Comparative Literature versus Comparative Cultural Studies

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture ISSN 1481-4374 Purdue University Press ©Purdue University Volume 5 (2003) Issue 4 Article 6 Comparative Literature versus Comparative Cultural Studies Tomo Virk University of Ljubljana Follow this and additional works at: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb Part of the Comparative Literature Commons, and the Critical and Cultural Studies Commons Dedicated to the dissemination of scholarly and professional information, Purdue University Press selects, develops, and distributes quality resources in several key subject areas for which its parent university is famous, including business, technology, health, veterinary medicine, and other selected disciplines in the humanities and sciences. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, the peer-reviewed, full-text, and open-access learned journal in the humanities and social sciences, publishes new scholarship following tenets of the discipline of comparative literature and the field of cultural studies designated as "comparative cultural studies." Publications in the journal are indexed in the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (Chadwyck-Healey), the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (Thomson Reuters ISI), the Humanities Index (Wilson), Humanities International Complete (EBSCO), the International Bibliography of the Modern Language Association of America, and Scopus (Elsevier). The journal is affiliated with the Purdue University Press monograph series of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies. Contact: <> Recommended Citation Virk, Tomo. "Comparative Literature versus Comparative Cultural Studies." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 5.4 (2003): <https://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.1202> This text has been double-blind peer reviewed by 2+1 experts in the field. The above text, published by Purdue University Press ©Purdue University, has been downloaded 3942 times as of 11/ 07/19. Note: the download counts of the journal's material are since Issue 9.1 (March 2007), since the journal's format in pdf (instead of in html 1999-2007). This document has been made available through Purdue e-Pubs, a service of the Purdue University Libraries. Please contact for additional information. This is an Open Access journal. This means that it uses a funding model that does not charge readers or their institutions for access. Readers may freely read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of articles. This journal is covered under the CC BY-NC-ND license. UNIVERSITY PRESS <http://www.thepress.purdue.edu> CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture ISSN 1481-4374 <http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb> Purdue University Press ©Purdue University CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, the peer-reviewed, full-text, and open-access learned journal in the humanities and social sciences, publishes new scholarship following tenets of the discipline of comparative literature and the field of cultural studies designated as "comparative cultural studies." In addition to the publication of articles, the journal publishes review articles of scholarly books and publishes research material in its Library Series. Publications in the journal are indexed in the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (Chadwyck-Healey), the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (Thomson Reuters ISI), the Humanities Index (Wilson), Humanities International Complete (EBSCO), the International Bibliography of the Modern Language Association of America, and Scopus (Elsevier). The journal is affiliated with the Purdue University Press monograph series of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies. Contact: <> Volume 5 Issue 4 (March 2003) Article 6 Tomo Virk, "Comparative Literature versus Comparative Cultural Studies" <http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol5/iss4/6> Contents of CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 5.4 (2003) <http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol5/iss4> Abstract: In his paper, "Comparative Literature versus Comparative Cultural Studies," Tomo Virk discusses debates of the role, essence, and the future of comparative literature as it has developed since the 1995 publication of the Bernheimer Report. Virk explores the situation of the discipline in its North American context: "contextualists" argue for the abandoning of comparative literature understood as the study of literature with theoretical investigations of literariness while the "noncontextualists" underscore the study of the linguistic structure(s) of the text. Virk supports comparative literature understood as the traditional concentration of the discipline with focus on the specificities of literary questions while supplementing this focus with the discoveries of new theoretical frameworks and he suggests to maintain the investigation of literariness as a standard of the discipline but that is conditioned culturally. In the second part of his paper, Virk discusses the notion of "comparative cultural studies" -- a notion proposed, among others, notably by Canadian comparatist Steven Totosy de Zepetnek -- and puts forward the argument that the drawing of cultural studies to comparative literature would evoke fatal consequences for comparative literature as a discipline. While it is clear that under the current circumstances comparative literature is in need to function pragmatically, in the last instance comparative literature would self-destruct by a striving for social relevance and institutional assertions for survival. Virk concludes by drawing attention to the possibilities of the further development of comparative literature as an independent discipline for the future. Tomo Virk, "Comparative Literature versus Comparative Cultural Studies" page 2 of 13 CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 5.4 (2003): <http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol5/iss4/6> Tomo Virk Comparative Literature versus Comparative Cultural Studies "If Comparative Literature willingly continues to change, as it has often done in the past, and shows itself open to diversity and innovation in objects and methods of inquiry, then the future is not behind us" (Dimic 7). This sober statement by Milan V. Dimic bears witness to good historical memory about the scholarly field of comparative literature, one that on the one hand has gone through many a paradigm shift while on the other hand allowing for a conjecture that the self-confidence of comparative literature, together with literary theory in general, has been in recent times time more seriously shaken than in its previous crises. In comparison with certain movements that have marked the discipline significantly in the last decade or two, its previous principal problems and dilemmas appear almost minimal if not trivial. This time it is not a question of an affiliation with this or that school of thought or methodology but, rather, it is a question of the very existence of the discipline. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that the past decade has been a per (...truncated)