Globalization and Literary History, or Rethinking Comparative Literary History - Globally

Globalization and Literary History, or Rethinking Comparative Literary History: Globally
Author(s): Walter F. Veit

Source: New Literary History, Vol. 39, No. 3, Literary History in the Global Age (Summer,
2008), pp. 415-435
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20533095
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Globalization and Literary History, or Rethinking
Comparative Literary History?Globally
Walter F. Veit
IF the term means the peaceful economic and cultural exchange

or military engagement with the "known world," then globalization
describes a phenomenon as old as the world's oldest heroic epics
and historical narratives. However, the modern condition of "true" glo
balization is quantitatively and qualitatively different in that the term
now includes the whole world and its survival or demise as well as the
possibility of instant communication around the globe. Under these
changed global conditions of human culture, it is the task of the scholar
of literature, as historian or critic, to reassess what has up to now been
called literary history, its tradition, theory, and practice?if only to ex
plore the impact that the commodification of literature in the global
intercultural marketplace has on its interpretation by the reading public
and the literary critic alike and, therefore, on its meaning. Furthermore,
the issues are more complex and varied than can be surveyed, let alone
adequately treated, here. In consequence, only a few elements and
theoretical problems as they pertain to the human sciences had to be
selected from recent advances in scholarship, with a view to establish a
number of hermeneutic parameters considered important enough for the
task of writing comparative history generally and as might be applicable
to the project of a comparative history of Australian literature. Such a
task is not without risks given the facts that, judged by the overwhelm
ing number of publications, even topical encyclopedias and handbooks
with useful entries on literature, globalization is generally taken to be
an encompassing economic phenomenon and that very few economists
of globalization have an interest in cultural matters such as literature
beyond making it an object of their study of wealth production. But for
Timothy Brook's daringly experimental Vermeer's Hat, his interdisciplin
ary and intercultural comparative history of Sino-European economic
interdependence during the seventeenth century from a Chinese point
of view, economic historians are by and large not interested in the un
quantifiable production of meaning.1
New Literary History, 2008, 39: 415-435
416 NEW LITERARY HISTORY
When talking about global literature, a variety of uses of the term have
to be distinguished. Historically, literature is already a global phenom
enon even if some of it has been called "oral poetry" or "literature of
the unlettered," indicating that in earlier cultures and language com
munities poets created and published literature without themselves or
their audiences being literate. Today, global literature denotes a progress
of dissemination and ingathering in which not only the book market
plays a dominant role, but in which the positions and functions of the
writer, the reader, the critic, and other mediating institutions have to
be considered and assessed since all have come under attack for various
reasons at one time or another. Above all, there is the task to describe
the relationship between existing national literatures and an emerging
global literature. The title of this essay, "Globalization and Literary His
tory, or Rethinking Comparative Literary History?Globally," wishes to
focus on the theory and practice of historians of literature who maintain
that the understanding of a literary work as a system of aesthetic argu
mentation2 and, therefore, as an institution of human communication,3
is no longer restricted to a national border and language, but by means
of translations, book markets, and interpretation is productive of mean
ing beyond such borders and restrictions.
The whole issue in question has been approached under the venerable
concept of "world literature," circumscribing the field and subject matter
the literary historian had to deal with.4 Participating in the emerging
debate about the possibility of a new history of literature, Adrian Marino
went one step further by starting out from "world literature" and, in order
to overcome the confines of the Eurocentric Enlightenment's project of
a "cultural unity of the Western world " and the cultural nationalism of
the nineteenth century, proposing to extend it to "universal literature"
on the thesis that "no one literature is superior to any other: European or
non-European, all are equally important."5 He acknowledges the "esprit"
of the Enlightenment in his definition: "Universal literature defines the
sum, or totality, of the literatures of the world without discrimination.
We thus return, in the final analysis, to our starting point: assimilation of
universal literature to a single, indivisible 'republic of letters,' in the tru
est spirit of the eighteenth century" (79; my translation). [La litt?rature
universelle d?finit la somme ou la totalit? des litt?ratures du monde sans
aucune discrimination. Nous retournons ainsi, en derni?re analyse, ?
notre point de d?part: assimilation de la litt?rature universelle ? une seule
et indivisible 'r?publique des lettres,' dans l'esprit le plus authentique
du XVIIIe si?cle.] His essay offers a number of new operational concepts
that can help in the description and analysis of globalizing literature,
the most fundamental of which is "interdependence" (69), which has
gained prominence in UN and EU politics today.6 The concept of in
GLOBALIZATION AND LITERARY HISTORY 417
terdependence describes more than the phenomena of interrelation or

even interculturality that are frequently used in contemporary compara
tive literary criticism. It indicates the ineluctable linking of the cultural,
social, and economic conditions as well as categories of communication
such as dialogue, exchange, bridges, and the all-important dimensions
of literary criticism: sender, receiver, and intermediaries (68). While Ma
rino diagnoses a progressive transformation of the cultural idiosyncrasies
into a "unified, permanent and simultaneous cultural conscience of the
world" (68), he also recognizes that a universal literature is governed by
a persistent?and probably unavoidable?dialectic between nationalism
and universalism, unification and differentiation, homogenization and
particularization (70). It is precisely this dialectic and the persistence of
contradicting intranational influences that offer literary cultures "self
preservation" (un r?le d?fensif d'autoconservation) against the imposition
of an imperious universalistic monoculturalism. It demonstrates, at the
same time, that the phenomenology of interdependence is the key to the
understanding of globalization in its presences as Weltliteratur or litt?rature
universelle, and to the possibility of writing a new comparative literary
history. We shall see how a start has been made on such a project.
Before globalization appeared as a critical concept in literary criticism
and economic historians moved from studying the national book trade
to analyzing the globalizing book market, comparative literature was the
domain and methodology of scholars comparing aspects of and mutual
influences between several national literatures.7 In 1961, Henry H. H.
Remak offered a remarkably comprehensive definition of comparative
literature as an academic discipline:
Comparative Literature is the study of literature beyond the confines of one

particular country, and the study of the relationships between literatures on
the one hand, and other areas of knowledge and belief, such as the arts (e.g.,
painting, sculpture, architecture, music), philosophy, history, the social sciences
(e.g., politics, economics, sociology), the sciences, religion, etc., on the other.
In brief, it is the comparison of one literature with another or others, and the
comparison of literature with other spheres of human expression.8
It will be noted that Remak, stopping short of using the concept of

interdependence, does not specifically mention history of literature here;
however, I assume that he, like all good philologists, considered history of
literature as a matter of course, although its theory became a matter of
contention among scholars of literature at the time. During his address
to the Second Congress of the International Comparative Literature As
sociation (ICLA) in 1958, after a remarkable history of scholarly work
in the discipline, Ren? Wellek diagnosed "The Crisis of Comparative
418 NEW literary history
Literature."9 He followed it up in 1973 with a deeply pessimistic pap

"The Fall of Literary History."10 These papers created a considerable
Not only have these papers been reprinted several times, confer
among them the Bellagio Colloquium in 197911?have made it a topic
discussion, and there is hardly an essay in the area that does not ref
it and is compelled to take sides. In fact, as late as 1992, David Perk
following Wellek's arguments, answered the question in the title of
book, Is Literary History Possible? in the negative.12 No doubt, as W
pointed out, at the time, literary history was criticized for its "atom
factualism" and antiquarianism; an "uncritical scientism which pret
to establish causal relationships and provide causal explanations by li
parallels between works of literature" (419) and, most importantly,
its "lack of focus," surrendering "its central concern to general histo
After scrutinizing each of these concerns, Wellek can point to the
of the malaise: "Causal explanation as deterministic scientific explana
by deduction from a general law or demonstration of necessary effi
cause fails if applied to literature" (427). Why this should be the ca
not discussed at this point. But the message is that the work of art
object sui generis that we cannot explain as to its causes but from w
our interpretation derives, in general terms, an understanding of t
meaning of human life. The turn to werkimmanente Interpretation,13 wh
does not demand the construction of linear developments in lite
history nor is any "evolution in the history of critical argument" (4
is ample evidence of this situation. In a far more theoretical essay, J
Bessi?re returns much later to the independence and difference of
work of art that he wants to preserve in the face of globalization.14
Yet in 1984, on the occasion of the second international confer
in Hong Kong on the theme Rewriting Literary History,15 Elinor Sh
also documented the slow "Demise of Practical Criticism," such as t
German werkimmanente Interpretation together with its French equivale
of the explication de texte and the Anglo-American close reading. T
"cultural revolution" after 1968 prescribed a much more politic
and socially inspired criticism. So what did remain of the search fo
satisfactory methodology in literary criticism? In his "Overview" of
conference, Fredric Jameson had "a curious sense that it was not ab
literary history at all." The reason for it was obvious to him:
For one thing, few enough of us are engaged anymore in writing literary histo
at least of the narrative kind; and few of us think of our work in terms of lit
history, though we may think of doing criticism historically, which is a somew
different matter. ... It is as though Auerbach were repeatedly invoked, but
to stand for the last real literary historian any of us could think of; that
though the moment is over, and we don't even have the issue of literary his
to confront. This is rather odd at a time when history itself has never bee
vital, when in the wake of the failure of the other social sciences it has once
again regained its power as the central organizing discipline.16
Further on, Jameson diagnoses a "fear of history," of suspicions that

"literary history seems to entail a reliance on mythical binary oppositions
and antitheses"; that it promotes a discredited middle-class ideology of
progress or returns to the myth of the Golden Age; and, most threaten
ingly, that it makes us lose the present. As an antidote, which may solve
the problems inherent in historicism, Jameson suggests a literary history
that does not look for links between works of literatures but is written as
a "history of situations to which these works [e.g. Ulysses] are responses."17
This suggestion strikes me as potentially very fruitful, particularly in the
context of a theory of literature as aesthetic argumentation, although it
seems, at first glance, to discount the efficacy of comparison.
As a participant together with Ren? Wellek in the Bellagio Symposium,
I presented a more optimistic view in my paper "History and Temporality:
Some Theses against Skepticism in the Writing of Literary History," argu
ing for the possibility of writing a history of literature on the foundation
of philosophical hermeneutics as initiated by Martin Heidegger's Sein
und Zeit (Being and Time) and elaborated by Hans-Georg Gadamer in
Wahrheit und Methode (Truth and Method).18 The choice of temporality as
analytical basis was meant to indicate a turning away from the timelessness
of laws in the natural sciences toward a phenomenology of change and
production of meaning in the humanities. I am convinced that it is still
valid in the hermeneutics of interdependence in comparative literature.
Clearly, many of my arguments have by now been developed by others
as will be shown later.19 However, it remains puzzling that, on the one
hand, Hans-Robert Jauss's Rezeptionsgeschichte,20 which is his attempt to
turn the canons of Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics in Truth and
Method into an effective methodology for a historiography of literature,
was then rejected almost immediately; and on the other, one might ask
why it was not obvious that the fundamental objection, the inapplicabil
ity of causal explanations in literary history, applies equally to general
history where the struggle for a comparative historiography beyond the
nation-state is gaining momentum, too.21 It seems that in spite of Paul
Ricoeur's, Ernesto Grassi's, Hayden White's, and Hans Blumenberg's
groundbreaking analyses of the condition of cognition, of understanding
and interpretation in historiography, in literary criticism the subjectivity
objectivity dilemma, the rejection of an anthropological metaphoricity,
and the fear of relativism in the epistemology of the humanities have
remained coercive.22
Or have they? After all, according to Remak's 1981 Bellagio report
and following the contributions of other participants, a new chapter in
literary history was about to be opened and a development initiated

that was, ever so slowly and circumspectly, moving through the open
ing created by Gadamer, Ricoeur, and White and encouraged by Ralph
Cohen's newly founded journal New Literary History.23 It is significant
that the main impetus to write literary history again came from the
discipline of comparative literature, in particular from the ICLA and its
official project for the Comparative History of Literatures in European
Languages (CHLEL) directed by its coordinating committee chaired
by Henry Remak.24 Although the ICLA project is, in the first instance,
restricted to literatures in European languages, in line with Remak's
definition, the index "comparative" indicates its methodological direc
tions: intercultural and interdisciplinary. Each of these parameters de
mands careful considerations. Literatures in European languages occur
not just within nation-states in their national language. Most European
languages are present in literatures of all continents. The reasons for
and the extent of this phenomenon have been thoroughly researched
mainly by linguists who, it seems, do not have a particular interest in
the hermeneutics of literature.25 European colonialism is one of them,
but voluntary or forced migration in English translations does not come
far behind. Others such as economic, strategic, and religious reasons
have emerged from the background, adding to the already considerable
complexity. It has become clear that traditional comparative studies fo
cusing on the influence of one writer or literature on another writer or
literature, or studies of literary devices, genres, intellectual and emotional
trends and styles, which juxtapose these phenomena in one literature
with similar ones in another, obviously have generated valuable facts,
but in the main did not foreground the readers' understanding of their
meaning. Further questions reveal the full extent of the complexity: Are
these comparisons intra- or international? Or intra- or intercultural? Are
they synchronous or diachronous? Or is diachrony an unavoidable ele
ment in all comparisons? Hidden in these questions are intrinsic factual
and, therefore, hermeneutic problems that demand attention. After
all, fundamental to literary communication is the dialectic of produc
tion and reception of literature or of question and answer in literary
argumentation. Furthermore, there is within all settler countries like
Australia the phenomenon of "ethnic writing" or "minority writing" by
writers of non-English-speaking background (NESB), making it obvious
that intracultural literature is no longer monolingual.26 There is a sizable
body of Australian literature in English by immigrant writers whose first
language is not English, but also in languages other than English. How
to integrate them into, and what is their meaning for, the "national lit
erature and culture"? This example points to many identical phenomena
in other countries that have remained largely unconsidered or not even
documented. If nothing else, these aspects should alert us to the fact that
such intracultural complexity is nothing new at all. European literatures
experienced it during antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance?
in fact in all periods of its history prior to the age of nationalism.27 For
a long time, such intercultural literary communication has been noted
as a curiosity. By now it has become obvious that interculturality must
be considered as a normal human condition and thus a factor in global
interdependence.
Since the start of the CHLEL project of the ICLA in 1967, members of
the coordinating committee charged with developing, overseeing, and,
eventually, publishing the individual histories, and the groups of authors
writing these histories, have revisited the theoretical problems that had
led Wellek to despair of writing literary history and that were discussed
during the Bellagio Colloquium. It had become apparent that the theory
of literature had finally taken note of recent advances in the epistemology
of the humanities mentioned earlier, necessitating a rethinking of the
theory and methodologies of comparative literature, too. Although clearly
excellent scholarly achievements within their own venerable traditional
theoretical ambit, some projects completed and published before 1986
did not sit comfortably with this new expectation. In an homage ? Henry
Remak, Jean Weisgerber, himself author and editor of the pathbreaking
project Les avant-gardes litt?raires au XXe si?cle, found the right words when
characterizing the theoretical development:
It is necessary to stress the essentially problematic character of the enterprise:

it is the first attempt in this type of comparative historiography, at once col
lective and international, interdisciplinary in its approach, proceeding by way
of questioning. Ceaselessly interrogating its own methods and their modes of
application, comparative history formulates answers which arouse in turn new
questions; it thus inductively forges a chain of knowledge.
Its volumes clearly state their theoretical and methodological choices and
through their interpretative decisions invite a dialogue, thus serving as a spring
board for future research and encouraging in the reader a spirit of critique and
interrogation, regardless of the answer.28
Such relentless questioning of traditional theory already stirred up by

contenders such as Marxism, structuralism, deconstruction, and cultural
studies has born seminal fruits in at least two of the ICLA sponsored
projects, in the avant-gardes project directed by Weisgerber, and in
one so far uncultivated area of comparative studies, namely the project
European-Language Writing in Sub-Saharan Africa, initiated and guided by
Albert G?rard.29 The "General Preface to All Volumes Published as Part
of the 'Comparative History of Literatures'" declares that all of the ICLA
projects are subject to the principle of internationalization in that they
are "based on two fundamental premises: one, that the writing of literary
histories confined to specific nations, peoples and languages must be
complemented by the writing of literary history that coordinates related
or comparable phenomena from an international point of view: two,
that it is not possible for individual scholars to write such comprehensive
histories but that we must now rely on structured teamwork drawing col
laborators from different nations."30 While emphasizing internationaliza
tion, collaboration, and interdisciplinarity, the focus is specifically on the
"promotion of an understanding of the historical processes in literature."
Thus the history of European-Language Writing in Sub-Saharan Africa is
placed in the social and political context of sub-Saharan Africa and, even
more significantly, into the context of the history of African language
literatures in sub-Saharan Africa, which G?rard had explored in depth
before embarking on the European languages literature project.31 This
innovative step moved not only in the direction of an intercultural history
of literatures not envisaged before, but initiated a new understanding
of the nature of comparative literary history in an age of globalization.
Gerard's introduction to European-Language Writing in Sub-Saharan Africa
is a tour de force through the development of a new methodology in
the writing of comparative literary history for African literatures, which
proved to be paradigmatic for subsequent ICLA projects. Starting slowly
from interest in individual writers in the geographic and political con
text of a repressive colonialism after the Berlin Conference of 1885, the
survey moves to the liberation struggles and eventual establishment of
independent nation-states and to the efforts at decolonization and the
formation of national identities with constant respect to linguistic and
religious differences. Thus the context for a history of African literatures
is first established by highlighting key concepts of a new comparative
literary history, such as internal and external interdependence beyond
fragile national cultures including multilingualism and multiculturalism.
It moves on from the earlier cosmopolitanism of individual writers to
internationalization in response to repression and exile and, ultimately,
to the dialectic of globalization. For the same writers who are forced into
exile in London, Paris, and elsewhere, even prior to winning Nobel Prizes
and other international awards, have started to influence metropolitan
writing in Europe and in the Americas, in Asia and in Oceania. In fact,
political exile and exodus for intellectual, moral, and economic reasons
should be considered among the main factors in the hermeneutics of
the globalization of literature.
In addition, Gerard's introduction points to further factors of glo
balization of literature, in particular the function of the literary critic
and historian in the hermeneutic triangle of writer, work, and reader.
Under conditions of political liberation, democratization, and cultural
decolonization, the role of the critic has become eminently political.

But Nobel laureates like Boris Pasternak, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, Wole
Soyinka, Naguib Mahfouz, Gao Xingjian, and Orhan Pamuk, whose
works have won a place in the canon of "world literature," are also
reminders that the Nobel Prize and other international awards can
become affronts to oppressive regimes and intolerant societies whose
main tools are censorship and the courts. Not surprisingly, during the
cold war years, the scholarly work on African literatures by members of
the Soviet Academy of Science in Moscow became political by promot
ing nationalism, anticapitalism, and socialism. The waxing and waning
of ideological agendas, say, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and their
recent emergence as "culture wars," analyzed by Samuel Huntington as
a general trend, represent further parameters of globalization.32 G?rard
adds a few more elements to the general picture in which comparative
literary studies became vehicles for political interests and part of the
context of his comparative history:
Historical circumstances, the facts of a common struggle against white supremacy,

bolstered by the political ideology of Panafricanism and the cultural ideology of
n?gritude, thus initiated an international approach which enabled African liter
ary scholars to eschew, at an early stage of its development, the pitfalls of narrow
nationalism that plagued the emergence and evolution of European literary
scholarship during the nineteenth century. . . . But it should not be forgotten
that through the early phase of modern African literary scholarship?say, until
the mid-sixties?the general topicality of African affairs, as independence was
coming closer or becoming a reality, made it practically impossible for literary
study to avoid preoccupations and stances which were often more appropriate
to journalism, sociology or anthropology than the traditional literary approach,
whether critical or historical.33
Regarding the hermeneutical dimension of research, the work on

