Following our previous creative-critical sessions on translation as activism and resistance, OCCT Discussion Group co-convenors Shivani Arulalan Pillai and Georgie Fooks invite you to reflect on comparative methodologies this term. In her introduction to the special journal issue of Comparative Literature Studies marking the twentieth anniversary of the publication of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s Death of a Discipline, Nergis Ertürk asks us to reflect on the ‘imperatives’ of comparatism: planetary continentalism and the right to read alterity.
With these imperatives as our points of departure, in this session, we will think through the various aspects involved in developing and implementing comparative methodologies and the questions they raise. How do we trace similarities and differences without allowing one to outweigh the other? How do we practise comparison within spaces that are ill-equipped to accommodate it? What does it mean to think comparatively at a time when singular viewpoints and grand narratives are becoming increasingly commonplace in the global geopolitical order? Can comparative methodologies themselves come to represent—to return to the themes from our previous sessions—acts of activism and resistance? Is the very notion of comparison fraught with assumptions that require unpacking?
This session aims to provide participants the opportunity to share their experiences of building comparative frameworks and engage in dialogue with others, thereby arriving at different ‘imperatives’ of comparatism in the process.
Suggested readings – these are not compulsory, so feel free to explore what interests you:
