Modern Language Association

Comparative Literature?
Author(s): Haun Saussy
Source: PMLA, Vol. 118, No. 2 (Mar., 2003), pp. 336-341
Published by: Modern Language Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1261421
Accessed: 16/08/2009 04:17

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless
you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you
may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=mla.

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the
scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that
promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Modern Language Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to PMLA.

http://www.jstor.org

theories and
methodologies
Comparative
Literature?
HAUN SAUSSY
HAUNSAUSSY,authorof The Problemof
a ChineseAesthetic(StanfordUP, 1993)
and GreatWallsof Discourseand Other
Adventuresin CulturalChina (Harvard
U Asia Center, 2001), is professor of
Asian languages and comparativeliter-
ature at StanfordUniversity.
336
PMLA
NOTA THEORYORA METH-
LITERATURE?
WHATISCOMPARATIVE
(WHICHRAISESTHEQUESTIONOF WHY
ODOLOGY,CERTAINLY
this article should appearin a series so entitled), though theories and
methodologiesaplentyoccuras partof its typicalbusiness.Is there,or can
therebe, an objectof knowledgeidentifiableas "comparativeliterature"?
The Rule of Three
When I began hearingaboutcomparativeliteraturein the middle 1970s,
there was a fairly straightforwardmeans of distinguishingcomparative
literatureon the universitycampuseswhere it was done. The Englishde-
partmentpursuedknowledgeof languageand literaturein one language;
the foreign language departmentspursued similar studies in two lan-
guages (typically English, assumed to be most students' native lan-
guage, plus the foreign tongue); and comparativeliteraturecommittees,
programs,or departmentscarriedout literaryanalysis in at least three
languages at once. The three-languagerule identified the discipline as
something apartfrom English, national-languagestudies, or studies of
literaturein translation;it set up a criterion of eligibility for new en-
trants,thus laying a basis for the discipline'scontinuedsocial reproduc-
tion; but it did not always specify the three languages or dictate the
substance of what was to be done in them. Now, in geometry three
points make a plane, and three dimensions make a solid; Thirdness,in
Peircean semiotics, makes signifying possible as a mediation between
Firstnessand Secondness (Peirce 387-90); but in comparativeliterature
the effect of addingthe magicalthirdelementis more elusive.
The third-languagehurdleassured,demographically,thatcompara-
tive literatureprogramswould not expandto cover all the territoryof the
humanities(if anyonewas worriedaboutthat),but it did not go fartoward
answeringthe question,Whatis, or is not, comparativeliterature?The rule
definedthe social membershipof comparativeliteraturebetterthanit did
the object of study. (And even in its influence on membership,the rule
could be appliedinconsistently:for lack of relevantprogramsor person-
? 2003 BY THE MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA
I I 8.2 2
nel, a studentfluentin English andCantonese,or
in BretonandQuechua,mighton manycampuses
be in the same position as a strictlymonolingual
student.) This all made for a fragile discipline,
one whose definition dependedcrucially on the
definitionsof the institutionalcells surrounding
it; andin pragmaticterms,this fragilitywas real-
ized in the status of most comparativeliterature
programsas epiphenomenalgroupings without
permanentfunding. In North America at least,
from the 1970s onward, comparativeliterature
foundits disciplinaryobjectin, andbasedits case
for institutionalindependenceon, an alwayscon-
troversialset of practicesknown as literarythe-
ory. To hearsome people tell it, the comparatists
were no producers, but an army of Soldiers of
Theory bent on occupying otherpeople's fields
andreducingthemto tributarystatus.