ICLA projects such as the comparative history of sub-Saharan African
literary cultures not only enforced interdisciplinarity but also multicul
tural and multilingual collaboration of a team of? in this case some
sixty?specialists from centers of African scholarship around the globe.
African literature and, with it, the study of its history have moved out of
the confines of regions, nation-states, and even the African continent
and have become an area of global scholarship.
It is clear now how defining the project initiated and supervised by
G?rard has become not only for the development of a new theory and
practice of comparative history of literatures in European languages but
also for any such project in other language areas by demonstrating the
interdependence of all elements and factors in literary hermeneutics
and, therefore, of global meaning production. Obviously, the reception
of a literary work of art is not the same in all places and recipient cul
tures, but rather produces the surplus of meaning relative to the work's
original context. Mario Vald?s, who initiated and directed with Djelal
Kadir the subsequent ICLA project Literary Cultures of Latin America?A
Comparative History, refers in his "Introduction: Beyond Literary History"
to the advances made in the Africa project and takes the opportunity to
search for a philosophical foundation of the new theory and practice of
writing comparative literary history.34 An extensive and comprehensive
discussion of the theoretical foundation had been offered previously by
Vald?s, Linda Hutcheon, Stephen Greenblatt, Marshall Brown, Walter D.
Mignolo, and Homi Bhabha in Rethinking Literary History: A Dialogue on
Theory?5 All contributions deserve intensive and extensive discussion for
which there is no room here. I shall try to tease out specific aspects from
Hutcheon's and Vald?s's essays, which should inform my equally abbrevi
ated consideration of a comparative history of Australian literature.
In her essay "Rethinking the National Model," Hutcheon offers a
survey of the literature on literary history and the problems arising.36
Accelerating globalization and deterritorialization increase the threat to
national cohesion and identity as habitual bases for writing history and
lead to multiple diasporas. They require new models that account for the
shift away from stabilized identity juxtaposing "us" and "them" toward
"mutual models of cooperation" and the "unavoidable interaction today
of the once dominant and the once marginalized" (24). These models
"move from a single national to a comparative transnational focus" (26)
that, according to Osterhammel, would have to be established under the
umbrella of transculturality. Analyzing the situation more deeply with
the help of critics and anthropologists like Edward Said, Robert Stam,
Homi Bhabha, and James Clifford, Hutcheon recognizes that the new
history of literature has to be constructed as a relational, contrapuntal,
polycommunal, polyethnic, multiperspectival comparative history. A
comparative literary history, which includes all the parameters, emerges
as dialogic and thus acknowledges that "[g]lobal identity, as much as
national identity, is a complex construction that has arisen in specific
historical conditions. It too is a lived reality, a reality lived as much in
cultural representations?such as literature and literary history?as
in any 'direct communal solidarity' (J. Tomlinson) on the level of the
social" (33). We will see later that these parameters apply eminently to
the writing of cultural and literary histories of immigrant societies like
the Australian.
In his contribution, which is clearly meant to lay the theoretical foun
dation of a "metahistory" for any future comparative literary history
(referring explicitly to Hayden White's Metahistory later in his essay) but
specifically for the project of the Literary Cultures of Latin America, Vald?s
probes deeper into the hermeneutic dimension with special emphasis

on an "effective history as a response to interventionist literary histories
as well as the few remaining antiquarian efforts."37 He opens his discus
sion with the question "Is literary history, history?" hoping to overcome
Wellek's objections by taking his departure from the historiographie in
novations of the Annales School, in particular taking Fernand Braudel's
writing on the Mediterranean as a guiding paradigm of an effective use
of the geography, language, economy, demography, and the social and
intellectual traditions in the establishment of the context into which a
comparative history, political or literary, is inevitably imbedded.38 These
parameters suggest a "reincorporation of literary history into history" and
the need to "think the literary text as a historical event of production
and subsequently of reception" (RH 67). Throughout his essay, Vald?s
acknowledges that the notion of an "effective history" "is treated in many
essays and books, most succinctly in Ricoeur's Time and Narrative,"39
which discusses Gadamer's notion of "Wirkungsgeschichte," commonly
translated as "effective history," but shifts its grounding from Heidegger's
ontology of time and Gadamer's exegesis, to language: "For language is
the great institution, the institution of institutions, that has preceded each
and every one of us" (3:221). The reasons for Ricoeur's analysis and the
consequences for historiography are presented again in the conclusions
of the final volume of Time and Narrative, time per se is inexpressible,
or in Ricoeur's words: "temporality cannot be spoken of in the direct
discourse of phenomenology, but rather requires the mediation of the
indirect discourse of narration" (3:241). Parodying Heidegger, Ricoeur
coins the phrase: "In its schematic form, our working hypothesis thus
amounts to taking narrative as the guardian of time [original French gardien
du temps-, German translation H?ter der Imt, all my emphases] insofar as
there can be no thought about time without narrated time" (3:241). Or
applied to history: there is no history outside narrated history. Ultimately,
time cannot be represented {irr?pr?sentibilit? du temps), it cannot be con
tained in a concept,40 "which makes even phenomenology continually
turn to metaphors and to the language of myth, in order to talk about
the upsurge of the present or the flowing of the unitary flux of time"
(3:243). This inexpressibility of time constitutes the ontological dilemma
that Hayden White tries to solve in his pathmaking book Metahistory by
grounding it, too, in the primordial metaphoricity of language.41
From such a foundation, Vald?s can derive an answer to his original
question whether literary history is history and an indication of the meth
odology necessary to fulfill the tasks of literary history. As "prefigurative
narrativity is the basis for temporality and, therefore, historical narrative
offers us the only way to make sense out of past events," "the historian's
task is one of mediation between the events and the story of human
agency that gives meaning to these events" (RH 80). As we know from
Gadamer, such mediation between the self and the other, between the
cognitive subject and, in the case of comparative literature, the event
of the work of literature as its object of understanding is the true locus
of hermeneutics.42 Both the self and the event, whether constituted in
traculturally or interculturally, are creations of the dialectical structure
of effective history not only with respect to their mutual affectedness or
interdependence. In the process of understanding, the cognitive self is
as much affecting its object as it is affected by it, while both are situated
in a context of past understandings and tradition that dominate the ho
rizon of expectation just as much as the horizon of present and future
experience. Given that the cognition of both, of the self and the event,
is made present in a narrative that gives the process of understanding its
temporal structure, understanding itself is inescapably locked in its own
historicity.43 This is also the reason for the productivity of the temporal
distance between the cognitive self and the event in the past. Temporal
distance, which is grammatically marked in and by the narrative, is pro
ductive of meaning in that the present subject is necessarily affected dif
ferently by a past event than any subject in the past. The same historicity
of understanding is also the reason for a surplus of meaning generated
in and by the historical sequence of interpretation. Whether the emer
gence of different interpretations, which is due to changed perspectives,
is taken to create a richer and more complex or a truer meaning needs
to be further investigated. The key to a solution of the problem may be
found in the theory of argumentation advanced in modern rhetoric.
The potential of an argument in the form of a question addressing us,
and the answer given by us as presented in the narrative of a work of
art or literature, is unveiled in a succession of readings from changed
perspectives and contexts but never brought to an end. Thus the mean
ing of a poem is inexhaustible, and its truth is being established in every
reading. Furthermore, neither the writer, nor the work, nor the reader
or critic are islands in the process of understanding. Multiperspectivity
and interdependence of events?that is, of works of literature beyond
their national setting?install comparison as the only effective methodol
ogy for literary history.
How much the elements of this badly truncated expos? of the herme
neutic situation and the pertaining factors in the process of understand
ing can serve us as the theoretical foil for the project of a comparative
history of Australian literature under conditions of globalization is put
forward in some earlier essays.44 Suffice it to say that the recent projects
of CHLEL named earlier are offering an inspiration and a lead for all
subsequent projects. The tables of contents of each of these publications
are demonstrating that the interdependence of interculturality, sociocul
tural contexts, multiperspectivity beyond the pluralism and complemen

