Why Compare?

New Literary History, Volume 40, Number 3, pp. 453-471.

 By R. Radhakrishnan.

The purpose of this essay is to complicate the rationale that informs "our" will to comparative knowledge. Why do we want to compare when we are not sure who the "we" is? Any act of comparison, despite the best of intentions, is bound to flounder in that perilous and nameless region that lies between Identity and Difference. Unless "between-ness" is acknowledged as a serious epistemological and political issue in its own right, projects of comparison are doomed to profound self mystification. This essay argues that not only are comparative endeavors mired in relationships of uneven and asymmetrical power that they are unconscious of, but are also symptoms of a developmental epistemology that denies coevalness among the many worlds that constitute our one world. The essay suggests not that we abandon comparisons altogether, but rather that we undertake comparisons in the name of a multilateral relationality that opposes any form of hegemonic centrism.

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