, as well as with Western literature. Yet in Taiwan, for example, there are no comparative literature university departments or undergraduate programs, although comparative literary study takes place in many different departments and fields (such as Chinese departments, Taiwanese Literature departments, and English departments). Following Saussy and Spivak, we might conclude that the lack of a visible institutional identity for the discipline does not mean that it does not exist.

Echoing Saussy's purpose, contributors provide a variety of perspectives on the situation of comparative literature. In “World Literature in a Postcanonical, Hypercannonical Age,” David Damrosch suggests that in the age of globalization world literature has become a different concern since the 1994 Bernheimer report, Comparative Literature in the Age of Multiculturalism. As Damrosch observes, the field of world literature should be seen in terms of a new, three-tiered system: “a hyper-cannon,” “a counter-canon,” and “a...