Comp and Genres of Interdisciplinarity

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University of Oklahoma

Comparative Literature and the Genres of InterdisciplinarityAuthor(s): Francesco LoriggioSource: World Literature Today, Vol. 69, No. 2, Comparative Literature: States of the Art(Spring, 1995), pp. 256-262Published by: University of OklahomaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40151132

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ComparativeLiterature and the Genresof InterdisciplinarityBy FRANCESCOLORIGGIO During the lastfew decadescom-parative litera-ture s most pressing impulse seems to have beenterritorial or cumulative: annexing material firstoverlookedor unexplored,enlarging he scope, ex-panding the limits of comparisongeographically,disciplinarily, ntellectually.You see this in thosedefinitionsof the disciplinewhich, on variousocca-sions,haveurgedcomparatistso put moretruly n-tercultural istancebetween the textstheychoose tocompare, to transcend Eurocentrismand addressthe insights critical and theoretical that worksfrom Asia or Africa or elsewhere outside Europemight provide.1You see it in the resolutionadoptedby the InternationalComparativeLiteratureAssoci-ation n the seventieswhich addstheories o the ros-ter of items amenable to comparison(Scholz). Oryou see it in in those definitionswhich, in the earlysixties,broughtwithinthe compassof the discipline"thestudyof the relationship etween literature . .andother areasof knowledgeandbelief,such as thearts (e.g., painting, sculpture,architecture,music),philosophy, history, the social sciences (e.g., poli-tics, economics, sociology), the sciences, religion,"or, in brief, "the other spheres of human expres-sion,"to round out and complementthe more tra-ditional"studyof literaturebeyond the confines ofone country" Remak, 1). And, of course,it is therein more recent versions,which raise the ante stillfurtherand inscribe the very process of readjust-ment and accumulation nto theirsurveyof the dis-cipline. For the 1993 BernheimerReport to theAmericanComparativeLiteratureAssociation,the"spaceof comparison" nvolves not only compar-isons between "artisticproductionsusuallystudiedby differentdisciplines"or "Westerncultural radi-tions, both high and popular, and those of non-Westerncultures"or "pre-andpostcontactculturalproductionsof colonizedpeoples"or "gendercon-structionsdefined as feminine andthose defined asmasculine" or "sexual orientations defined asstraightand those defined as gay" or "racial and

ethnic modes of signifying" r "hermeneutic rticu-lations of meaning and materialistanalysesof itsmodes of production and circulation" not onlythis, but "much more" (Bernheimer,41-42). Yousurmise that tomorrowis anotherday, with morenew material o canvassand to agglomerate.It is difficultto say with how strong a sense ofcaution or of suspicion such a compulsionshould be faced. The continualupdating, he manyrevisionsmay spring rom some anxietyof omission,some unavowed ntellectualhubris,but theyare alsoa signthat the disciplineparticipatesullyin the dy-namics of cultural conversation,that it listens tooutside proddingsand keeps in touch with events.Comparativeiterature omparesanything he timesconfrontit with. Certainly, n spite of their elitismand Eurocentrism, omparativeiteratureprogramshavenotbeenthe placeswhere nstitutionalpower sconcentrated, r, for thatmatter,wherepower-mak-ing and power-breakingntellectual rends are initi-ated or consolidated.As the history of poststruc-turalism, postcolonialism, and cultural studiessuggests, ideas in North American faculties of arthave to be properlydomesticated, o go through hefilter of English departmentsbeforethey can aspireto anymeasureof academic uccess.What is striking, n the nineties, is the degreetowhich, in the various definitionsof comparativeit-erature,both the principleof coverageand the com-patibilityof the elementsthe coverageentails,of theingredientsthe many correctionssediment on therest, are taken for granted.Each of the new itemscomes attachedwith a theoreticalor criticalagendawhich has externalrepercussionsas well as its owninternaltensions. Today, the misgivingsabout thefocus of traditionaliterary tudiesvoicedby the in-tercultural omparatistsof one or two decades agoare similarbut not quite the same as those of post-colonialist critics. Relocating theories into theprovince of comparison aligns comparatistswithantifoundationalists rom a varietyof institutionalvenues not an uncontroversialposition. For itsown part to pass overgenderstudies,whose actu-alityand explosiveness,as topics,need not be dweltupon the opening to "the other arts,"visual andplastic,leavescomparativeiterature t the doorstepof media and culturalstudies, two of its strongestinstitutionaland intellectual ompetitors.Schematized,the strains which the widening ofthe perimetersof comparative iteraturehas beencausing among comparatists tem, I would submit,from the centrifugalpull of two basic orientations.