The interveningyearshave broughtchanges
to comparativeliteraturein all its registers, not
least because the neighboring disciplines have
changed. We see more and more bilingual stu-
dents, with instant repercussionson the idea of
"foreign languages." The departmentsdevoted
to "major"languagesare increasinglyinterested
in and permeable to their less prominent rela-
tives (ex-colonial creoles, new Englishes, pid-
gins, dialects, and sociolects). Languages once
considered "less commonly taught"now often
boast higher enrollments than some "more
commonly taught" languages. Theoretical ap-
proacheshave long since naturalizedthemselves
in English departments.In comparative litera-
ture programs, too, the scope of the term lan-
guage is no longer self-evident:a medium such
as film or music now often substitutes for the
thirdlanguage.Whatdefinedcomparativelitera-
ture twenty-five years ago no longer distin-
guishes the field, positively or negatively, by
referenceto its membershipor object of study.
Anothermenace to comparativeliterature's
fragileidentitycomes fromtheveryconditionthat
madethe disciplinepossible:cosmopolitanism.
Thebourgeoisiehasthroughits exploitationof
theworldmarketgivena cosmopolitancharac-
Haun Saussy 337
rP
ter to productionand consumptionin every
country....Theintellectual
creationsof individ- 00
ualnationsbecomecommonproperty. National
one-sidednessandnarrow-mindedness become
moreandmoreimpossible,andfromthenumer-
ous nationalandlocalliteratures,
therearisesa C*
worldliterature. (MarxandEngels38-39)
3
r
r0
Or as the systems theoristNiklas Luhmann o
putsit, "Undermodemconditions... only one so-
cial systemcan exist. Its communicativenetwork
(A
spreadsoverthe globe ... A pluralityof possible _5
worlds has become impossible" (178). If dis-
tinctions areno longer meaningful,comparison
becomes the likening of like and like, a hollow
gesturewith a predeterminedoutcome.Reduced
to the scale of the university campus, a global
economy of communication makes compara-
tivistsof us all,as"nationalone-sidedness"andthe
consequent"pluralityof possibleworlds"become
"impossible"evenas a scholarlyconcentration.
Comparative? Literature?
So, then,now morethanever:comparativelitera-
ture?If the specificity of our enterpriseis wear-
ing away through its banalization, we need to
think once more about what comparatistshave
done to see if thereis anythingfor the discipline
to keep on doing.Whatwerethe models for com-
parative work, and what lessons do they teach
thatmay still applyin changedcircumstances?
The name of the field-"comparative"-
once denoteda methodand,behindthatmethod,
a theory of how literaturewas organized.Com-
parativereligion, comparativelaw, and the other
comparative disciplines that arose in the nine-
teenth centuryunderthe strangedual patronage
of comparativeanatomyandcomparativephilol-
ogy all began as whatone mightcall tree-shaped
disciplines, organizing historical and typologi-
cal diversityinto a common historicalnarrative
with many parallel branches. Difference be-
came differentiation,the subjectof a historical-
developmental account. Throughthat account,
morphologybecamereadableas genesis.
 338 ComparativeLiterature?
,1 Indeed, one of the cornerstones of the de-
t!
velopment of comparative literature in this
.C country, E. R. Curtius's European Literature
0
and the Latin Middle Ages, makes exactly this
sort of claim. Reaching back to a time before
E the national separation of the languages and
Io their increasing mutual opacity, Curtiusrecon-
c
4^:
structsa common basis for the majorEuropean
literatures in Latin authors and topoi.1 The
Latin basis was there all along, hidden in the
"one-sidedness" of the national languages;
scholarship restores it to view, elucidating the
differential paths taken and leading them back
to the source. Curtius'smode of comparisonis a
phylogeny. But surely in many other contexts
this would be a naive or impossible way of
puttingone's comparativeclaim.
Although new tools such as genetics and
ethologyconfirmedthe usefulnessof tree-shaped
comparativism for the biological sciences, in
most of the human sciences the narrativespro-
viding the substantivegroundfor differentiation
sooner or later broke up. General evolutionary
paradigms (as in Maine, Morgan, or Frazer)
could not be maintained without begging too
many questions aboutthe universalreach of the
categories employed. Only in linguistics, my-
thology, and manuscriptfiliation are distal trees
still importantargumentativetools. In compara-
tive literature,the typologicaltree of writtencul-
ture was never more than a vestige anyway.
