Beyond comparison
In this article, the author takes up the issue of the so-called “crisis” of comparative literary studies (Comparative Literature), at the same time trying to outline the presentday condition of the discipline and to point to the objectives which it should attempt to attain today. Beside other detailed problems, the author analyses the threats posed by the hegemonic status of English which has become a specific ‘foundational language’ in Comparative Literature. However, in the principal part of his analysis, the author tries to go beyond the tendency towards ‘unification and totalisation of thought,’ which is present in Comparative Studies, by means of a search for ‘commensurability’ between the elements being compared,, and also beyond the equally popular strategy of ‘divisiveness’ that consists in continual emphasis on and proliferation of differences. He juxtaposes these two dominant trends with a model of conducting Comparative Literary Studies based on the concept of language of friendship or even love – an idea stemming from the philosophical thought of Lyotard and Badiou. In this approach, reading becomes an ‘event of love, which, like love, is what is without and beyond compare.

In this article, the author takes up the issue of the so-called “crisis” of comparative literary studies (Comparative Literature), at the same time trying to outline the presentday condition of the discipline and to point to the objectives which it should attempt to attain today. Beside other detailed problems, the author analyses the threats posed by the hegemonic status of English which has become a specific ‘foundational language’ in Comparative Literature. However, in the principal part of his analysis, the author tries to go beyond the tendency towards ‘unification and totalisation of thought,’ which is present in Comparative Studies, by means of a search for ‘commensurability’ between the elements being compared,, and also beyond the equally popular strategy of ‘divisiveness’ that consists in continual emphasis on and proliferation of differences. He juxtaposes these two dominant trends with a model of conducting Comparative Literary Studies based on the concept of language of friendship or even love – an idea stemming from the philosophical thought of Lyotard and Badiou. In this approach, reading becomes an ‘event of love, which, like love, is what is without and beyond compare.