Francesco Loriggio teaches Italianand ComparativeLitera-ture at CarletonUniversityn Ottawa,Ontario.He haspublishednumerousarticleson literary heory, he relationsbetween itera-ture andotherdisciplines,he novel,and various wentieth-cen-tury authors.His translations rom the works of AchilleCam-panile, The Inventor of the Horse and Two Other Short Plays,appearedn 1995. He is the editor of the essaycollectionSocialPluralismand LiteraryHistory:TheLiteratureof the Italian Emigra-tion forthcoming).


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LORIGGIO 257On the one hand, comparatistsmaintain a funda-mental interest in literarytexts that are markedly"different."The premiumthat comparativismhasput on readinga text in the original,on the knowl-edge of languagesother than the mother tongue,speaks to this concern. The embarrassment hatpostcolonialismposes for Westerncomparatistshasto do, by andlarge,with the fact that the textsmorereadilycirculating n the West are those writteninEnglishor French or in Spanish,or that when thetexts appear irst in another anguage, he languagewillbe accessible o so small a publicas to make thereadingin translation nevitable. The globalizationthe late twentiethcenturyhas witnessed simultane-ously supersedescolonizationand reaffirms ts ef-fects. On the other hand, comparatistshave beenlookingmore and more to disciplinesand fields be-yond literature.This too has elicited a number ofworst-case cenarios.The sheerquantityof informa-tion required o concoct a barely adequate pictureof the goings-onof a discipline s a sufficientlydis-couragingobstacle. Able and willingas you maybeabout talkingthe talk, you still worry about yourabilityto walkthe walk. Do you reallyknow aboutanthropologyf you have no experiencewith whatthe people trained n the disciplinedo, if you havenever done any ethnography?As significantly, hetwo orientationscrisscross,commingle. In distin-guishingbetweentwo postcolonial iteraturesn En-glish, you may need to rely on disciplinessuch ashistory,sociology,andanthropology.Conversely, naccostinganyof the socialsciences,andperhaps hesciencesthemselves,you must think about the tradi-tion you areenlisting n your comparisonor oppos-ing to literature,whether t is GermansociologyorAfricanphilosophyor Britishanthropology ou aredealingwith.However requentlyheoriesmaytrav-el in modernity, anguageand intellectualgenealogycontinue o be essentialbaggage.Inevitably,each of these two penchants of thediscipline eads backto a reconsideration f the ad-jectivecomparativendits status n present-dayiter-ary theory. As for myself, in picking up on this,which is the uninflectedstrandof the debateaboutcomparative iterature,I find the discussionaboutinterdisciplinaryomparison o be the more conve-nientpointof departure; nd it is the solicitations owhich t givesrise thatI will be probinghere,in par-ticular the issues emanatingfrom the comparisonwith philosophy,the sciences, religion the "otherspheresof human expression"mentionedso oftenin the definitionsof greatest pan.To argue or thissortexpansion f the disciplinesnow, in the nineties,to confirm,wittinglyor unwit-tingly, the demise of those attitudesaccordingtowhich literature an be only the objectof study ofotherdisciplines,or of analytic ools legitimatedbyotherdisciplines.Declare the intellectualhorizon to

