Comparative Cultural Studies and Latin America

Comparative Literature in an Age of “Globalization”

198 Comparative Literature in an Age of “Globalization” Lois Parkinson Zamora I. I have titled my essay “Comparative Literature in an Age of ‘Globalization,’” trusting my reader to take note of the quotation marks around “globalization.” This punctuation will suggest the exploratory nature of my project; in fact, there should probably be quotes around “comparative literature” as well, because the changes occurring under the sign of globalization may also be shifting some of the parameters of our profession. In the following discussion, according to good comparative procedure, I want to weigh seemingly unlike entities—the cultural processes of globalization on the one hand, and our own disciplinary processes on the other—to see whether their differences—and certain similarities—may prove instructive. I am, of course, well aware that globalization is a venerable process and that cultural contacts have operated globally since antiquity. Here, however, I will consider “globalization” narrowly , as a term referring to the changes in cultural conditions worldwide during the past ten to twenty years, and then test my generalizations against a number of Latin American literary texts. These texts are part a long tradition of cultural theorizing that addresses the nature and effects of cultural contact in Latin America, and thus the processes of globalization avant la lettre. I ask you, then, to join me in considering how (or whether) comparative literary study has changed, and how it should change in Latin America and elsewhere, given the effects of what we now routinely refer to as the globalization of culture . No doubt most of us already have a working definition of this household word, and our definitions are likely to include a strong affective charge; most discussions of globalization, however academic, are value-specific, with description and judgment often interdependent and sometimes worrisomely indistinguish- Comparative Literature in an Age of “Globalization” 199 able. Here, I intend to avoid this tendency, because my concern is not polemical but pedagogical, and it is this: how are we and our students to engage critically the operations of globalization and their as-yet-undetermined outcomes? For my purposes, it is sufficient to refer to globalization as a complex of transcultural operations characterized by four factors: 1) the presence of new information and communication technologies; 2) the emergence of new global markets; and 3) the unprecedented mobility of peoples and levels of immigration , with their accompanying cultural displacements; and 4) the reconfiguration of space, both conceptually and experientially. The first two are causal, the second two are usually effects: that is, new information technologies and the emergence of new global markets impel immigration and other spatial displacements —indeed, more often force than facilitate them. A general statement of the effects of globalization might be couched in terms of the “shrinking world” metaphor, which goes like this: societies are increasingly interconnected, so that events and information in one part of the world increasingly affect people and cultures in other parts of the world. The revision of spatial categories is fundamental to virtually all discussions of globalization, whether space is engaged metaphorically as shrinkage or mobility or distance, or discussed literally in terms of decentralization, deterritorialization , redrawing boundaries, or any number of other ways of signifying current global realignments. Once the presence of these characteristics has been recognized, most discussions of globalization move directly to comparative cultural questions. Anthropologists, economists, ecologists, political scientists all become cultural comparatists, weighing cultural differences against what is generally considered to be the inevitable function of globalization: the leveling of cultural difference. This comparative quotient runs inexorably, it seems, through discussions of globalization, and this should interest us as a profession, since our own most basic disciplinary methods are, of course, designed to recognize and interpret difference. I think of my own work in comparative American cultures, for example, as moving along a spectrum between assumptions of basic cultural difference on the one hand, and literary examples of analogous attitudes and expressive structures on the other. I look for common contexts in order to ground my comparisons, but it is the differences that will matter most to my analysis. So a mirror image begins to emerge; whereas the literary comparatist may be said to value significant differences, and to study literature for what we may learn from those differences, the processes of globalization would seem to work in ways that are something like the reverse—toward a leveling of significant difference in favor of insignificant sameness. But this comparison, too, will need to be complicated, for homogeneity and...