CLTS: Comparative Literature in the Age of Digital Humanities by Todd Presner

Comparative Literature in the Age of Digital Humanities

Todd Presner

[Reading and comprehending original articles by scholars can be a daunting task, and I found it especially challenging while preparing for my exam. To alleviate this stress, I have simplified the article based on my understanding and with the assistance of ChatGPT. I have attempted to present the information in simple and easy-to-understand language. This blog is geared toward exam preparation and aims to provide a clear understanding of the article's core ideas and concepts. However, it's important to note that if you want to gain a deep understanding of the topic, reading the original article is highly recommended. CLICK HERE FOR BLOG I (it has quotes in the language of the original article)]

Introduction

Throughout history, there have been moments of great change that have transformed society and culture. Two of these watershed moments were the invention of the printing press and the discovery of the New World. The printing press revolutionized communication, literacy, and knowledge, enabling the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the rise of mass media. Similarly, the discovery of the New World exposed the limitations of conventional knowledge, reconfigured the earth's surface, enabled the rise of rationality and its connection to barbarism, and provided the seedbed for colonialism and the modern nation-state.

Both of these historical events were made possible by networking technologies that disseminated knowledge into new cultural and social spheres, bringing people, nations, cultures, and languages together. These technologies include seafaring, railways, the postal system, the electric telegraph, world standard time, colonization, the exploitation of the natural world, electrification, highways and car culture, transnational finance and technology, radio, film, television, the Internet, and real-time social networking on hand-held devices.

Every technology has both good and bad effects. It can help to share information and connect people, but it can also be used to control and exclude. This is true for all kinds of technology, like printing, radio, phones, TV, the internet, ships, trains, roads, and more. We cannot assume that technology will always make life better for everyone. For example, even though mobile phones and social media can be used to spread knowledge and democracy, they can also be used to spread hate and violence. In the same way, the radio and trains were used in the past to help people communicate and travel, but they were also used to hurt and conquer others.

When we talk about technology, we also need to think about how power and authority play a role. The way we use technology can help or harm people, depending on how it is used and who is in charge. We need to be aware of these issues and think carefully about how we use technology to make sure it helps everyone.

Today, we are experiencing rapid changes brought about by new communication technologies such as social networking, cloud computing, web-based media, digital archives, locative technologies, and mixed realities. These changes are so significant that they can be compared to the encounter with the New World and the dissemination of printing. However, the pace of these developments is much faster than the ones we experienced in the past, taking place over months and years rather than decades and centuries. Because of the speed of these changes, we have only just begun to develop the intellectual tools, methodologies, and disciplinary practices needed to respond to, engage with, and interpret these massive transformations.

Furthermore, we have yet to fully appreciate the profound disciplinary, methodological, and institutional shifts that are occurring as print culture is enhanced and displaced by the emergence of natively digital culture.

Rise of DH and related Issues

The author of this text is reflecting on the future of Comparative Literature in the 21st century and how to move away from the dominance of print media. The author draws inspiration from scholar N. Katherine Hayles, who challenges the field to consider the interplay between a text's physical characteristics and its meaning-making practices. The author argues that we can no longer assume that the medium of literary artifacts or scholarship is exclusively print, as digital media have transformed the ways we produce and study literature.

The author invokes Walter Benjamin's work in The Arcades Project as an example of how scholars can transform their methodologies by interrogating the media they use to study literature, culture, and society. Similarly, the author suggests that digital media can enable scholars to focus on the media and methodologies of print culture in Comparative Literature. However, the author also cautions that we must consider the implications of moving away from print as the normative medium for producing literature and undertaking literary studies. The author is examining the future of Comparative Literature by looking at the issues that have emerged in the field of Digital Humanities over the past decade. These issues are not unique to Comparative Literature but rather affect a wide range of academic fields in the Humanities. They include questions of authorship, access, collaboration, dissemination, media, platform, and scholarly legitimacy.

The author argues that these issues require a fundamental rethinking of how knowledge is created, what it looks like, who creates it, when it is published, how it is authorized and disseminated, and how it can be made accessible to a broader audience. The Humanities have the potential to generate and disseminate knowledge in radically new ways, involving technologies and communities that were previously not engaged in global knowledge creation. The purpose of the chapter is to provide some initial guidance for understanding what these changes mean for the Humanities and Comparative Literature in particular. The author is not alone in this line of thinking, as many scholars in the field of Digital Humanities have been exploring these issues for some time.

What is DH (Digital Humanities)?

The term 'Digital Humanities' refers to a wide range of practices that involve using new and old technologies to create, apply, interpret, and analyze information. These practices involve collaboration between people from different fields, such as humanists, technologists, librarians, and social scientists. Digital Humanities projects are often collaborative and engage with a wider audience than traditional academic research. The role of the humanist is critical in this historic moment as our cultural legacy moves to digital formats, and our relationship to knowledge, technology, and society changes. The Digital Humanities expand on traditional humanistic inquiry and help us understand, critique, compare, historicize, and evaluate digital publications and the platforms that support them.

Role of humanist

The 'Digital Humanities' refers to interdisciplinary practices that create and analyze new and old information technologies. These practices involve collaboration between humanists, technologists, librarians, social scientists, artists, architects, information scientists, and computer scientists. The projects are designed to reach a broader public than traditional academic research in the Humanities.

Humanists need to assert and insert themselves into the culture wars of the 21st century, which are largely being defined, fought, and won by corporate interests. For example, when Google won the right to transfer the copyright of orphaned books to itself, why were humanists, foundations, and universities silent? Similarly, when Sony and Disney restricted intellectual property and copyright with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, why were they not more vocal?

The 'Digital Humanities Manifesto' calls on humanists to engage more deeply with digital culture production, publishing, access, and ownership. If new technologies are dominated and controlled by corporate and entertainment interests, it is important to ask who will render our cultural legacy in new media formats, and for whom? These are questions that Humanists must urgently ask and answer. Jeffrey Schnapp is a scholar who has written extensively on these issues.