be entirelyecumenical,and you automaticallynvis-agethepossibilityhat iteraturemayreciprocate,mayimpingeuponotherdisciplines o less than otherdis-ciplineshave mpingedorimpingeuponliterature.n-deed,you provide he premises or one of the crucialdevelopments f thelate twentieth entury.Whatever he eightiesand the nineties havebeenor are,they arethatportionof the century n whichnotions hithertoidentified with literaturehave be-come suddenly portable,in which sociologistsandanthropologists ave been able to likensocietyor aparticular trip of the life they have observed to atext and cognitivescientistshave been able to spec-ulatemore seriously han everbefore aboutthe roleof the imaginationn theirdebateson how the mindoperates. The eighties and the nineties have alsobeen the periodwhichhas seen an impressivenon-literaryunfurlingof categoriesof literarycriticism,and the willingnesson the partof membersof otherdisciplines o engagenovels and poetryand theateror the opinionsof writers n mullingover a particu-lar topic. HaydenWhitedescribingnineteenth-cen-tury historiographyn terms of Frye'snotions of ro-mance,tragedy,comedy,and satire(1973); RichardRorty bringing together Heidegger, Kundera,andDickens in the same article (1991); Paul Feyer-abendcontinually xplaining he progressof sciencethrough long, sustainedglosses on Renaissanceartor Homer or Greek tragedy (1984, 1987); MarkTurnerfinding metaphorsof kinshipat the heart oflogical discourse (1987, 15 ff.) these have beenamongthe now typical gesturesof the times. Whatis justas important,philosophers, cientists,and so-ciologists have become more self-conscious abouttheir writing, at times attempting complicatedex-periments.The anthropologistCliffordGeertz,thebiologistLewisThomas,the paleontologistStephenJayGould, the sociobiologistE. O. Wilson are oftencited for their style and could very well figure inreading ists of classes n Englishcomposition.Theystand to the generalethos of these last few decadesas the transgressivelywriterlyDerrida and Heideg-ger, whose work is literary n a still more deliberateandcompulsive ashion,do to the avant-garde.The result is a kindof supplementary elletrism,a yet-to-be-chartediterary imension that exists intandem with and in extension to literatureas it iscommonlyknown.Rephrasingt differently,n oneof their more specific aspects,the circumstances fthe late twentiethcenturyecho those obtainingbe-fore disciplines were established and disciplinarylinkages nstitutionalizedn the pattern hey exhibittoday. After all, up until the seventeenthcentury,before the humanities and the sciences went theirseparate ways, a Machiavelli could write both //Principe nd La Mandragola, oth politicaltreatisesand comedies, and a Francis Bacon could writeboth Novus Organonand The New Atlantis,both


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258 WORLDLITERATURE ODAY

philosophy of science and novels or novel-likeworks,withoutcausingscandal.It is in thisrespect hat the ability o talk the talk,while not a sufficientbasis on which to pursuecom-parisonbetween literatureand the "other forms ofexpression,"s nonethelessa necessaryone. In someof the nonliterary omains, he fracturebetween thefield the body of works on whichresearchers, rit-ics, andprofessors onduct theirinquiries and thediscipline the worksthat recordthe experiencesofthe individualswho identifywith the domain or withthe rulesandregulations heyhave actedupon is aratherdeep one. You are not required o have di-rectedfull-length ilms or to play in a rock band inorder to speakabout cinema or about rock music.You arenot obligedto participaten that whichyouare writingabout if you are an anthropologist r asociologist:SirJamesFrazermade a careerof arm-chairanthropology.Withliterary tudies the gapis amuch more tenuous one. The essay is a literarygenre (which is why it is easy to confuse "literarystudies"and "literature,"o sayone whenyou actu-ally mean the other). And the argument,more orless, holds for the othermainstaysof the humanisticcurriculum, or such disciplinesas philosophyandhistory, also highly and blatantlyverbal. Not bychance, the inclusion of interdisciplinary ompari-son within comparative literature'spurview oc-curredonlywhen it becameacceptable o reempha-size the role of the written,discursive omponentofnonliterarydisciplines. Paradoxically,at the sametime that the presence of literature n society isbeing eroded by cinema, television, and videogames, literarystudies have never enjoyed greaterinterdisciplinaryrestige.For all this, the literary urn in interdisciplinarycommerce is, as I have indicated, a problem forcomparativeiterature.Why?First and foremostbe-cause it foists on comparativeiterature ariousam-bivalences.Any pleading or the blurringof bordersruns into the caveat most succinctlycountenanced,in recent years, by Stanley Fish: "The announce-ment of an interdisciplinary rogram[either] nau-guratesthe effort of some disciplineto annex theterritory f another,or 'interdisciplinaryhought'isthe name ... of a new discipline" 19). Intentionsnotwithstanding,he dismantling f a particular er-sion of interdisciplinarylow (according o which adiscipline would provide the conceptual andmethodologicalwherewithal o otherdisciplines)al-waysreproduceshe same conditionsunder a differ-ent guise.Thus, the newly-regained restigeof liter-ariness is two-edged:from a certainangle, it alsoundermines the idea of literature and of literarystudies,withoutwhichcomparativeiterature as noraisond'etre.Yes, the last few decadeshave revokedthe once indispensableantinomybetweenlanguageand metalanguage,and yes, in so doing they have

