Abstract :
In Haun Saussy’s contribution to Comparative Literature in the Age of Globalization, which mistakingly came to be seen by many as “‘the 2004 Report’” on the state of the discipline (Saussy viii), he pinpoints the issue that makes comparative literature such a problematic field to define: “The history of comparative literature as a university discipline is not one of steadily deepening understanding of a single object of study, but rather a history of attempts to locate that object of study” (12). Unlike comparative philology or comparative anatomy, which find their common points of reference in their respective linguistic or anatomic “latest shared ancestor,” comparative literature has no such “tertium comparationis” upon which to ground itself (13). Unable to conform to the historical, “tree-shaped” pattern of these other comparative disciplines because of its “interest in modern literary traffic across languages and borders,” comparative literature must effectively construct its own “trunk” (13). Saussy surveys several potential candidates to serve as the discipline’s fixed object of study—“the universality of human experience” (13), “literariness” (17), “culture” (19)—but ultimately concludes that it is precisely the “lack of a permanent defining object” that accounts for not only the “fragility” but also the “success” of the institution of comparative literature (24).
