Editor's Column

THE COMPArZATIST Editor's CoCumn The twentieth anniversary conference ofthe Southern Comparative Literature Association, hosted by the North Carolina State University in 1994, reflected very well the intellectual growth of this scholarly organization and of comparative studies in general. It also called attention to some of the tensions inherent in our field, revisiting debates and concerns that have been with us ever since René Wellek announced a crisis ofcomparative literature in 1958. The forum that opened the conference, "Comparative Literature: Crisis and Challenge," counterposed again two generations ofcomparatists with the difference that—in Liban R. Furst's words—the most recent school ofcomparatists seemed more revisionistic and pessimistic about the possibilities of the field than Wellek had been several decades ago. Manuela Mouräo (Old Dominion University) reviewed a number of recent attempts to revamp the field, as well as the corresponding efforts to police the boundaries ofcomparative studies against such revisionistic assaults. According to Mouräo, who has experienced the commitments and challenges of our profession both in Europe (Portugal) and in the United States, comparative methodologies are often restrictive, making the integration ofnew cultural experiences and theoretical models more difficult. She praised, on the other hand, the mediating efforts of scholars like Mary Louise Pratt and Claudio Guillen who have proposed to mix the paradigms, allowing comparative literature to expand its traditional approaches and methodologies. Inhiswittypositionpaper, DavidMoore (Duke University) wondered why comparative literature has ceased, paradoxically, to have a significant impact in areas thatwould have naturally fulfilled its desire to cross boundaries and encourage comparison: global studies and postcolonial criticism. He cited three contributors to the areas of subaltern and postcolonial literatures, postindustrial cultures and orientalism (Spivac, Jameson, and Said) whose work has not been properly integrated in comparative literature. At the same time he acknowledged the fact that these important projects have their limitations, needing the input of comparative literature to develop more flexible approaches to the issues of similarity and difference, or the reciprocal homologation of literary experiences from diverse geocultural areas. Moore suggested that this was as good a time as any to return to the notion of a "Weltkulturwissenschaft " inspired by Herder and Goethe—but this revisitation, instead of reviving blanket terms like "universal," "architectonic," and "global," should regain some ofthe "macaronic" puzzlement with which Herder and Goethe responded to the diversity oflanguages and cultures. In her response, Lilian R. Fürst (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) found unwarranted the pessimism with which comparatism has been viewed by the most recent promotion ofscholars. Comparative Vol. 19 (1995): 1 EDITOR'S COLUMN literature, she argued, has always been in crisis, improvising some ofits methodologies and approaches, crossing linguistic and cultural boundaries spurred by the impulse to compare which can manifest itself regardless of what labels we use to describe its work. In one word, comparative literature has always been "macaronic" rather than dogmatic . As the personal statements collected in Building a Profession: Autobiographical Perspectives on the History of Comparative Literature in the United States (ed. Lionel Gossman and Mihai I. Spariosu, SUNY Press, 1994) attest, many comparatists in Furst's median generation have often stumbled into comparative literature, developing their own provisional approaches, readjusting them continually to new requirements and challenges. Comparatists would do well to continue, according to Fürst, to resist the imposition of single agendas (traditional or nontraditional), striving for freedom of approach and subject matter, but also for analytic rigor backed by an intimate knowledge ofthe languages they read in. She also suggested that the ambition of certain comparatists to be "on the edge" is not only faddish, but also theoretically fallacious: comparative literature must be in many places at the same time, continually reinventing its position, crossing boundaries, learning to cope with diversity. Ronald Bogue (University ofGeorgia) began his response by reading a list ofrecent Ph.D.'s awarded by the Comparative Literature Department he chairs. Their titles reflect a typical intercrossing of theories, approaches, and interests, from postcolonial, through feminist, multicultural , African and Asian—with or without a Western term ofcomparison. He challenged Moore's and Mouräo's narratives of comparatism for positing an adversary that no longer exists—at least not with the rigid, demonized contours...