Actual comparativestudies covered only small
pieces of the literaryrecord,rarelyventuringso
far afield as to challenge the applicabilityof the
discipline's terms;moreover,when widely sepa-
ratedliterarytraditionswere involved, compara-
tists wroteas if little could be done to explain(as
opposed to reciting) the typological differences
amongthe traditions.
Comparativeliteraturewas thus a discipline
with a branchinglogic, but the brancheslacked
a trunk.Thattrunkmight conceivablyhave been
furnishedby a universalpoetics, a historicalori-
gin of all literarytraditions,or an ultimatetypo-
logical category such as literariness.2But none
PMLA
was needed. Historicalstudies (influenceand re-
ception) could carry on in various sections of
the tree withoutworryingaboutthe existence of
a trunk. Studies cast in the mode of difference
and similarity could disregard it, taking for
grantedsuch generally applicableterms as they
found necessary. "Theory,"never a compact
philosophical system, migrated from case to
case or let itself be carriedwith the broadening
acceptance of certain historical narratives or
methodologicalmetaphors.
Perhaps the best thing about comparative
literatureis its failureto live up to its name. Un-
like the other comparativedisciplines, this one
is not principally about the relation of sub-
sidiary phenomena to an original or ancestral
source. And unlike Aristotelian comparison, it
is not about discovering the "third thing" on
which two other things stand as on a common
groundof identity.It must then have an unusual
logic. Perhaps a "rhizomatic"logic (Deleuze
and Guattari6-8)?
In and And
Some literary scholars have a penchant for the
prepositionin, some for the conjunctionand. In
suggests thata readingis a matterof observation
and inventory;and, that a readingis a collision.
A papertitled "Renunciationin Mahabhdrata,
Huckleberry Finn, and Der Rosenkavalier"
claims to discover a common thread"in"a body
of writings;a papertitled "MansfieldParkandA
Theory of Justice" tells you to think about one
thing in relationto another.Comparativelitera-
tureis largelya disciplineof the and type. It does
its workbest as a chain of ands: this relationand
that relation and that relation . .. .each and
modifyingthe sense of those thatcame before.
The and is comparativeliterature'sanswer
to the tree model. Lackinga common substance
to which the differences among its objects
might be reduced, comparative literature has
grown,not from the roots upwardlike a tree,but
as the InternationalSpace Stationdoes, through
I I 8.2 2
the lateral construction of linking elements.
Leaving aside Curtius's"Romania,"with its ori-
entation toward historical recovery, the model
texts of comparativeliteraturelink togethersets
of examples whose mutualcoherence is not ob-
vious in advanceof their combination.It is as if
the readerwho asks, "Whatdo X, Y, and Z have
to do with one another?"could only get the an-
swer,"Nothing-up to now."
ErichAuerbach'sMimesisproffersa histor-
ical narrative(the growth of realism) but does
not substantivelydevelop realism or give it the
role of a protagonist who might lead the story
towardits outcome. (For that type of story, see
Lukacs.)Rather,Auerbachbeckons us to exam-
ine a series of sample passages-touchstones-
in historical sequence, each different from the
others, each exhibiting a different mode of de-
tail, each contributing indirectly to a mode of
seeing that is also the critic's (the eye for just
what makes this text a new turningfor literary
representation).3This is and criticism: but read
it as in criticism, and the thing in all the exam-
ples is a thin threadindeed.
In Qian Zhongshu's work, comparability
is the point to be made. Recognizing the utter
dominancein Chinese scholarshipof the kind of
literaryhistory thatreduces a text to the general
circumstancesof its period-and therebydenies
that the relation between two texts can be any-
thing but historical-Qian answers this under-
standing of literaturewith a model of meaning
as open-ended translatability.In a tacit rebuke
to historicaldeterminism,his essays simplyjux-
tapose passages or motifs from Chinese classi-
cal literaturewith "equivalents"in Latin,Greek,
English, French, German, and Spanish litera-
ture-an empirical but experimentalchallenge
to the assumptionof Chinese uniqueness.