The Digital Humanities Manifesto is a document that calls for humanists to be engaged in the digital revolution happening in the 21st century. The manifesto is not a systematic analysis of the state of humanities but rather a call to action and a provocation. It seeks to transform and debate ideas within the humanities. The manifesto is available in many forums online, with different versions and commentaries created by scholars, students, and the general public. The manifesto advocates for participatory humanities scholarship in the expanded public sphere. It calls for humanists to guide the reshaping of the university in creative ways that facilitate the responsible production, curation, and dissemination of knowledge. The manifesto does not provide answers, but rather it examines the explanatory power, relevance, and cogency of established organizations of knowledge and imagines creative possibilities and futures built on humanistic traditions. The manifesto argues that the work of the humanities is more necessary than ever for developing thoughtful responses, purposeful interpretations, trenchant critiques, and creative alternatives. However, this cannot be done while locked into restrictive disciplinary and institutional structures, singular media forms, and conventional expectations about the purview, function, and work of the Humanities. Robert Darnton points out that this is the beginning of the fourth information age, not the first.

Role of society in the Information age?

The author is saying that we are currently in the fifth decade of the fourth information age in human history. They believe that we need to understand the field of Comparative Literature and the Humanities from an information and media-specific perspective. They also suggest that we need to come to terms with the difference between our digital age and everything that came before it.

Although the Internet is only forty years old and the World Wide Web is only two decades old, there is already an incredible amount of data produced. There are more than twenty-one billion indexed web pages, over one trillion URLs indexed by Google, more than ten million books scanned and cataloged by Google, more than a hundred thirty million blogs indexed by Technorati, over six million articles on JSTOR, and more than twenty-five billion pieces of content on Facebook, including photos, videos, news stories, and blog posts. There are also billions of photographs on Flickr, and fifty-five million tweets per day on Twitter, which are now archived and cataloged by the Library of Congress. All of this content, particularly textual and visual data, is being produced, shared, consumed, and archived at an exponential rate compared to anything in the history of humanity. The author suggests that we need to understand this new reality and its impact on our understanding of culture and literature.

This passage discusses how the field of Comparative Literature has expanded in recent years to include a variety of perspectives, including transnational studies, mobility and translation studies, and postcolonial and diaspora studies. These perspectives have displaced the focus on high culture and have examined popular or vernacular literature, newspapers, and other media. The author acknowledges the importance of these efforts and suggests that Comparative Literature is a "problem" that requires a new critical method to analyze both the print world in the digital age and the digital world in the post-print age.

Several scholars are mentioned in the passage. Gayatri Spivak and Arjun Appadurai have contributed to transnational studies, while Edward Said and Ali Behdad have contributed to postcolonial and diaspora studies. Stephen Greenblatt and Emily Apter have contributed to mobility and translation studies, and Paul Gilroy has contributed to the study of cosmopolitanism. Franco Moretti and W.J.T. Mitchell have called for a new critical method to analyze literature in the digital age, and Todd Presner has made his own contributions to the field.

Or

The field of Comparative Literature has evolved to encompass a diverse range of perspectives, including transnational, mobility and translation, postcolonial, and diaspora studies. While traditional print artifacts remain an important focus of the field, scholars such as Spivak, Appadurai, and Thomas have expanded the scope to include digital culture and media, popular and vernacular literature, and changing notions of literacy, publishing, and knowledge systems. Franco Moretti suggests that Comparative Literature needs a new critical method to analyze both the print world in the digital age and the digital world in the post-print age. This means taking seriously the new authoring, annotation, and sharing platforms that have transformed global cultural production.

Change in reading culture

The proliferation of cultural data through the internet highlights the interconnectedness of the world but also exposes inequalities and erasures that come with new technology. Print media and digital media differ in terms of material composition, authorship, meaning-making, circulation, reading practices, viewing habits, navigation features, embodiment, interactivity, and expressivity. It is important for literary scholars to apply rigorous, media-specific, social, cultural, and economic analyses to understand the specific affordances of digital culture. It is not enough to simply study the impact of technology; we must actively engage with, design, create, critique, and hack the environments and technologies that facilitate this research to produce knowledge about ourselves and our world.

In today's digital age, the amount of data and cultural material available to us is vast and overwhelming. To make sense of it all, we need to use new tools that can analyze and evaluate this information. Humanists must consider using text-mining tools, machine reading, and algorithmic analyses to accomplish this task. One approach that has been suggested is 'distant reading,' which involves analyzing larger units of information to reveal their overall interconnection. According to Moretti, distant reading focuses on shapes, relations, structures, forms, and models, as opposed to deep hermeneutics, which involves extracting meaning from a text through close readings.

Another possibility is machine reading, which involves using computational methods to extract trends, correlations, and relationships from data. As Hayles points out, the sheer volume of data and cultural material available to us is far too great for us to process and make sense of without the help of a computer. Even if we were to read a book a day for our entire adult life, we would only be able to read about twenty-five thousand books, which does not include the reading and composition of digital forms of data and cultural material.

The concept of 'literature' and 'culture' has been defined and studied in the humanistic tradition through the history of writing and inscription practices, which include various forms of media such as stone carving, parchment scrolls, printed books, and digital authoring environments. However, in the fourth information age, we need to confront the specificity of the digital medium compared to other media formats and the ways of analyzing cultural knowledge produced through it. To address these questions, there are three potential futures for Comparative Literature in the Digital Age, as suggested by Jerome McGann: "The first... involves a reconceptualization of what we mean by ‘literary culture’ and the role of the literary critic within it." The second "involves creating new archives of literary and cultural materials, archives that are organized in fundamentally different ways than the archives of print culture. 'The third' involves developing new ways to create and analyze multimedia works."

These three futures for Comparative Literature in the Digital Age are not separate but rather interrelated and complementary. By reconceptualizing the role of the literary critic, creating new archives, and developing new ways of analyzing multimedia works, we can better understand the specificity of the digital medium and its impact on cultural knowledge production and reception.

Comparative Media Studies

The field of Comparative Literature has traditionally focused on the study of literary and textual works, but in recent times, there has been a shift towards incorporating other media forms like art, photography, film, and television. However, with the advent of digital media, there is a need to re-evaluate the way we approach Comparative Literature. Digital media not only changes the works we study but also the scholarly environments, tools, and platforms we use. Digital media is hypermedia and hypertextual, meaning that it uses a variety of media forms in interconnected systems that allow for annotation, indefinite growth, mutability, and non-linear navigation. This poses a challenge to Comparative Literature as it must now take into account the media-specificity of literary and cultural artifacts, including print.