altered the relationbetween criticismand creativework,and loosened the gripof otherdiscourses, heauthorityby which philosophy, inguistics,and thesciences natural and social legitimized literarycritics.The trouble s that the abrogationhingesonnotions ecriture, textuality, figuration which,thoughmore appealing o individualsconnectedtoliterary tudies,themselvespositone overriding on-tinuum. Andwhere there arenot sufficientdisconti-nuities between the variousfields, where worksbynovelistsorby philosophers rby anthropologists rby sociologistsare available o scrutiny nasmuchasthey exhibitfiguralor rhetorical raits,there is onlytropology or discourse analysis;there can be noroom forcomparison.Hence in the nineties the verysuccessof literarystudiesforcescomparativeiteratureo insiston theresidualasymmetry f literature is-a-visother fieldsof inquiryor (disciplinary) iscourses.And this notfor any theoreticalconservatism, or any desire topreserve ome long-lostand elusive ntegrityof liter-ature and/or iterary tudies.Simply,literature an-not shed its recenteighteenth-or nineteenth-centu-ry legacy,whichbequeatheddisciplinarityo it, anymore than it can or should forget its Renaissancepast. Either alternative conceiving tself as the ex-erciseof literacy,of writingtoutcourt,or conceivingitself as the exercise of one specificand unalterablemode of literacy would be an ahistorical hoice, achoice that wouldneglector forsake omething.Theemergenceof a cross-disciplinaryextualdimensionwith literary-like ualitiesdoesreflectbackon litera-ture;it is a phenomenonthat should be meditatedupon by criticismmore thanit has been. The ques-tion is whether literaturehas any furtherresourcesat its disposal hatwouldallow t still to differentiateitself from otherfields, and whether he businessofliterarystudies is not or should not be to de-scribe and assess the give-and-takebetween thesetwo features.I supposewhat I am implicitlydefendinghere isthe view that comparatistssuch as Yves Chevrelhave advocated:comparativeiteratureas the disci-plineof the encounter,as a "demarche ers autruietetude de la demarchevers autrui" 8), a movementtowardother texts and other culturesand the studyof how other people have confronted the texts ofother cultures and other peoples. This is an ap-proach to interdisciplinary elations Bakhtin alsomight have appreciated.In dialogue, the Russianphilosopher-critic as intimated,interlocutorsbothpartakeof sharedcodes andconsummate,completeeach other. Once contactis established,a conversa-tion will not last long if there is no exchangeof in-formation.And that occursby virtue of the "extra-locality" of each of the speakers, because eachspeaker is positioned differently,can even on astrictly physical level see aspects of his or her