tarity of critical approaches suggested by Weisgerber,45 past and present
history, are the hermeneutic parameters for a new comparative history
of literature?also of comparative histories that have to leave the orbit
of European languages in multicultural and multilingual societies. So
far such comparative literary histories have been published or planned
only for literatures in sub-Saharan Africa, the successor states of the Hab
sburg empire, South America, and the Caribbean. All of these areas are
characterized by immense internal and external migration, producing,
at least, diasporic multilingual literatures. Obviously, such characteristics
are shared with the United States of America, Australia, and, increasingly,
with all European nation-states, although the dominant local language
tends to become the preferred language for immigrant writers in which
to publish their works or have them immediately translated into. How
ever, it seems that we have not even started to think about such a project
for the culturally diverse Middle Eastern countries or the South Asian
countries with their complex history of invasions and colonial rule that
has reached out in many ways into Australia and the Pacific. Beyond
important studies of bilateral influence between individual writers or
during certain epochs of national literatures, no comprehensive histories
have been attempted. The national model is still dominant.
What then are the hermeneutic conditions for a comparative history
of Australian literary cultures? Australian literature benefited greatly by
breaking free from a semicolonial status in 1901, from a vast Anglo-Celtic
and non-Anglo-Celtic immigration before and after World War II, which
increased the population from almost 8 million in 1946 to 21 million in
2007, of which 85 percent claim European descent. Similarly, it benefited
from globalization if only considering the economic side of a free ex
change of cultural products.46 However, for a long time, Australians felt,
and more often than not feel even today, separated from the rest of the
world by the most populous nations (China, India, and Indonesia) to
the north and the west, and by the vast expanse of the Pacific bounded
by the Americas to the east. This geographic placing is further extended
by the competing political systems and, during a time of globalized eco
nomic interdependency, by intricate but all-important economic relations
upon which Australia's fortunes depend. This geopolitical context is still
stimulating the internal as well as external discussions about Australia's
national identity ranging from "poor white trash in Asia" and "lapdog of
America" to "an outpost of European civilization."471 fear that the sensible
and wise considerations of the Australian philosopher John Passmore,
who pointed out that Australia and her neighbors had little choice but
to acknowledge a specific identity in the Pacific, has not put an end to
the debate.48 This context and its intellectual recognition will remain an
element in any serious theoretical and practical work in the history of

Australian literary culture. But it must also be pointed out that there is
very little evidence that the theoretical work regarding the epistemol
ogy of the humanities in general, and of comparative literary history in
particular, fundamental to the ICLA projects, has been recognized let
alone absorbed into Australian comparative literary criticism. Very recent
voices have called for a crossing of national, political, ethnic, and disci
plinary boundaries, particularly towards Australian Aboriginal literature.
However, apart from an obviously pertinent interest in postcolonialism,49
they do not reflect upon and, therefore, miss to consider seriously the
critical parameters of interculturality and globalization.50
This is clearly reflected in the existing histories of Australian litera
ture, which I surveyed some years ago.51 Literature by Aborigines and
by refugees and migrants from non-English-speaking countries in lan
guages other than English or in translations, sometimes called diasporic
literature, and by other marginalized groups in Australian society, are
either not included at all or have made a hesitant entry under the pres
sure of government-sanctioned multiculturalism since the early 1970s.
In any case, there is enough scholarly work already invested for a new
comparative history.52 But even the more recent and very useful history
by Ken Goodwin, published in the many volumes of the MacMillan His
tory of Literature series whose title suggests that there is only English,
perhaps Irish, language literature, has only a short paragraph entitled
"The uniqueness of recent writing" offering few remarks on "Aborigi
nal writers" and "Writers of non-English-speaking background."53 All of
these are obviously based on a great number of research publications
by scholars and writers inside and outside the academy?not only inside
but also outside of Australia, where studies into Australian literature are
conducted by Australians and non-Australians, generating a complex
system of perspectives that reflects the even greater complexity of the
readership in the country. These facts can no longer be analyzed solely
with the help of reception theory; they have not been and are still
not consistently recognized and integrated into the hermeneutics of
Australian literary criticism. Most scholars and writers in Australia who
have used and are still using multiculturalism as the theoretical base for
their studies have a background of migration from non-English-speaking
countries.54 They have started to go beyond documenting and studying
the "contributions to and influences on" Australian literary culture by
migrant writers. They have begun to investigate the shift in the identity
formation of migrants, which made them read Australian literature "dif
ferently." In consequence, Australian scholars recognize that local critics
have neither a monopoly on the production of knowledge about Australia
and her literary culture, nor on the production of meaning of Austra
lian literature abroad.55 Scholars have shown that not only individual
authors have moved intellectually between Australia and Europe. They
have demonstrated how modern Australian literature is interculturally
meshed with global modernism.56 Others have painstakingly traced the
change in meaning of works when read or performed in other parts of
the world.57 The changes in meaning of globalized modern literature
by, say, G?nter Grass or Bernhard Schlink, and the frequently acrimoni
ous debate following their readings in Australia or America, are good
examples of the process of interdependence. Thus Australian literature
acquires a "surplus of meaning" beyond the understanding of the term
that Ricoeur gave it.58 At the same time, the underlying multifaceted
phenomenon of global interdependence of literary cultures comes into
focus, requiring comparison of cultures dominated by the anthropologi
cal and epistemological dialectic of the self and the other, the foreign
and the familiar. However, comparisons guided by interculturality and
interdependence do not eliminate but acknowledge and protect the
insurmountable gap between cultural identities in order to generate
meaning and understanding of differences.59
Has the work on a comparative history of Australian literary cultures
started? Following John Docker's earlier trenchant critique of the con
dition of literary criticism in Australian departments of English,60 Mark
Davis diagnosed an ongoing crisis of an inward looking literary liberalism
that has begun "to lose its status as the epistemological axis of western
civic discourse" under the onslaught of a rising "new conservatism and
the increasing entrenchment of neo-liberalism."61 The reference is to the
"culture wars" fought out mainly between the supporters and critics of a
long-reigning conservative federal government in the field of Australian
historiography largely over questions of Australian national identity and
pride, and regarding the past and present treatment of the Australian
Aborigines. Literary criticism has been drawn into it over the establish
ment of a national literary canon.62
At the same time, and perhaps without cognizance of the new com
parative histories of literary cultures advocated by NLH or their episte
mological foundations and consequences, Robert Dixon reflects, in his
essay "Boundary Work," on the consequences of interdependence in and
on academic research, on the discipline of Australian literature stud
ies, and Australian institutional research infrastructure and concludes:
"The reality is that Australian literary studies are no longer, if they ever
were, a separate field whose logic is self determining. It exists in a series
of complex, usually productive relations with numerous neighbouring
disciplines and projects. It is both a structured and structuring field.
Recognizing this complexity may require us to rethink our research
projects, and our own professional identities and practices."63
Surprisingly then, but without recognition let alone criticism of the