Comparative Literature as Comparative Media Studies considers the formal material qualities of the surface structures upon which inscriptions are made, the technical processes of reproduction and circulation, the institutional mechanisms of dissemination and authorization, and the reading and navigation practices enabled by the media form. It investigates all media as information and knowledge systems that are intertwined with histories of power, institutions, and governing and regulatory bodies that legitimize and authorize certain utterances while disregarding others. Comparative Media Studies are concerned with studying every element of an argument, not just the text. This includes things like the design, layout, and delivery platforms of work. By examining these elements, we can better understand how knowledge is created, as well as the world views that are reflected in a work. With digital media, we are prompted to consider questions like who is an author, what is a work, and what constitutes a text, since anyone can potentially be a reader or writer. As Roland Barthes noted, in a digital environment, any text is both readerly and writerly.

Comparative Data Studies

Google has digitized and indexed over ten million books, which allows scholars to conduct more complex searches and analyze patterns in large-scale cultural datasets. The field of "cultural analytics" has emerged in the past five years, using high-end computational analysis and data visualization to dissect such datasets. This includes historical data that has been digitized, such as every shot in the films of Vertov or Eisenstein, or contemporary, real-time data flows such as tweets, SMS messaging, or search trends. Comparative Data Studies use computational tools to enhance literary scholarship by creating models, visualizations, maps, and semantic webs of data that are too large to read or comprehend using unaided human faculties. This method also broadens the canon of objects and cultural material under consideration, including cultural objects originally constituted as singular objects in one medium, now digitized, marked-up, accessible, and shareable in multiple formats and on a variety of platforms.

'Born digital' objects such as blogs, videos, web pages, music, maps, photographs, or hypermedia artifacts provide data for analysis and instantiate new forms of knowledge creation and curation. Scholars like Lev Manovich and Noah Wardrip-Fruin have worked on cultural analytics to bring the tools of high-end computational analysis and data visualization to dissect large-scale cultural datasets. Jerome McGann's analysis of "radiant textuality" argues that digital books exist in "N-Dimensional Space" since the archive of digital objects and exchanges can be expanded in both spatial and temporal terms. The "data" of Comparative Data Studies is constantly expanding in terms of volume, data type, production and reception platform, and analytic strategy.

Comparative Authorship and Platform Studies

The internet and advancements in technology have lowered barriers for people to participate in creating and sharing content, as well as developing software. This has led to a participatory web known as Web 2.0, where users are actively engaged in producing, annotating, and evaluating digital media and software through collaborative authorship, peer-to-peer sharing, and crowd-sourced evaluation. James Boyle, in his book "The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind," warns about the danger of failed sharing due to restrictions and enclosures placed on the creative commons by corporate entities. This is a central argument of the Digital Humanities Manifesto, which aims to perform collaborative authorship using platforms such as the blogging engine, Commentpress.

In the domain of Comparative Authorship and Platform Studies, design, interactivity, navigation strategies, and collaboration are critical issues that literary scholars must consider. Scholars cannot simply hand off their content to publishers for layout, design, editing, printing, and dissemination in the digital world. Choices of the interface, interactivity, database design, navigation, access, and dissemination are all part of how arguments are staged in the digital world. Vectors is a multimodal, multimedia humanities journal that explores the complex interrelation between form and content, underscoring the immersive and experiential dimensions of emerging scholarly vernaculars across media platforms. Scholars work closely with designers, technologists, and the Vectors editorial staff to develop appropriate interfaces, database schemas, navigation features, and content types that instantiate an argument while preserving the authority of peer review. The publication platform foregrounds collaborative authorship and public feedback through threaded discussion forums and annotation features.

In summary, the internet and advancements in technology have democratized the ability to create and share content and develop software. However, corporate entities may seek to control the creative commons. Scholars must consider design, interactivity, navigation strategies, and collaboration in the digital world, and Vectors is an example of a publication platform that foregrounds collaborative authorship and public feedback. Scholars cannot simply hand off their content to publishers, and choices of the interface, interactivity, database design, navigation, access, and dissemination are all critical considerations in the digital world. James Boyle and the Digital Humanities Manifesto are two examples of scholars who have raised important issues in this area.

The article discusses the changing landscape of academic knowledge production and dissemination in the post-print era. It highlights various academic platforms, such as Grand Text Auto, Scalar, Connexions, and the Institute for the Future of the Book, which has explored the participatory dimensions of scholarship, re-examining authorship, design, peer review, and collaborative content generation and editing. The article also mentions scholars such as McKenzie Wark and Kathleen Fitzpatrick, who have used Commentpress to publish early versions of their entire books, allowing them to receive immediate feedback from self-selecting peer reviewers before the book is sent to scholarly authorities in their field. The article also discusses the author's own work on HyperCities, a digital mapping platform for exploring and authoring complex layers of city spaces.

The article then focuses on Wikipedia, which it describes as a model for rethinking collaborative research and the dissemination of knowledge in the humanities and at institutions of higher learning. It acknowledges that while some may dismiss Wikipedia as amateurish and unreliable, it is actually an innovative, global, multilingual, collaborative knowledge-generating community and platform for authoring, editing, distributing, and versioning knowledge. The article notes that Wikipedia has more than three million content pages, over ten million registered users, and articles in forty-seven languages, making it the most comprehensive, representative, and pervasive participatory platform for knowledge production ever created by humankind. The scholars mentioned in the article include McKenzie Wark, Kathleen Fitzpatrick, and Michael Gorman, former President of the American Library Association. The article also references Davidson and Goldberg's work on rethinking collaborative research and the dissemination of knowledge in the humanities.

I hope this blog is helpful if any queries please comment.

CLTS: Comparative Literature in India by Amiya Dev

Comparative Literature in India.

Amiya Dev

[Reading and comprehending original articles by scholars can be a daunting task, and I found it especially challenging while preparing for my exam. To alleviate this stress, I have simplified the article based on my understanding and with the assistance of ChatGPT. I have attempted to present the information in simple and easy-to-understand language. This blog is geared toward exam preparation and aims to provide a clear understanding of the article's core ideas and concepts. However, it's important to note that if you want to gain a deep understanding of the topic, reading the original article is highly recommended. CLICK HERE FOR BLOG I (it has quotes in the language of the original article)]

Abstract: 

Amiya Dev argues that India's diverse linguistic and literary traditions make it problematic to speak of Indian literature in either the singular or the plural. He believes that the relationship between commonality and difference in India is the main site of comparative literature. Dev examines the tension between unity and diversity, and post-structuralist critiques of homogenization. He also looks at efforts to find common denominators and patterns of togetherness. Dev emphasizes the importance of location and inter-Indian reception in understanding inter literariness. He views Indian literature as an ongoing process of re/making rather than a fixed entity.