Comparative literature books may be as
elaboratelystructuredas NorthropFrye's Anat-
omy of Criticismor Paul de Man'sAllegories of
Reading or as loose as Qian Zhongshu'sor Leo
Spitzer's essay collections, but they all must
raise the question of what glue holds them to-
Haun Saussy 339
gether. The job of every comparativeliterature 7PO
book is to find that out, and rarely do two an- 0
*1
swers coincide. Metalepsis (the positing as ac-
(A
complished of something yet to occur) is the
z
structuringtrope of these speculativeinvestiga-
CL
tions, which spin the rope before them as they
walk on it. The willingness to toleratereadings 2
that produce, rather than discover, meanings 7
0
brings a risky,experimentalqualityto compara-
0;
0
tive literatureand shows why its virtues are in-
0611
separablefrom its questionablelegitimacy.
The Rule of Three Revisited
What might be called a third-language effect
helps to explain comparativeliterature'spast in-
tellectual affinities and to markwhat keeps the
field open for particularkindsof innovation.The
three-language rule precipitated (i.e., contrib-
uted to causing withoutnecessarily entailing) a
kind of questioningthatthe then-currentstateof
practice in national-literatureprogramsdid not
satisfy, and the moving frontiers of the disci-
pline should continuerespondingto similardis-
satisfactions now that so many of comparative
literature'sformer specialties have been taken
up by others.One cannotsay thatit always hap-
pened, but often and ideally the addition of a
third language made it necessary to appeal to
theoreticalconsiderationswhere taste, common
sense, or a shared literary history would have
told the practitionersof English or a single for-
eign literaturewhat was significant, beautiful,
predictable, necessary, or controversial about
their objects of study. Just as Anaxagoras, ac-
cordingto Aristotle(1071), attributedthe intelli-
gence of humanbeings to theirhavinghands,so
perhapsin comparativeliteraturethe third lan-
guage as an organcreatedits own functions.
Most relations of influence that can be for-
mulated historically (the original problem for
comparativeliteratureto resolve;see Schulz and
Rhein) occur, like the standardmodel of trans-
lation, between two poles, with a source and a
target.Typological considerationsreduce to an
 340 Comparative Literature?
(,
exchange between a type case and a candidate
token. If a two-languagepatternis adequatefor
0 culturallyunified Europe, see
formulating and answering most questions of
historicalinfluenceor typological similarity,the
0 linguistics and literary
Jc thirdlanguage,like an uninvitedguest, points to
- the encyclopedic projectof Chadwickand Chadwick,mod-
the thingsthata two-languagepatternleaves out.
Whatis going on, even in a dyadicrelation,thata
E
dyadic explanation leaves unaccounted for? A
relationoccurs underparticularconditions:what
.m
L. are those? What is the relation about;what in it
0
illuminatesrelationsnot now underdiscussion?
In my experience,the thirdlanguageor field fur-
nishes counterexamples.It frustratesthe progress
to universal literature-to the delivery of the
same thing in differentlanguages, ad infinitum.
Because it is preciselynot a tertiumquid,it keeps
thingsfrom settlingdown.The space of this third
language-a space analogous to the yet-to-be-
constructedrelationand opposite to the missing
trunk-might be held by an indefiniteset of enti-
ties. Whateveroccupies thatspace mediatesless
thanit interferes,as signifiersdo, andits interfer-
ence producessomethingnew.
What is specific to comparativeliterature,
as distinguished from investigations into na-
tional literaryhistories or from literaturetaken
as a single mass, is its propensity to construc-
tion-a technical term on which sociologists
and geometers idiomatically cohabit. It would
be a mistake,then, to seek to definecomparative
literature through its objects of knowledge or
methods;lacking exclusive title to any of these,
it is rathera practice, a way of constructingob-
jects. As in surveying,every completionof a tri-
angle makes measurement,and thus conclusive
knowledge, possible; but the apex of the trian-
gle just determinedis also a point from which a
new angle opens up for measurement. "The
suitabilityof the figures [used in surveying]de-
pends to a greatextentupon the shapeof the fig-
ures selected. Angles near0? or 180?are subject
to large computational errors and are avoided
when possible"("Surveying"615).