theoretical and substantive work in comparative literary history in cognate
areas, such as French or German studies, Dixon feels that there is hope.
He argues that the still existing boundaries on "three principle axes: the
disciplinary, the institutional and the national" have to be overcome, in
particular the national. He claims that: "On the national axis, we have
worked within but also gone beyond the paradigm of the nation, placing
it in a series of broader contexts of comparison, originally with English
and European literatures, later with Commonwealth literature, and,
most recently, in relation to ideas of the postcolonial, the international
and the global" (38).
The effects of such placing on theory and practice of an Australian
literary history have still to be anticipated. But only when the net of psy
chosocial factors of the context is unraveled is an understanding of many
puzzling elements, such as the reception of German postwar literature,
possible. On the practical side, Dixon admits that in order to engage
in true comparisons of literary cultures, "it may become necessary to
have a second language" (42), a conditio sine qua non since the inception
of comparative literature. This being accepted but by few scholars in
Australian Studies in Australia, he argues that it might be safer in their
strenuous efforts at internationalization to go no further than placing
conferences of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature in
"Boston, Christchurch or Johannesburg" rather than in Berlin, Madrid,
or Moscow, although these and other foreign countries have vibrant
centers of Australian Studies. Wherever and whenever, encounters with
globalizing Australian literature and comparative literary criticism will
turn into lessons of global interdependence in which any hegemonic
domination of the correct understanding of Australian literature will
miss the surplus of meaning generated in other places and times.64
Monash University
NOTES
1 Jonathan Michie, ed., The Handbook of Globalisation (Northampton, MA: Edward El

gar Publishing, 2003); Roland Robertson and Kathleen White, eds., Globalization: Critical
Concepts in Sociology, 6 vols. (London: Routledge, 2003); Robertson and Jan Aart Sch?lte,
eds., Encyclopedia of Globalization, 4 vols. (New York: Routledge, 2007); John Tomlinson,
Globalization and Culture (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1999); Tyler Cowen, In Praise of
Commercial Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 2000); Cowen, Creative Destruction:
How Globalization Is Changing the World's Culture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 2002);
Eric L. Jones, Cultures Merging: A Historical and Economic Critique of Culture (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton Univ. Press, 2006); Ulrich Beck, What is Globalization? (Cambridge: Polity, 2003);
J?rgen Osterhammel and Niels P. Petersson, Globalization: A Short History (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton Univ. Press, 2005); Daniel Cohen, Globalization and Its Enemies (Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press, 2006); Timothy Brook, Vermeer's Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of a
Global World (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2008).
2 Walter Veit, "Rhetorik als Argumentationstheorie: Das philosophische Problem der
Vorwissenschaftlichkeit am Beispiel der Rhetorik," Topik und Rhetorik, ed. Thomas Schirren
and Gerd Ueding (T?bingen, Ger.: Niemeyer, 2000), 445-58.
3 Karl Popper, "Towards a Rational Theory of Tradition," in Conjectures and Refutations:
The Growth of Scientific Knowledge, 3rd rev. ed. (London: Routledge, 1969), 120-35.
4 See the relevant essays and bibliography in Manfred Schmeling, ed., Weltliteratur heute:
Konzepte und Perspektiven (W?rzburg, Ger.: K?nigshausen and Neumann, 1995); Hendrik
Birus, ed., Germanistik und Komparatistik (Stuttgart-Weimar, Ger.: Metzler, 1995); David
Damrosch, What is World Literature? (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 2003).
5 Adrian Marino, "O? situer la litt?rature universelle?" Cahiers roumains d'?tudes litt?raires
3 (1975): 66, 67 (hereafter cited in text).
6 Bertrand Badie, L'Impuissance de la puissance: Essai sur les incertitudes et les espoirs des nou
velles relations internationales (Paris: Fayard, 2004) and Sovereignty, Prevention and Intervention:
Norms and Practice in International Politics (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).
7 Sarah Lawall, ed., Reading World Literature: Theory, History, Practice (Austin: Univ. of
Texas Press, 1994).
8 Henry H. H. Remak, "Comparative Literature, Its Definition and Function," in
Comparative Literature: Method and Perspective, ed. Newton P. Stallknecht and Horst Frenz
(Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1961), 5.
9 Ren? Wellek, "The Crisis of Comparative Literature," in Proceedings of the 2nd Congress
of the International Comparative Literature Association, vol. 1, Comparative Literature, ed. Werner
P. Friederich (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1959), 149-59.
10 Wellek, "The Fall of Literary History," in New Perspectives in German Literary Criticism,
ed. Richard E. Amacher and Victor Lange (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1979),
418-31 (hereafter cited in text).
11 Henry H. H. Remak's report and the proceedings in Neohelicon 8, no. 2 (1981):
219-306.
12 David Perkins, Is Literary History Possible? (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press,
1992).
13 Reinhold Grimm and Jost Hermand, eds., Methodenfragen der deutschen Literaturwis
senschaft (Darmstadt, Ger.: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1973) (hereafter cited in
text).
14 Jean Bessi?re, "How To Reform Comparative Literature's Paradigm in the Face of
Globalization," Neohelicon 28, no. 1 (2001): 13-24.
15 Elinor Shaffer, "The Demise of Practical Criticism," in Rewriting Literary History, ed.
Tak-Wai Wong and M. A. Abbas (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Univ. Press, 1984), 277-313.
16 Fredric Jameson, "Overview," in Rewriting Literary History, 341.
17 Jameson, "Overview," in Rewriting Literary History, 342-43, 344.
18 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John MacQuarrie and Edward Robinson
(1927; London: SCM Press, 1962); Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd rev. ed.,
trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (1960; New York: Crossroad, 1992);
Gadamer, Philosophical Hermeneutics (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press,
1976). The persisting misunderstanding of Gadamer's epistemology as a methodology in
the humanities remains of concern.
19 Veit, "History and Temporality: Some Theses against Skepticism in the Writing of
Literary History," Neohelicon 8, no. 2 (1981): 255-67.
20 Hans-Robert Jauss, "History of Art and Pragmatic History," in New Perspectives in German
Literary Criticism: A Collection of Essays, ed. Richard E. Amacher and Victor Lange, trans.
David Henry Wilson et al. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1979), 432-64; Literaturge
schichte als Provokation der Literaturwissenschaft (T?bingen, Ger.: M. Niemeyer, 1957); Toward
an Aesthetic of Reception, trans. Michael Shaw (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1982);
also Aesthetic Experience and Literary Hermeneutics (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press,
1982).
21 J?rgen Osterhammel, "Transkulturell vergleichende Geschichtswissenschaft," in
Geschichtswissenschaft jenseits des Nationalstaats: Studien zur Beziehungsgeschichte und Zivilisati
onsvergleich (G?ttingen, Ger.: Vandenhoek and Ruprecht, 2001), 11-45; significantly, the
names and arguments of Gadamer and Ricoeur are not mentioned in the index. Eckhardt
Fuchs and Benedikt Stuchtey, eds., Across Cultural Borders: Historiography in Global Perspective
(Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002).
22 For Paul Ricoeur, see History and Truth, trans. Charles A. Kelbley (Evanston, IL: North
western Univ. Press, 1965); The Conflict of Interpretation: Essays in Hermeneutics (Evanston, IL:
Northwestern Univ. Press, 1974); Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning
(Fort Worth: Texas Christian Univ. Press, 1976). For Ernesto Grassi, see The Primordial
Metaphor (Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1994) and Rhetoric
as Philosophy: The Humanist Tradition (University Park: Pennsylvania State Univ. Press, 1980).
For Hayden White, see Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1973); "Historical Pluralism," Critical Inquiry 12,
no. 3 (1986): 480-93; The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1987); Figurai Realism: Studies in the Mimesis Effect
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1999). For Hans Blumenberg, see Paradigmen zu
einer Metaphorologie (Frankfurt am Main, Ger.: Suhrkamp, 1998) and "An Anthropological
Approach to the Contemporary Significance of Rhetoric," in Kenneth Baynes et al., eds.,
After Philosophy: End or Transformation? (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987).
23 Ralph Cohen, ed., New Directions in Literary History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ.
Press, 1974); Cohen, ed., The Future of Literary Theory (New York: Routledge, 1989); Cohen
and Michael S. Roth, eds., History and... : Histories within the Human Sciences (Charlottesville:
Univ. Press of Virginia, 1995) ; Wolfgang Iser, 'Twenty-Five Years of Literary History: A Tribute
to Ralph Cohen," 25th anniversary issue, New Literary History 25, no. 4 (1994):733-47.
24 Jean Weisgerber, "?crire l'histoire: l'example de l'Histoire compar?e des litt?ratures
de langues europ?ennes: Principes et organization," in Th?orie Litt?raire: Probl?mes et perspec
tives, ed. Marc Angenot et al. (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1989), 353-58.
25 Michael Clyne, Intercultural Communication at Work: Cultural Values in Discourse (Cam
bridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1994); Gerhard Leitner, Australia's Many Voices: Ethnic Eng
lishes, Indigenous and Migrant Languages: Policy and Education (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2004).
26 Sneja Gunew, FramingMarginality: Multicultural Literary Studies (Melbourne: Melbourne
Univ. Press, 1994) and Haunted Nations: The Colonial Dimensions of Multiculturalisms (London:
Routledge, 2004).
27 A telling example is documented and discussed in Natalie Zemon Davis's book Trickster
Travels: In Search of Leo Africanus, A Sixteenth-Century Muslim Between Two Worlds (London:
Faber, 2007).
28 "Il faut souligner le charact?re essentiellement probl?matique de l'entreprise: c'est la
premi?re tentative de ce genre en mati?re historiographie compar?e, ? la fois collective
et internationale, interdisciplinaire dans sa d?marche et proc?dant par questionnement.
S'interrogeant sans rel?che sur ses m?thodes et leurs modalit?s d'application, l'Histoire
compar?e formule des r?ponses suscitant ? leur tour de nouvelles questions: ainsi, elle
forge inductivement la cha?ne du savoir.
Ses volumes indiquent clairement leurs options th?oriques et m?thodologiques et par
leurs choix d'interpr?tations invitent au dialogue, servant ainsi de tremplin aux recherches
futures et encourageant chez le lecteur l'esprit critique et l'interrogation, quelle qu'en
soit l'issue." Weisgerber, ed., Les avant-gardes litt?raires au XXe si?cle (Budapest: Akad?miai
Kiad?, 1984), 353-54. See also Weisgerber, "R?nover l'histoire: le probl?me des avant
gardes litt?raires," Komparatistische Hefte 11 (1985): 21-33, and "Esquisse d'un programme
comparatiste ou de quelques chateaux en Espagne," in Sensus Communis: Contemporary Trends

in Comparative Literature: Panorama de la situation actuelle en litt?rature compar?es: Festschrift
f?r Henry Remak, ed. J?nos Riesz and Peter Boerner (T?bingen, Ger.: Gunter Narr, 1986),
203-10.
29 Albert S. G?rard, ed., European-Language Writing in Sub-Saharan Africa, 2 vols. (Budapest:
Akad?miai Kiad?, 1986).
30 Remak, "General Preface to All Volumes Published as Part of the 'Comparative History of
Literatures, '"here taken from G?rard, European-Language Writing, 1:5.
31 G?rard, Four African Literatures: Xhosa, Sotho, Zulu, Amharic (Berkeley and Los Angeles:
Univ. of California Press, 1971); African Language Literatures: An Introduction to the Literary
History of Sub-Saharan Africa (Harlow, UK: Longman, 1981); African Language Literatures: An
Introduction to the Literary History of Sub-Saharan Africa (Washington, DC: Three Continents,
1981) ; Contexts of African Literatures (Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1990). Appraisals of Gerard's work
can be found in J?nos Riesz et al., eds., Semper aliquid novi: litt?rature compar?e et litt?ratures
d Afrique: M?langes offerts ? Albert G?rard (T?bingen, Ger.: Gunter Narr Verlag, 1990).
32 Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New
York: Simon and Schuster, 1996).
33 G?rard, European-Language Writing, 1:20-21.
34 Mario Vald?s and Djelal Kabir, eds., Literary Cultures of Latin America: A Comparative
History, 3 vols. (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2004).
35 Linda Hutcheon and Vald?s, eds., Rethinking Literary History: A Dialogue on Theory
(Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2002).
36 Hutcheon, "Rethinking the National Model," in Rethinking Literary History, 3-49 (here
after cited in text).
37 Vald?s, "Rethinking the History of Literary History," in Rethinking Literary History, 63
(hereafter cited in text as RH).
38 Fernand Braudel, La M?diterran?e et le monde m?diterran?en ? l'?poque de Philippe II, 2 vols.
(Paris: A. Colin, 1966) and A History of Civilizations (New York: Lane, 1994).
39 Vald?s, RH, 107n6; Ricoeur, Temps et r?cit III: Le temps racont? (Paris: ?ditions du Seuil,
1985) and Time and Narrative, 3 vols. (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1986-88), 3:226-40;
even more condensed in "Conclusions," 3:241-71 (hereafter cited by volume and page
number).
40 The English translation has "unrepresentability" (3:243), the German "Unvorstellbar
keit." Ricoeur, Zeit und Erz?hlung 3: Die erz?hlte Zeit (Munich: Fink, 1999), 391.
41 See note 22 above; also Hayden White, Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1978) and "The Historical Text as Literary Artifact,"
in The History and Narrative Reader, ed. Geoffrey Roberts (London: Routledge, 2001), 221-37.
Noel Carroll's "Interpretation, History, and Narrative," History and Narrative Reader, 246-67,
attempts a critique of White's position. See also Veit, "Rhetorik als Argumentationstheorie"
and "Topics and the Discovery of the New," in Rhetorik, Figuration und Performanz, ed. J?rgen
Fohrmann (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2004), 59-80.
42 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 294.
43 See "The Principle of History of Effect (Wirkungsgeschichte)," in Gadamer, Truth and
Method, 299-306.
44 Veit, "Tn Australia, we read it differently . . .': Interculturality and the Theory of Liter
ary Criticism," in Striking Chords: Multicultural Literary Interpretations, ed. Sneja Gunew and
Kateryna Longley (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1992), 129,145, and "Comparative Literature
and an Intercultural History of Australian Literature: A Modest Proposal," in Appredating
Difference: Writing Postcolonial Literary History, ed. Brian Edwards et al. (Geelong, Aus.: Deakin
Univ. Press), 91-108.
45 Weisgerber, "?crire l'histoire," 358.
46 James Jupp, The Australian People: Aboriginal, British and Multicultural (Bedford Park, Aus.:
Centre for Multicultural Studies, 1988); Jupp, ed., The Australian People: An Encyclopedia of
the Nation, Its People and Thar Origins (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2001); Charles
Price, "Australian Population: Ethnic Origins," People and Place 7, no. 4 (1999): 12-16.
47 See Manjit Bhatia, "Asia's Hypocrisy over Australia," Asia Times, December, 19, 2002,
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/DL19Ae02.html; Dennis Haskell, "Identity
is a Process, Not a Fixity," The Australian, July 25, 2007, http://www.theaustralian.news.com.
au/story/0,25197,22128684-27702,00.html; the earlier debate in Stephen FitzGerald, Is
Australia an Asian Country? (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1977).
48 John Passmore, "Europe in the Pacific," Quadrant, September 1992, 10-19.
49 Brian Edwards and Wenche Ommundsen, eds., AppredatingDifference: Writing Postcolonial
Literary History (Geelong, Aus.: Deakin Univ. Press, 1998); Bob Hodge and Vijay Mishra,
Dark Side of the Dream: Australian Literature and the Postcolonial Mind (Sydney: Allen and
Unwin, 1990); John Joseph Healy, Literature and the Aborigine in Australia (1978; Brisbane:
Univ. of Queensland Press, 1989); Adam Shoemaker, Black Words White Page: Aboriginal
Literature 1929-1988 (Brisbane: Univ. of Queensland Press, 1989).
50 Robert Dixon, "Boundary Work: Australian Literary Studies in the Field of Knowledge
Production," Journal of the Assodation for the Study of Australian Literature 3 (2004): 27-43;
Ken Gelder, "Notes on the Research Future of Australian Literary Studies," Australian
Humanities Review 37 (2005): 1-10; Robert Dixon, "Australian Literature?International
Contexts," Southerly 67, nos. 1-2 (2007): 15-28.
51 Veit, "Comparative Literature, Interculturality and the History of Australian Literature,"
in Comparative Literature Now: Theories and Practice, ed. Steven T?t?sy de Zepetnek, Milan
Dimic, and Irene Sywenky (Paris: Champion, 1999), 425-37.
52 Jacques Delaruelle, Alexandra Karakostas-Sed?, and Anna Ward, eds., Writing in Mul
ticultural Australia (Sydney: Australia Council, 1985); Alan Corkhill, Antipodean Encounters:
Australia and the German Literary Imagination, 1754-1918 (Bern: Lang, 1990); Manfred
J?rgensen, Eagle and Emu: German-Australian Writing 1930-1990 (Brisbane: Univ. of Queens
land Press, 1992); Annette Robyn Corkhill, Australian Writing: Ethnic Writers 1945-1991
(Melbourne: Academia Press, 1994); Corkhill, The Immigrant Experience in Australian Literature
(Melbourne: Academia Press, 1995); David Walker and J?rgen Tampke, eds., From Berlin
to the Burdekin: The German Contribution to the Development of Australian Science, Exploration
and the Arts (Kensington, Aus.: New South Wales Univ. Press, 1991); Bob Hodge and
John O'Carroll, Borderwork in Multicultural Australia (Crows Nest, Aus.: Allen and Unwin,
2006).
53 Ken Goodwin, A History of Australian Literature (London: MacMillan, 1986) ; Peter Pierce
et al., eds., The Oxford Literary Guide to Australia, rev. ed. (Melbourne: Oxford Univ. Press,
1993).
54 For example, see the list of contributors in Gunew and Longley, Striking Chords, note
44.
55 Veit, "Tn Australia, we read it differently . . .'"; Stefanie Everke Buchanan, The Con
struction of Cultural Identity: Germans in Melbourne (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2007); Beata Leuner,
Migration Movements, Policies and Language Maintenance in Multicultural Australia: A Study of
Polish Migration to Melbourne in the 1980s (Bern: Lang, 2007).
56 Ann Stephen, Andrew McNamara, and Philip Good, eds., Modernism and Australia:
Documents on Art, Design and Architecture 1917-1967 (Melbourne: Miegunjah Press, 2006).
57 Ulrike Garde, Brecht and Co.: German-Speaking Playwrights on the Australian Stage (Bern:
Lang, 2007) ; "Kulturelle Identit?tsbildung im Wechselspiel zwischen lokalen und globalen
Bezugspunkten: Kommentare zu australischen Inszenierungen von Texten deutschspra
chigen Ursprungs," Jahrbuch f?r Deutsch als Fremdsprache 31 (2005): 39-59.
58 Ricoeur, Interpretation Theory.
59 Veit, "Misunderstanding as Condition of Intercultural Understanding," in Cultural
Dialogue and Misreading, ed. Mabel Lee and Meng Hua (Sydney: Wild Peony Press, 1997),
163-74.
60 John Docker, In a Critical Condition: Struggles for Control of Australian Literature Then and
Now! (Melbourne: Penguin Books, 1984).
61 Mark Davis, "The Clash of Paradigms: Australian Literary Theory after Liberalism,"
Journal of the Assodation for the Study of Australian Literature 7 (2007): 8.
62 David McKnight, Beyond Right and Left: New Politics and the Culture Wars (Sydney: Allen
and Unwin, 2005); Huntington, Clash of Civilizations.
63 Dixon, "Boundary Work," 41 (hereafter cited in text).
64 It goes without saying that such lessons have to be learned by all scholars when teaching
their "native" literature in foreign countries. Australian scholars missed an early chance
when An Introduction to Australian Literature, edited by C. D. Narasimaiah and published in
India (Mysore: Wesley Press, 1964), had?apart from a 'Visitor's Impression of the Land,
Life and Literature" by the editor?no other Indian scholar among the fifteen contribu
tors.