Article:

In this article, the author discusses the diversity and unity of Indian literature, given India's immense linguistic diversity. The author argues that the binary approach of either seeing Indian literature as unified or diverse is problematic, and instead proposes a dialectical view of literary interaction and the notion of the inter-literary process. The article begins by providing a brief account of India's linguistic diversity, noting that previous censuses have recorded a total of 1,652 languages. While only eighteen languages are listed in the Indian Constitution as major languages, there are actually twenty-two major languages and literature recognized by the Sahitya Akademi. However, this diversity is not reflected in social discourse or literary scholarship, which often views India as a hegemonic language and literature area. The author highlights the importance of studying the ongoing process of literary interaction in India's diverse linguistic and literary traditions.

In India, there are many different languages and literature, but scholars often debate whether there is one 'Indian literature' or many 'Indian literature'. Historically, Western scholars focused on Sanskrit literature, and Indian scholars have also tended to focus on a single literature. However, some argue that a country with such linguistic diversity should be understood as having much literature. There are also concerns that the term 'Indian literature' may eventually become equated with one of the major languages and literature, which would ignore the diversity of the other literature. Ultimately, writers and readers tend to focus on their literature, so it is important to recognize the individualities of each piece of literature rather than trying to force them into a singular category. It is from this perspective that to the Akademi's motto "Indian literature is one though written in many languages," the retort is "Indian literature is one because it is written in many languages."

The problem of unity in diversity is a key issue in Comparative Literature as a discipline in India. One scholar, Gurbhagat Singh, has proposed the idea of 'differential multilogue' which emphasizes the singularities of different languages and cultures in India. Singh rejects the notion of Indian literature as a whole because it promotes a nationalist identity and instead advocates for the celebration of difference. He sees Comparative Literature as an exercise in differential multilogue, which goes beyond mere dialogue and acknowledges the plurality of logoi.

Singh's proposal is based on a poststructuralist trend in Indian discourse today, which is suspicious of the designation of Indian literature as one. This suspicion is due to concerns about the accumulation of power and the importance of decentralization. Singh argues that decentralization minimizes aggression from above and encourages grassroots movements from below. The notion of difference and inter-literary processes has recently engaged Indian scholars in the context of inter-Indian translation.

Poststructuralism understands difference as a notion of inclusion, not exclusion, and sees it as a way to achieve mutuality. If the deconstruction of politics involves the weeding out of things excessively local or peripheral, it is appropriate because all value-loading is suspect. If 'Indian' is a mere description, a general signifier, then there is no need for the act of deconstruction.

However, Singh notes that some negative discrimination has occurred towards texts produced in 'less important' and 'different' literature in the pursuit of 'Indian literature'. The poststructuralist stance is wary of rhetoric in the name of integration and a call to emotion in the name of the nation, as nationalism and fundamentalism of any type are built on regimentation and exclusion.

The article discusses the problems with poststructuralism in Indian scholarly discourse. The author argues that there is an overemphasis on theory to the detriment of application, resulting in an overabundance of meta-theory. Indian poststructuralism does not recognize the differences in the Indian experience and tends to fit literature to theory rather than the other way around. The author suggests that the situs or location of theory and the theorist is as important as theorization, particularly in a country where the decolonization process is still incomplete, and a neo-colonial situation is in the making. The author emphasizes the importance of cultural and linguistic rootedness, which can lead to a sensus communis or commonality. However, the author warns against commonality turning into self-referentiality, nationalism, or racism. The theorist must be vigilant against this and must ensure that commonality does not become an ideological and political commodity. The author also cautions against the theorist denying commonality out of expediency or fear or suggesting a superior and detached intellect, which can lead to alienation.

The author cites Jaidev's critique of existentialist aestheticism in contemporary Indian fiction and his argument for a cultural differential approach. The author also mentions Tagore and Gandhi, who emphasized the importance of situs, and the problem of situs in Indian Marxism.

The author is talking about the idea of 'commonality' and 'oneness' as a primary location for Indian theorists and their theories. They argue that this is important because of the incomplete decolonization process and the risk of a neo-colonial situation. However, they also acknowledge the danger of commonality turning into self-referentiality, nationalism, or racism. The author suggests that Indian theorists should strike a balance between acknowledging commonality while also being wary of its potential negative consequences.

The author mentions a critic named Jaidev, who critiques the use of cultural pastiche in contemporary Indian fiction. Jaidev's concept of oneness is different from the author's, as it is rooted in the pre-modern age of Indian literature. The author argues that Jaidev's structure is more applicable to contemporary literature in India, where the danger of constructing a national identity looms.

In Aijaz Ahmad's book In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, he talks about the problem of constructing a singular 'Indian' literature identity. He argues that the notion of homogenous Indian literature is limiting, as each of the 22 recognized literature by the Sahitya Akademi has its own unique archive. Ahmad also criticizes the use of English as a lingua franca in government and education, as it reflects a colonial attitude and reinforces the nation-state's official language policy. He discusses how the National Book Trust, which is responsible for inter-Indian translation, uses a process where the first translation is into English followed by translations into other languages, which perpetuates English dominance. Ahmad argues that Indian literature cannot be compared to European literature, as the notion of "European literature" is an umbrella term and a pedagogical imposition, whereas Indian literature is categorizable.

Two decades ago, V.K. Gokak and Sujit Mukherjee suggested creating an "Indo-English" archive of Indian literature, which would include English translations of major texts from different Indian languages. This would help authenticate the idea of Indian literature and propose a history for it, with different forms and techniques from various ages. Gokak and Mukherjee also suggested including this corpus in university curricula to canonize their proposal.

A decade ago, the government committee recommended a Master's program in Indian literature following an undergraduate degree in any single Indian literature, but Ahmad expressed concern about the hegemony of English. However, Gokak, Mukherjee, and Motilal Jotwani suggested implementing English as a function, owing to the growing corpus of translations from different Indian literatures into English. They believed this would create a more or less homogeneous Indian literature and suggest an Indian commonality.

However, there are problems with this notion and its implementation. Ahmad argued against the construction of national literature, and there could be a hegemonizing situation if literary texts from different languages were translated only into Hindi. Furthermore, English is the largest language program in Indian colleges and universities.