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260 WORLDLITERATURE ODAYmetatheoretical reath.Just as the attractiveness fnarrative, f discourseas the tellingof aplot, is war-rantedby narratology nd,beyondthat,by a lineagegoingback,in this century,to Saussureand culmi-nating in Derrida, an impressivegenealogystandsbehinddramaturgical erspectives.CharlesPeirce'sadmonition hat the goal of thought oughtto be theeliminationof doubt and the preparation f action,that the "meaningof a concept expressesitself inthe shape of conduct to be recommended" 272),resonates through the works of William James,Dewey, and George Herbert Mead as well as thephilosophyof Austin and the laterWittgenstein. nliterary criticism proper, dramaturgical thoughtreaches ts apogee in the pivotal figureof KennethBurke. The methodBurke devised for the studyofmotives,of symbolicaction his dramatisticpentadof act, agent, purpose,scene,andagencyand the at-tendant ratios (xvii-xxv) takes over the functionnarratologists ave in the other camp: it mediatesbetweenpragmatic onceptionsof languageorprag-maticphilosophyandliterary heory.Reenvisioninghe literary urn of interdisciplinar-ity in this mannerreinstates iteraturemore directlywithin intellectualhistory.What sort of theoreticalstakes lurk in the narrative/drama ichotomy hasbeen illustratedduringthe last two decadesby thepolemic between Derrida and Searle and betweendeconstructionists ndspeech-act heorists n gener-al.3Butproceedingn the otherdirection lluminatesthe polemic,andprobably,n retrospect, hanges tstenor. Austin's conditionsof felicity for performa-tives includerequirementshat to literary ritics arepalpably generic, i.e. "theatrical":he right back-drop, properrecitation of the formula, and, mostovertly,"audienceuptake"of the speaker'swords(115-16). As such, these requirements ttest to thepersistence and impact of literary reminiscences(you could read Austin's How to Do ThingswithWordss an instanceof the theatrummundimotif) inor upon the culturalmemoryof philosophy: heaterprecisely representshe tension between languageandnonlanguage, he inescapableand alwaysresur-facing proximityof doing to words that Austin istryingto capture,and it is fittingthat the analogyshould nfiltratehisbook so spontaneously.That in the course of the polemicDerridarejectsthe cogencyof context (of setting,or "scene,"as aKennethBurkewould say) for the determination fmeaning,that he should shift the focus back ontothe verbalnatureof discourse,on the "telling," rig-gersothermusingson genre.Philosophy'sor the so-cial sciences' fascinationwith narrativemodels ishistoricallyquite in sync: the rise and institutionalsiting of the various disciplines, their sensitivitytowardlanguageand language-centeredssues, co-incides with the rise of the novel, the moderngenreparexcellence, he only genreto achievecriticaland

popularsuccess afterGutenbergand the adventofsilent reading. Literaryhistory throws one swerveinto this coherence.It has often been calledupontoregister he resistanceof dramaand dramaticmod-els to the heavymodernpurchaseof the novel.Youhave to wonderwhyin some of the momentsof self-consciousnessof the genre duringthe late nine-teenthcenturyor the earlytwentiethcentury,whenits poetics was being constructed some of themore compellingcriticalpreoccupationsabout thenovel were best reflectedby statementsabout the-ater. "Lepoete est dans le dramecommeDieu dansla creation. . . Le poete dramaturgest le grand n-visible,"declaresAuguste Vacquerie,a minor con-temporary of Flaubert, anticipating perhaps toosummarily he disputeabout impersonalismn thenovel (4-5). And the passage in which Joyce'sStephenDedalus recapitulateshe twentieth-centu-ryversionof the conceptand conjureshis imageofthe artist as one who "like the God of creation,re-mainswithin or behindor above hishandiwork,n-visible, refined out of existence, indifferent,paringhis fingernails"s apassageabout drama 214).Admittedly,Vacquerie'sand Joyce's pronounce-ments echo the Platonic separationof genres, ac-cording o whichthe distribution f voice is the dis-criminatingfactor: in drama only the charactersspeak; n narrativeboth the author and the charac-ters do so. And with this paradigm,difficultiescanbe smoothed over.The dramatic peechsituation sbuilt-in to narration.Some of Pirandello'splaysde-liberatelyset out to prove that the entirenarrativecohort, author not excluded,can be dramatized. ,on the contrary,have been harpingon the conceptof action, which in genre theoryis an Aristoteliancriterion.My answer is that, in spite of the diver-gencesbetweenthe two classical nheritances f crit-icism,the largercriticaland historicaldriftof my re-marks applies to action too. Where prioritylies,whether t is meaningfulactionthat should be con-sideredas a text or whether t is the meaningful extthat should be consideredas action, is ultimatelymoot. What can be said and all that probablyshould be said is that the two genresdo translate,do convert one into the other.Novelists (a Beckett,a Camus,a Sartre)have doubled as playwrights r,at times, have adapted heir own narrativeexts forthestage(asPirandelloamouslydid with hisstories).Peirce,the pragmatists,Burke,Austinproposenoless at the philosophicalevel: anguagecantranslateinto conduct,actions canpermeatewords,as wordsaction. And how to construe the cogitationsof thepsychologistswho, in commentingon the value ofthe "narratory rinciple" or their discipline,write,"Thespecial eaturesof any'other'canbe identifiedonly if it is known n whatdrama, n whatstory,theactor is participating"Sarbin, 15); or "The utteredpronoun, , stands for the author,me stands for the