Globalization and Literary History, or Rethinking Comparative Literary History - Globally

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Globalization and Literary History, or Rethinking Comparative Literary History: Globally

Author(s): Walter F. Veit

IF the term means the peaceful economic and cultural exchange

New Literary History, 2008, 39: 415-435

terdependence describes more than the phenomena of interrelation or

Comparative Literature is the study of literature beyond the confines of one

It will be noted that Remak, stopping short of using the concept of

Literature."9 He followed it up in 1973 with a deeply pessimistic pap

Further on, Jameson diagnoses a "fear of history," of suspicions that

literary history was about to be opened and a development initiated

It is necessary to stress the essentially problematic character of the enterprise:

Such relentless questioning of traditional theory already stirred up by

decolonization, the role of the critic has become eminently political.

Historical circumstances, the facts of a common struggle against white supremacy,

Regarding the hermeneutical dimension of research, the work on

probes deeper into the hermeneutic dimension with special emphasis

tural contexts, multiperspectivity beyond the pluralism and complemen

element in any serious theoretical and practical work in the history of

Surprisingly then, but without recognition let alone criticism of the

1 Jonathan Michie, ed., The Handbook of Globalisation (Northampton, MA: Edward El

comparatiste ou de quelques chateaux en Espagne," in Sensus Communis: Contemporary Trends

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