The idea of creating an "English" archive of Indian literature was suggested by V.K. Gokak and Sujit Mukherjee about two decades ago. They proposed an Indo-English corpus of literature that included major texts from different Indian languages. This would authenticate Indian literature and propose a history for it. They suggested that this corpus be inserted into university curricula. A decade ago, a government committee recommended a Master's program in Indian literature following an undergraduate degree in any single Indian literature.

However, there are concerns about the hegemony of English and the notion of homogeneous Indian literature. Instead, it is proposed that Indian literature is not an entity but an inter-literary condition. This idea is related to Goethe's original idea of Weltliteratur and its use by Marx and Engels in The Communist Manifesto. The inter-literary condition of India stretches back much farther than its manuscript or print culture. There are many literary and cultural textualities in India whose nature, while manifest in different other systems of a similar nature, is based primarily on themes or genres, forms, and structures observable in historiography. It is possible to think of a series of such sub-systems in which the individual literature of India has been interrelated with one another over the ages. Such a systemic view of Indian literature predicates that we take all Indian literature together, age by age, and view them comparatively.

Critics of the notion of an "English" archive of Indian literature include Ahmad, who is concerned with the hegemony of English, and Motilal Jotwani, who suggests implementing English as a function. Swapan Majumdar takes a systemic approach in his book, Comparative Literature: Indian Dimensions, where Indian literature is viewed as neither a simple unity nor a simple diversity. Sisir Kumar Das has taken a similar approach with his planned ten-volume project, A History of Indian Literature.

Das is working with a team of scholars to collect data on Indian literature from different languages. They are listing information on authors' births and deaths, dates of text composition and publication, genres, text dissemination, literary reviews, society formations and debates, translations, and more. This information is both literary and social data. The approach is pragmatic and involves a comparative chronology. Das has developed a narrative based on the collected data, but other readings are possible. He has discovered a structure of pro-phanes and meta-phanes, which may be found in different literatures at different times Das's work focuses on nineteenth-century Indian literature and does not propose it as a category by itself. Instead, he seeks to establish patterns through different ages. Indian literature is neither a unity nor a total differential.

Das's work is comparatist in nature, despite the fact that he does not refer to it as such. His approach is similar to that of K.M. George's two-volume Comparative Indian Literature, which was published in 1984-85. However, George's work was not as comprehensive as Das's and only covered fifteen literatures, with a focus on a few given genres. George's genealogy was mostly given and not based on the literature itself.

Furthermore, George's work demonstrated Western hegemony in the way that poetry was discussed. The traditional and modern classifications were framed as if traditional was exclusively Indian and modern was a result of Western influence. Additionally, George's two volumes lacked comparison as the fifteen individual literatures were simply placed side by side, leaving it up to the reader to make necessary comparisons. It's important for Indian students to be aware of these issues in comparative literature studies and how they can impact the interpretation of literature. The critic mentioned in this passage is K.M. George.

The writer discusses the discipline of comparative literature in relation to the question of Indian literature. They mention that the work of scholar Sisir Kumar Das on Indian literature is comparatist in nature, and similar in some ways to the work of K.M. George. The writer also notes that the institutional manifestation of comparative literature in India reflects the binary approach to the question of Indian literature, which sees it as either a unity or a diversity. They mention two presidents of Indian comparative literature associations, Umashankar Joshi and U.R. Anantha Murthy, who represent different approaches to the question. The writer then discusses their own evolving understanding of Indian literature, which now sees it as constantly changing and in a state of becoming.

In studying Indian literature, there are different aspects that help us understand it in an inter-literary process. One of these aspects is the fact that we are located in our own languages, with access to one or two other languages. Through inter-Indian translation, we can also access texts from other languages. As readers, we may consciously or subconsciously place texts in additional languages besides our original and first text. An example of this process is when reading an early twentieth-century Oriya novel, which reminded the reader of an acclaimed pioneer of Bengali fiction. This suggests a possible commonality in genre history, although evidence to the contrary may also exist. This process of active juxtaposition does not mean that we have already made up our minds about the so-called Indian novel of the first phase and reduced these texts to their common denominator. On the other hand, the texts are very much themselves, unique to their own language and culture.

This is important to understand because there is no neutral territory between Indian literature. The situs of both theory and theorists is an important issue, and we should first look at ourselves and try to understand our own situations as thoroughly as possible before formulating a comparative literature of diversity in general. The problematics of unity and diversity are not unique to India, but Comparative Literature has taught us not to take comparison literally, and it has also taught us that theory formation in literary history is not universally tenable.

I hope this blog is helpful if any queries please comment.

CLTS: Why Comparative Indian Literature? Sisir Kumar Das

Why Comparative Indian Literature? 

Sisir Kumar Das

[Reading and comprehending original articles by scholars can be a daunting task, and I found it especially challenging while preparing for my exam. To alleviate this stress, I have simplified the article based on my understanding and with the assistance of ChatGPT. I have attempted to present the information in simple and easy-to-understand language. This blog is geared toward exam preparation and aims to provide a clear understanding of the article's core ideas and concepts. However, it's important to note that if you want to gain a deep understanding of the topic, reading the original article is highly recommended. CLICK HERE FOR BLOG I (it has quotes in the language of the original article)]

Introduction:

Some scholars have tried to find similarities and commonalities between the different literature produced in India over the past 3000 years. This is because they want to find unity in our multilingual and multireligious culture. However, this idea of Indian literature has not helped us study Indian literature together in a critical way and has limited impact on our literary studies which are still fragmented into smaller linguistic units. Recently, another group of scholars is talking about 'comparative Indian literature' to create a framework for studying the relationships between different Indian literature. However, the term 'comparative' has created confusion and it is important to define what we mean by 'Indian literature' and why the qualifier is necessary. Simply taking all literature written in Indian languages does not make a significant literary category. Instead, Indian literature should be seen as a complex of literary relations, and any study of Indian literature must reflect that diversity to truly understand it.

What is an article talking about?

The author is discussing the relationship between comparative literature and comparative Indian literature. They are questioning whether the study of Indian literature is best approached through a comparative framework and if it imposes certain restrictions on the investigator. They also ask why a scholar of literature should choose to study Indian literature over comparative literature, which has a wider scope. In simpler terms, the author is exploring the advantages and limitations of studying Indian literature comparatively, and whether it is a valid approach to understanding the nature of literary facts.