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LORIGGIO 261actor,the charactern the drama,the narrative ig-ure"(Sarbin, 18); or "Inthe samewaythat theatri-cal productionsvary n theircapacity o arouse andcompel an audience,so may the narrative orms ofdaily life and of science varyin their dramatic m-pact" (GergenandGergen,28)?How else to under-stand the allusions to drama that crop up almostunawares n these passages, f not as a symptomofthe perduranceof older, literary-criticalopoi intothe newerdiscoursesof the socialsciences?Having finally evoked the ancientness of theproblems which comparativeliteraturebrings tobear in its attemptto rendercomparativehe studyof the relationswith philosophyor the sciences orthe social sciences, I should perhaps, in closing,point out that genres are the groundwhere all thetypes of comparison,all the interdisciplinaritiesmentioned earliercross paths. Much of the debateabout the relation between comparative iteratureand the other arts or the other,nonverbal orms ofexpressions actuallyabout the placeof genre-basedmetaphorsand models in theoryand criticism.Theproponentsof cultural tudies haveradicalized heirdifferenceby underscoringhe multicodednatureofsome of the material hey deal with. Simplereality,the geometricmultiplication f textsby new media,a diffusion that abolishesthe usual pigeonholesofhigh-low,popular-serious,will compel literarycriti-cism andtheory some have maintained Easthope,1991) to transmute nto a more capaciousdisci-plinewhich has cultureas its objectof inquiry.Cu-riously,the ubiquityof media, at least, has revivedrather han reduced or annulledthe allure of tradi-tional literarygenres.In bypassing he age of print,cinema,television,videos, and virtualrealityrejointhe other temporalextreme,the art of the village.The spectacularization hey have instituted intoeverydayife is drama o the wthpower,dramasub-limated, etherealized,simulacrizedby machineryand gadgetryundreamedof; but it is drama, orsomething ufficientlyike it.And this introduces n the discourseswhichnamemedia-objects he tensions inherent to other disci-plines.Dramaor spectaclecan be a model or a toolof analysis or criticsdoing culturalstudies (intend-ed in its difference,as the studyof verbal and non-verbal orms of expression),not theirmeansof com-munication,which remainswriting,the medium ofprint.Even thoughthereexists withinthe essaythesubtraditionof the dialogue, even though the in-creasingfrequency, n criticism,of the recoursetothe interview s a phenomenonto watch, as writingthe discourseof cultural tudies willbe missing, ikethe discourse of strictly literarystudies when itdwells on theater, the combination of sensorial(audio plus visual) and representational-epistemo-logical (languageplus action)elementsthat charac-terize he textual ield which it is negotiating.