PMLA
NOTES
1On Curtius'svision of a
Menocal 133-37.
2 A tension between folklore or
study structuressome phases of the field's development.See
eled on folklore and diffusionisthistory;see also the differ-
ing accounts of "literarylanguage" produced by the New
Critics and the inheritorsof Slavic linguistics and folklore
(Ransom;Jakobson).
3 On the peculiarities of Mimesis as a historical narra-
tion, see the essays in Lerer.
WORKS
CITED
Aristotle. "Partsof Animals." The CompleteWorksof Aris-
totle. Ed. JonathanBarnes. Vol. 1. Princeton:Princeton
UP, 1984. 994-1086.
Auerbach,Erich.Mimesis: The Representationof Reality in
WesternLiterature.Trans.WillardR. Trask.Princeton:
PrincetonUP, 1953.
Chadwick, H. Munro, and N. Kershaw Chadwick. The
Growthof Literature.3 vols. Cambridge:CambridgeUP,
1932-40.
Curtius, Ernst Robert. European Literatureand the Latin
MiddleAges. Trans.WillardR. Trask.Princeton:Prince-
ton UP, 1948.
Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari.A ThousandPlateaus:
Capitalism and Schizophrenia.Trans.Brian Massumi.
Minneapolis:U of MinnesotaP, 1987.
de Man, Paul. Allegories of Reading: Figural Language in
Rousseau, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Proust. New Haven:
Yale UP, 1979.
Frazer,JamesGeorge.The GoldenBough:A Studyin Magic
and Religion. Abr.ed. New York:Macmillan,1951.
Frye, Northrop.Anatomyof Criticism:FourEssays. Prince-
ton: PrincetonUP, 1957.
Jakobson,Roman. "Linguisticsand Poetics." Style in Lan-
guage. Ed. ThomasA. Sebeok.Cambridge:MITP, 1960.
350-77.
Lerer,Seth, ed. LiteraryHistory and the Challenge of Phi-
lology: The Legacy of Erich Auerbach. Stanford:Stan-
fordUP, 1996.
Luhmann,Niklas. Essays on Self-Reference.New York:Co-
lumbiaUP, 1990.
Lukfcs, Gy6rgy. Studies in EuropeanRealism. New York:
Grosset, 1964.
Maine,HenrySumner.AncientLaw. London:Murray,1861.
Marx, Karl,and FriedrichEngels. Manifestoof the Commu-
nist Party. Selected Worksin One Volume.New York:
Intl., 1968. 35-63.
Menocal,MariaRosa. Shardsof Love:Exile and the Origins
of the Lyric.Durham:Duke UP, 1994.
118.2 Haun Saussy 34I

Morgan, Henry Lewis. Ancient Society. New York:World, Ransom, John Crowe. Beating the Bushes: Selected Essays
1877. 1941-1970. New York:New Directions, 1972.
Peirce, Charles Sanders. Values in a Universe of Chance: Schulz, Hans-Joachim,and Phillip H. Rhein, eds. Compara-
Selected Writingsof Charles SandersPeirce. Ed. Philip tive Literature,the Early Years:A Collection of Essays.
P. Wiener.Stanford:StanfordUP, 1958. ChapelHill: U of NorthCarolinaP, 1973.
Qian Zhongshu. Guan zhui bian [Essays of the Pipe and Spitzer, Leo. Essays in Historical Semantics. New York:
0Ce
Awl]. 4 vols. Beijing:Zhonghuashuju, 1979. Vanni,1947.
-. LimitedViews:Essays on Ideas and Letters.Trans. . Linguistics and LiteraryHistory: Essays in Stylis- 0
Ronald Egan. Cambridge: Harvard U Asia Center, tics. Princeton:PrincetonUP, 1948. Fo
1998. o
"Surveying."EncyclopaediaBritannica.1964 ed.
Q.
oq
&P
o,