Comparative literature is a subject that looks at how literature from different places and languages is similar and different. Its goal is to see all literature in the world as one big connected thing. To do this, comparatists need to study much different literature from all over the world, not just one or two. However, it can be difficult to study everything at once, so they have to focus on certain areas. Indian literature is one of these areas that comparatists study, but it's important to understand that Indian literature is just one part of the bigger picture of comparative literature.

Goethe was a famous poet who believed in the concept of "Weltliteratur" or world literature, which means bringing together the great works of literature from all languages and civilizations around the world. He thought that the era of national literature was over and that we should focus on the important works of literature from all over the world. Similarly, early scholars of Indian literature also believed in studying the great works from different languages of India that had stood the test of time.

A comparatist is a person who studies literature from different countries and languages. They are not concerned with finding the best works in the world, but rather with understanding the relationships between national literature, including their similarities and differences. The comparatist wants to arrive at a general understanding of the literary activities of humanity and to help create universal poetics. Their goal is world literature, which includes all literary traditions, not just the best works in all languages. They use comparative literature as a method of investigation, which is not different from the study of a single literature but rather differs in matter, attitude, and perspective. The comparatist's ultimate limit is the literature of the whole world, and their strength and weakness lie in their cosmopolitanism.

How is it that the votary of cosmopolitanism in literary study is a pathetic victim of parochialism?

The Western comparatist has been studying Western literature for the past hundred years, without paying attention to the existence of other literature. This has led to a narrow-minded approach in literary study, despite claims of cosmopolitanism. However, contact between Western and Eastern literature has existed since ancient times. European literature has been influenced by Hebrew, Arabic, and Sanskrit literature. Even Chinese and Japanese literature was available in translation during the establishment of comparative literature in Europe and America. However, Western criticism still shows reluctance to integrate exotic literature into the corpus literature, which could be due to ignorance or prejudice against these civilizations. This narrow-minded approach has resulted in comparative literature being limited to Western literature. François Jost, a critic, acknowledges this issue and blames it on Western ignorance and indifference towards other cultures.

In simpler language, the writer says that Western literary scholars have only been studying Western literature for a long time and have not paid attention to other literature from other parts of the world. This has resulted in a narrow-minded approach to literary study. Although there has been contact between Western and Eastern literature for centuries, Western scholars have been reluctant to study them, leading to ignorance and prejudice against other cultures. Critics have pointed out this issue and blame it on Western ignorance and indifference towards other cultures.

Western literature has been accused of Eurocentrism and neglecting other literature. However, the Western comparatist's choice to focus on European literature is due to pragmatism rather than prejudice against Oriental literature. Ulrich Weisstein expressed hesitation to extend the study of comparative literature to include different civilizations. The academic justification for excluding Oriental literature from comparative literature in the West comes from the need to avoid ahistorical parallels based solely on speculation. However, if we accept the criterion of civilization, the European comparatist is within their rights to focus on Western literature. If we choose to include Indian literature in comparative literature, it should be as valid as comparative literature in the West. Critics such as Henry Remak and Etiemble have called for the widening of the scope of comparative literature.

Is not comparative Indian literature, then, a retrograde step so far as the basic premise of comparative literature is concerned?

Comparative literature is the study of literature from different countries or languages. Some people argue that when it comes to India, comparative literature should focus only on one national literature because India has many different languages. However, this is a narrow view. When Europe first defined comparative literature, it only thought about national literature from monolingual countries. But now we have countries like India with many languages and nationalities. So, we need to revise how we think about comparative literature.

Language, culture, and politics are all important factors, but they cannot be the only criteria. For example, English and American literature are both national literature, but they are not considered comparative literature because they use the same language. Similarly, Indian English literature cannot be part of English literature just because it is written in English. The criterion for comparative literature needs to be more flexible.

Comparative literature needs to be both intralinguistic and interlinguistic. This means we need to look at relationships between literature within one language and between literature in different languages. Political boundaries and nationality are not dependable criteria because they can change. Language is a better criterion, but it's not perfect because one language can be used for two different kinds of literature.

So, comparative literature needs to adapt to the changing political and linguistic scene. We can't focus only on national literature from monolingual countries. Instead, we need to consider the relationships between different national literature and national literature written in different languages. This is especially important in India, where there are many languages and literature. Critics like Etiemble have called for a wider scope of comparative literature that includes all literature, regardless of language or nationality.

Comparative Indian literature is an important area of study in literary studies, just like comparative literature in the West. It is important to avoid being narrow-minded in literary studies, whether it comes from the West or the East. Indian literature, written in languages like Hindi, Tamil, Marathi, or Assamese, provides a solid foundation to study literature. Literature is based on language and culture, and its meaning comes from its relation to that culture. We can't ignore Indian literature if we want to understand literature and cultures in general. We should learn from Western comparativists to avoid being shallow in our studies. Therefore, we should call our study "comparative Indian literature" to show our relation to Indian people and culture. This is not biased but a necessary affirmation of literature's relation to its people and time.

Will not the study of Indian literature alone breed a kind of literary patriotism or critical parochialism that must be avoided?

Some people may wonder if studying only Indian literature will create a biased or narrow-minded view of literature. However, the history of Indian literature can provide an answer to this concern. India is a multilingual society, with many different languages spoken and written. This diversity is reflected in the literature of India, where different languages have influenced each other and even given rise to new literary styles and languages. Writers in India have often used multiple languages in their work, and some texts have been claimed by different linguistic groups. This diversity of languages and literature is unique to India and has been happening for centuries.

Indian literature is not just limited to India alone. There have been many interactions between India and other civilizations, such as Greece and China, that have yet to be explored by literary scholars. Indian literature has also been greatly influenced by Persian and Arabic literature, which arrived with the arrival of Sufi saints. This interaction between different literary traditions makes it important for any serious student of Indian literature to study the literary traditions of other countries as well.

Modern Indian literature is also exposed to various thought currents and literary traditions from different parts of the world, so it's essential to have a wide literary perspective. Comparative Indian literature is an excellent way to justify the need for literary study, and it provides a new range and vision to the comparative study of literature.

It's also essential to study different languages to understand the impact they have had on Indian literature. For example, it is challenging to study Konkani literature without a reference to Portuguese, which had a direct impact on the Indian languages spoken in Goa. There are many translations from European languages, such as French and Russian, which show the deep relationship between those literature and Indian literature.