By contrast, t is important o recognize he addi-tive effect of current,historical,and largelymedia-inducedspectacularity n literature f anykind,fic-tional and nonfictional.The themes withwhich theculturalconversationof the last two decades hasgrappled identity, he cultureof complaint, he vo-cabularyof victimization,community, ethics, thestrained allegiances of individual to nation andstate are very familiar o anyone acquaintedwiththe historyof tragedy, romthe Greeksonward.Ex-cept that in the contemporaryworld this materialhas acquired strong over- or undertones. NancyMiller has describedthe recentperformative haseof feminist criticism, which has produced worksoften narrativeor autobiographical r confessionalin form, and lecturesby speakerswho literallyre-cite, act out their text, by statingthat it is writingthat displays he person, writingabout"thespecta-cle of gender"(22). The phrase s a happyone, butit can be amplified:genderedor not gendered,allwriting that draws attention to itself "creates ascene," makes "a spectacle of itself." Revisited inthe parlanceof either dramatism r cultural tudies,the century's earliest intimations of literarinessthose sponsored by the Russian Formalist theo-rists are about the speechactthatliteraryanguagebecomes when it deviates from its conventions orstresses ts own procedures. n the currentage, theworksof womenwho personalize heirwriting,or ofphilosophers arefulabout theirstyle, or of ethnog-rapherswho narrate their encounters with infor-mants, or of sociologistswho define themselves as"ironists," ealizein printand withinthe academicenvironment,for a professionalpublic hence insmall scale some of the premisesand the promisesof mass media.They construct, f not their own no-toriety, their own exposure. n Russian Formalistthought, techniquedeautomatizes erceptions, reesthe individual rom the deja-vusyndrome,reestab-lishes the visibilityof whatever t represents.Thatfunctionin late modernity s carriedout withintheintricateweb of relations hat comes with the exis-tence of other modes of expression. Style, self-re-flexivity, performanceare dramatic several timesover:they are to the extent that they aresocial,his-torical gestures with ethical or political ramifica-tions, and to the extent thatthey are socialand his-toricalin a fashiondeterminedby the adjacencyofmass media (for which the "showability"of the"telling," o to say,is amandatory rerequisite).As for the intercultural imensionof interdiscipli-narity,genrewould obviouslyhave to figurepromi-nentlyin anyaccount of its vicissitudes.Here in theWest, literary riticismhastraditionallylassified it-erature under three headings, with lyric poetryflankingnarrative nd drama.To my knowledge,ofotherdisciplinesonlyphilosophy in redressperhapsof its Platonicpast? the quarrelwith literature hat


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262 WORLDLITERATURE ODAYTheRepublic nstigatedis still labeled the quarrelwithpoetry)has from time to time manifested omepartialityor this thirdgenre; he lyric s the emblemof art forGadamerand of antimetaphysicalhinkingforHeidegger,whoselaterwritings trive o be poet-ic in the literalmeaningof the word. Generalizingsomewhat, t would be possibleto blame the lackofappeal of poetry on the subject matter of theyounger,more moderndisciplinary iscourses.Nat-ural or social, the sciences are realisticenterprises:they ministerto the prose of everyday ife, typical,routinebusiness,not the private ndividualism uchas lyric poetry might depict and celebrate.But theisolation of that particulargenre is also due to theoverwhelmingpredominanceof drama and narra-tive, which have been foundationalrespectively nclassical and modern literarycriticism. And theseare are not prerogativeshateverycultureaccords othem. Elsewhere the catalogue of genres may bemorecomplex more suppleor more varied or dif-ferentlyorganized.To listen to literary heorists, nAsia the founding genre is the lyric. Comparatistswishingto get a clearergraspof the literary urn ofnonliterary isciplines or of modernculturalhisto-ry willhave to look into the relations his has occa-sioned. It would be of considerable nstructiontoknow if in Asianor Africanor other traditionspoet-ic models fare better with the social sciences thantheyhavein the West, or, conversely, f any changein the critical-theoreticalortunes of narration iesin, as it does in the West, with the irruptionon theintellectual scene of sociology, anthropology,psy-chology,and so forth. CarletonUniversity

11 am thinking here primarily of Etiemble (1974) and Miner(1990), but the theme has been a recurringone in the discipline.Bakhtinstates this most directly:"In order to understand, it isimmensely important for the person who understands to be heatedoutside he object of his or her understanding in time, in space, inculture. For one cannot even see one's exterior and comprehend itas a whole, and no mirrors or photographscan help; our real exteri-or can be seen and understood only by other people, because theyarelocated outside us in space and because they are others"7).3The texts in which Derrida and Searle played out their ver-sion of the polemic are, for the former, 1972 and, for the latter,1977. But my contention is that the polemic has many versions,one of which is represented by genres.ReferencesAustin, J. L. How To Do Things With Words.New York. Oxford

University Press. 1962.Bakhtin, M. M. "Response to a Question from Novy Mir" InSpeech Genres and Other Late Essays. Vern W. McGee, tr.Austin. University of Texas Press. 1986. Pp. 1-9.Bernheimer, Charles. "The Bernheimer Report, 1993." In Com-parativeLiterature n theAge of Multiculturalism.Charles Bern-heimer, ed. Baltimore. Johns Hopkins University Press. 1995.Pp. 39-48.Burke, Kenneth. A GrammarofMotivesand A RhetoricofMotives.Cleveland. World Publishing. 1962.

Chevrel, Yves. La litteraturecomparee.Paris. Presses Universi-taires de France. 1989.Clifford, James, and George E. Marcus, eds. WritingCulture:ThePoeticsand Politicsof Ethnography.Berkeley. University of Cal-ifornia Press. 1986.Derrida, Jacques. "Signature evenement contexte." In Margesdela philosophicParis. Minuit. 1972. Pp. 365-92.Easthope, Anthony. Literary nto CulturalStudies. London. Rout-ledge. 1991.Etiemble. Essais de litterature (vraiment) generale. Paris. Galli-mard. 1974.Feyerabend, Paul. Farewell o Reason.London. Verso. 1987. . Scienza come arte. Libero Sosio, tr. Bari, Italy. Laterza.1984.Fish, Stanley. "Being Interdisciplinary Is So Very Hard to Do."Profession,1989, pp. 15-22.Gergen, Kenneth J. and Mary M., eds. "NarrativeForm and theConstruction of Psychological Science." In Sarbin, pp. 22-44.Goffinan, Erving. "The Theatrical Frame." In Frame Analysis.New York. Harper. 1974. Pp. 124-55.Joyce, James. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Har-mondsworth, Eng. Penguin. 1962.Locke, David. ScienceAs Writing.New Haven, Ct. Yale Universi-ty Press. 1992.Marcus, George E., and Dick Cushman, eds. "Ethnographies asTexts ."Annual Reviewof Anthropology,11 (1982), pp. 25-69.Miller, Nancy K. GettingPersonal.New York. Routledge. 1992.Miner, Earl. ComparativePoetics:An InterculturalEssay on Theo-ries of Literature.Princeton, NJ. Princeton University Press.1990.Peirce, Charles S. PhilosophicalWritings. ustus Buchler, ed. NewYork. Dover. 1955.Remak, Henry H. H. "Comparative Literature: Its Definitionand Function." In ComparativeLiterature:Method and Perspec-tive. Newton P. Stallknecht and Horst Frenz, eds. Carbon-dale. Southern Illinois University Press. 1971. Pp. 1-55.Ricoeur, Paul. Time and Narrative. Vol. 1 Kathleen McLaughhnand David Pellauer, trs. Chicago. University of ChicagoPress. 1984.Rorty, Richard. "Texts and Lumps." In Objectivity,Relativism,

and Truth. Cambridge, Eng. Cambridge University Press.1991a. Pp. 78-92. . "Heidegger, Kundera and Dickens." In Essayson Heideg-ger and Others.Cambridge, Eng. Cambridge University Press.1991b. Pp. 66-82.Sarbin, Theodore R., ed. "The Narrative as a Root Metaphor forPsychology." In Narrative Psychology:The Storied Nature ofHuman Conduct.Theodore R. Sarbin, ed. New York. Praeger.1986. Pp. 3-21.Schafer, Roy. "Narration in the Psychoanalytic Dialogue." Criti-cal Inquiry,7:1 (1980), pp. 29-53.Scholz, Bernhard F. "Comparing The Theories of Literature?Some Remarks on the New Task Description of the ICLA."Yearbook f Comparativeand GeneralLiterature,28 (1979), pp.26-30.Searle, John. "Reiteratingthe Differences: A Reply to Derrida."Glyph, 1 (1977), pp. 198-208.Simons, Herbert W., ed. The RhetoricalTurn: Inventionand Per-suasion in the Conduct of Inquiry. Chicago. University ofChicago Press. 1990.Turner, Mark. Death Is the Mother of Beauty: Mind, Metaphor,Criticism.Chicago. University of Chicago Press. 1987.Turner, Victor. Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors:SymbolicAction inHuman Society.Ithaca, N.Y. Cornell University Press. 1974.Vacquerie, Auguste. Profilsetgrimaces.Paris. Levy. 1856.White, Hayden. The Greco-RomanTradition. New York. Harper&Row. 1973.

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Comp and Genres of Interdisciplinarity