The study of Indian literature is not just limited to Indian literature alone. The emergence of forms like tragedy and the novel in India, along with unique texts like the Meghanadvadh Kavya, which involved two different civilizations, throws a challenge to the Indian comparatist to study Indian literature with ancient Greek and modern European literature, respectively.

Simply Indian literature is not just limited to India alone, and the study of literature demands a wide literary perspective. Therefore, it's crucial to study the literature concerning other literary traditions and civilizations.

Amiya Dev, in his article 'Towards Comparative Indian Literature', explains that comparison is necessary for Indian literature because we are a multilingual and Third World country. Multilingualism is understood by Indian scholars, but the Third World situation requires further explanation. Western tools for comparison, such as 'influence' and 'imitation', need to be modified to suit the Third World literary situation. For example, influence in our case is not limited to two authors or texts but involves entire literature influencing each other and is connected to larger socio-political questions.

Conclusion:

The Third World situation has also imposed psychological restrictions on us. We have venerated the language and literature of our colonial masters and believed in the infallibility of Western literary categories. We have applied these categories to our literature to gain respectability.

To free ourselves from these psychological restrictions, we must look at our literature from within. This will enable us to respond to the literature of other parts of the world without any inhibition or prejudice. Our understanding of comparative literature will emerge only when we consider the historical situation in which we find ourselves. Therefore, it is important for us to study our literature and respond to other literature with an open mind.

Our journey is not from comparative literature to comparative Indian literature, but from comparative Indian literature to comparative literature.

I hope this blog is helpful if any queries please comment.

Assignment 208: Comparative Studies and Translation Studies

Susan Bassnett's analysis of the Current State of Comparative Literature Studies

What is Comparative Literature Today?

Name: Jheel Barad

Roll No.: 12

Enrollment No.: 4069206420210003

Paper no: 208

Paper code: 22415

Paper name: Comparative Literature and Translation Studies

Sem.: 4 (Batch 2021- 2023)

Submitted to: Smt S.B. Gardi Department of English, M.K. Bhavnagar University

[Reading and comprehending original articles by scholars can be a daunting task, and I found it especially challenging while preparing for my exam. To alleviate this stress, I have simplified the article based on my understanding and with the assistance of ChatGPT. I have attempted to present the information in simple and easy-to-understand language. This blog is geared toward exam preparation and aims to provide a clear understanding of the article's core ideas and concepts. However, it's important to note that if you want to gain a deep understanding of the topic, reading the original article is highly recommended. CLICK HERE FOR BLOG I (it has quotes in the language of the original article)]

What is Comparative Literature?

The simplest answer is that comparative literature involves the study of texts across cultures is interdisciplinary and is concerned with patterns of connection in literature across both time and space.

People often come to study comparative literature from different paths. Some want to explore beyond the limits of a single subject, while others are intrigued by the similarities between texts or authors from different cultures. Some may simply follow Matthew Arnold's belief that studying literature comparatively is valuable.

‘Everywhere there is a connection, everywhere there is an illustration, No single event, no single literature is adequately comprehended except in relation to other events, to other literature.'

When we read books, we often encounter references to other authors and works from different cultures. This can lead to a natural curiosity and interest in comparative literature, as we begin to make connections and see how different writers and traditions influence each other. The German writer Goethe believed that poetry was a shared human experience, and encouraged readers to explore literature from different parts of the world. Ultimately, comparative literature is about exploring the connections and resonances between different texts and cultures.

Comparative literature is not just common sense. Despite the ease of access to international literature and translations, the history of the term is marked by debates about its focus and purpose. Critics have questioned what the object of study is, how to define a comparative canon, and whether comparative literature is a field of study or a discipline. These debates have continued from the 19th century to the present day, to what Rene Wellek defined as the ‘crisis of Comparative Literature.’

Comparative literature has been a subject of debate and controversy for over a century. Benedetto Croce, a scholar from 1903, argued that comparative literature was not a separate discipline and that the proper object of study should be literary history. He claimed that the term 'comparative literature' was misleading and that it lacked substance. Other scholars, such as Max Koch, also contributed to the debate. Despite these arguments, comparative literature remains a field of study and continues to generate discussions and debates among scholars.

Charles Mills Gayley saw comparative literature as a study of literature that transcends boundaries such as language, culture, and history, and connects different works of literature through their commonalities as expressions of universal human thought and experience. He believed that despite differences in social conditions, individual perspectives, and other factors, literature reflects the common needs and aspirations of humanity and is shaped by universal psychological and physiological processes. Thus, comparative literature, for Gayley, was a means of understanding literature as a medium that unites all of humanity.

François Jost, in 1974, believed that national literature was limited and proposed that comparative literature represented more than just an academic discipline. He saw it as an overall view of literature, a vision of the cultural universe that is inclusive and comprehensive, and even likened it to a kind of world religion. The idea was that all cultural differences disappear when readers engage with great works and that the comparatist's role was to facilitate the spread of universal harmony through the study of literature.

According to Wellek and Warren, comparatists need special skills and linguistic proficiency, and they should widen their perspectives and suppress local biases. They suggest that Literature is a unified field, and comparatists are like international ambassadors promoting universal harmony through their work. This idealistic vision of literature as a unifying force has recurred in history after major crises, such as World War II.

 Wellek and Warren state that ‘Literature is one; as art and humanity are one’.

The grand vision of comparative literature as a unifying force has not been realized. As different critical approaches gained prominence in the 1960s and 1970s, the focus shifted away from comparing texts to analyzing the role of the reader. This led to the breaking down of the idea of universal values and a single interpretation of literature. In the 1950s and 60s, graduate students in the West saw comparative literature as a radical subject that crossed boundaries, even though it lacked coherent methodology and the debate on its existence persisted. In 1969, Harry Levin urged more practical work and less focus on theory, it was already out of date. By the late 70s, a new generation of students had turned to Literary Theory, Women's Studies, Semiotics, Film and Media Studies, and Cultural Studies as more radical subjects. Comparative Literature was seen as a relic of liberal humanism.

In the West, Comparative Literature lost its appeal to the new generation of students in the late 1970s, who turned to other subjects like Literary Theory, Women's Studies, Semiotics, Film and Media Studies, and Cultural Studies. However, in the rest of the world, particularly in Asia, Comparative Literature gained ground based on the specificity of national literature, which was previously denied by many Western comparatists. Programs in Comparative Literature emerged in China, Taiwan, Japan, and other Asian countries, and 

Swapan Majumdar attributes this to ‘the predilection for National Literature, which was deplored by Anglo-American critics as a methodology. In particular, Comparative Literature has struck roots in Third World nations and India’.

According to Ganesh Devy, comparative literature in India is directly linked to the rise of modern Indian nationalism, as it has been used to assert the national cultural identity. In contrast to the traditional Western approach of starting with Western literature and looking outwards, Indian comparatists scrutinize the West from without. Indian scholars refer to literature derived from Graeco-Roman matrices via Christianity as "western literature," including English, French, German, etc., which they term as "sub-national literature." This alternative perspective brings a revaluation of the discourse of 'national' literature.

The Indian perspective on comparative literature, as articulated by Ganesh Devy and Swapan Majumdar, challenges the Western notion of 'great' and 'minority' literature. Homi Bhabha suggests that post-colonial culture emphasizes productive cross-cutting across social sites, erasing the traditional disciplinary sense of cultural reference and relevance.

In his essay attacking Hegel's Eurocentric views, James Snead points out that Wole Soyinka and a whole range of African critics have exposed the pervasive influence of Hegel's argument that African culture was 'weak' in contrast to what he claimed was higher, more developed cultures. Hegel effectively denied Africa a history, which was a denial of its cultural and intellectual richness. Snead argues that the outstanding fact of late twentieth-century European culture is its ongoing reconciliation with black culture and that it took too long to discern the elements of black culture already present in latent form. The separation between the cultures was not one of nature, but one of force, and it is only now that Europe is recognizing this fact.

Today, the field of comparative literary studies is very diverse and its approach varies depending on the location where it is being studied. Critics from Africa, India, the Caribbean, and other regions have challenged Western literary criticism's tendency to ignore the implications of their literary and cultural policies. Terry Eagleton has argued that literature, in the traditional sense of the word, is an ideology. He discusses how the emergence of English as an academic subject in the nineteenth century had clear political implications. According to Eagleton, the establishment of the subject in universities followed the major social changes that occurred after the First World War.

“English Literature rode to power on the back of wartime nationalism, but it also represented a search for spiritual solutions on the part of the English ruling class whose sense of identity had been profoundly shaken”

Terry Eagleton's explanation for the rise of English as an academic subject tied in with the early comparatists' aspirations for a subject that transcended cultural boundaries through great literature. However, the definition of English literature has evolved and become more complex over time, leading to questions about what should be included in an English syllabus. Similarly, the emergence of alternative schools of thought, such as Edward Said's work on orientalism, has challenged the traditional understanding of comparative literature. Said's idea that "the Orient" was a word with multiple meanings and connotations not necessarily related to the actual region, has led to a rethinking of Western attitudes towards other cultures. Zhang Longxi's essay, "The Myth of the Other: China in the Eyes of the West," further explores this theme, arguing that China has been traditionally seen as the ultimate "other" by the West. These challenges from non-European critics have brought ideology back into the forefront of literary studies.

In the past, a literature syllabus in Europe or North America could focus on established canonical writers. However, in non-European cultures, especially those that were colonized by Western powers, the syllabus must address different issues. For example, Indian students must grapple with Shakespeare not only as a great figure in European literature but also as a representative of colonial values. This conflict between the two Shakespeares can be addressed by studying his work comparatively and examining his impact on Indian cultural life, while also comparing his work with that of Indian writers.

Comparative literature is growing in many parts of the world as a way to explore indigenous and imported traditions. In places like China, Brazil, India, and Africa, it is used constructively to study the impact of national culture by importation. This is different from the crisis and decay of comparative literature in the West, where there is quibbling about the canon and terms to start comparing. Ganesh Devy's argument that comparative literature in India coincides with modern Indian nationalism is important because it reminds us of the origins of the term 'Comparative Literature' in Europe during an age of national struggles and the question of national culture and identity.

Comparative literature, which compares different works of literature, is facing challenges and changes. In the West, there is a crisis with falling student numbers and a lack of consensus on what the subject should be. However, in other parts of the world, especially in the Third World and the Far East, comparative literature is developing and expanding. It is being used to explore questions of national culture and identity. This new comparative literature is also questioning the traditional European canon of great writers and challenging ideas about cultural history that are male-oriented. The post-modernist theory also revalues the role of the reader and exposes the power structures in society. Western readers are engaging with these challenges without using the term "comparative literature", but the ideas they are exploring are similar.

Translation studies is a rapidly growing field in literary studies that has significant implications for the future of comparative literature. It emphasizes the importance of literature as a differentiated and dynamic 'conglomerate of systems' and sees individual literary systems as part of a multi-faceted whole. This changes the terms of debates about 'majority' and 'minority' cultures and 'great' versus 'marginal' literature. Translation studies draw from multiple disciplines and propose that translation is not a marginal activity, but a major shaping force for change in the history of culture.

Translation studies is an area of literary studies that has grown rapidly since the mid-1970s. Scholars such as Toury, Lefevere, Hermans, and Lambert have shown that translation is especially important during times of cultural change, such as when a culture is expanding or in need of renewal. Translation studies see literature as a dynamic 'conglomerate of systems', and translation as a major shaping force for change in the history of culture. This view explains why there was a proliferation of translations into emergent European nations in the early nineteenth century, and why translation into English began to decrease as the British Empire extended its grasp. Translation studies offer a new way of looking at cultural history, taking into account both the implications of socio-historical changes that affect literary production in different cultures and the linguistic structuring of a text as it is transported across language boundaries. Comparative Studies have claimed translation studies as a sub-category, translation studies establish itself as a subject based on intercultural study and offer a methodology of some rigor, while comparative literature appears less like a discipline and more like a branch of something else. Translation studies are undergoing the opposite process to comparative literature, which seems to be losing ground and becoming more nebulous and loosely defined. The time is approaching for comparative literature to rethink its relationship with Translation Studies, just as linguistics had to rethink its relationship with Semiotics.

Therefore, we need to reassess the role of translation studies vis-à-vis comparative literature, and the long, unresolved debate on whether comparative literature is or is not a discipline in its own right could finally be shelved.

Work Cited

Bassnett, Susan, and Susan Bassnett-MacGuire. Comparative Literature: A Critical Introduction. Wiley, 1993. Accessed 28 March 2023.