Baqer Aziz1, Azra Ghandeharion2 *, Vahideh Sayedi3
1- MA of English Language and Literature, Ferdowsi university of Mashhad,
2- Corresponding Author, Assistant Professor in English Literature and Cultural Studies, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad
3- Lecturer in English Literature, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad
Abstract
Comparative literature refers to the multinational study of literature through comparison as its main mean. This field is can be applied in the study of literature in two ways: first, gaining knowledge and utilizing other disciplines for the study of literature and second, the inclusion of the Other, be that a marginal literature in its several meanings of marginality, a genre, various text types, etc. It may also facilitate the cross-cultural and interdisciplinary study of literature. In fact, comparison is a necessity in many fields, including literary studies, where the globalization has stimulated comparative analysis of literature and culture on a vast scale. Thus, comparative literature will satisfy the desire of scholars to study literature beyond national limits. The purpose of this study is to determine how different literatures may share similar features especially American and Arab literature. The process of comparison is a usual function of the literature. Hence, the study of literature is always comparative. To reach this purpose, the present article will first introduce different schools of comparative literature; then, the main theorists of this field will be discussed concisely in west and east. Then, to focus on the study of the “Other”, we elaborate on the theory of intersectionality.
Key Words: Comparative Literature, American School, Arab homeland, Theory of intersectionality
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1. Introduction
“Comparative literature” refers to the multinational study of literature and emphasizes on comparison as its main tool. As Tötösy de Zepetnek (1998) has announced, comparative literature is a method which can be applied in the analysis of literature in two ways. The First way is by gaining knowledge and making use of other disciplines in and for the study of literature and the second way is by the inclusion of the other, be that a marginal literature in its several meanings of marginality, a genre, or various text types. It may also facilitate the cross-cultural and interdisciplinary study of literature. Comparison is a necessity in many fields, including literary studies, where the globalization has stimulated comparative analysis of literature and culture on a vast scale (Tötösy de Zepetnek, Comparative literature 13). Thus, comparative literature will satisfy the desire of scholars to study literature beyond national limits.
The purpose that this study follows is to determine the similar features which are shared by different literatures. In fact, all admired literary works look to their own times and also look forward and backward. The comparative nature of literature requires the literary works to be studied not in isolation but in comparison. It would also compare themes and literary forms belonging to different languages. All these are comparative studies in the dominion of literature. However, the term “comparative literature” is by some critics used just when works from two or more literatures of separate languages and nationalities are the focus of analysis (Tötösy de Zepetnek, Comparative literature 18).
Critics of comparative study normally seek to discuss the similarities of literary works. According to Rene Wellek (1978), a distinguished critic in this field, comparative literature must go beyond the national limitations and at the same time should not disregard the existence of different national traditions (272). According to Ray (2002), comparative literature helps the critics to distinguish the merits of a work in a more operative way by comparing it to other works in different languages. Secondly can also have a well-adjusted interpretation of those merits; thirdly, it shows that literature is not a separate entity, but it exists in relation with other literatures (Ray 10).
In addition, comparative literature intends to study different national traditions. Thus, attempting to define the spirit of a nation reflected in its language and literature which is one of the most important benefits of comparative literature. Henry Remak (1916-2009) was a distinguished critic in the field of comparative literature. He has defined “Comparative Literature” by declaring that “Comparative Literature is the study of literature beyond the boundaries of a particular country and it is the study of relations among the literatures and other scientific areas of knowledge and belief” (Remak 53).
According to Tötösy de Zepetnek (1998), comparative literature mostly includes the analysis of diverse literatures in an open-ended way. Different characteristics of literature like language and historical background of the literary texts are of high significance in comparing the literary works. Comparative literature is chiefly a study of parallels and variances. Originally, comparative literature was assumed as a universal study; though, many literary critics and historians rejected this belief (Tötösy de Zepetnek, Comparative literature 15).
In many parts of the world, the discipline of comparative literature is defined as cultural studies (Tötösy de Zepetnek, Comparative cultural studies 235). It is believed that the comprehensiveness and extended range of this field helps to develop a wide viewpoint. The comparison can be done in different aspects, including the literary works’ structure, style, and themes of the writers (Tötösy de Zepetnek, Comparative cultural studies 235). A better conception of the works and their authors is the main goal of comparative literature. It is the study of literatures written in various countries and in various languages. In the modern period, the comparative literature is one of the most important academic and literary disciplines (Tötösy de Zepetnek, Comparative cultural studies 235).
The discipline of comparative literature has not been universally accepted by traditional critics (Tötösy de Zepetnek Comparative cultural studies 190). This is the reason that comparative literature has only been assumed as a different discipline in the recent years. However, it is a developing field of study. The comparatists attempt to employ different methods in their inquiries; some of them may stress the differences and gaps and some may focus on similarities, while other critics do both at the same time (Palumbo-Liu 58). However, the comparatists should try to find out both the similarities and differences, because even the differences can result in a deeper understanding of the works. It should also be taken into consideration that there cannot be any significant difference without any principal identity (Dhawan 19)
Cao (2013) has stated that comparative literature is an academic field, which mainly consists of three main stages. The field started with the French school, which highlights the matter of influence, while the second stage of the field is the American school with its insistence on similarities, interdisciplinary research and the artistic interpretation and evaluation. The third school is the practice of the Chinese scholars who put forward “cross civilization studies and the Variation Theory” (Cao xix-xxx).
Wellek (1978) objected to the development of limits for comparative literature; He believed that despite differences in language and culture, all nations have certain things in common. Hence, as Bassnett (1993) sums it up the American school would lay more emphasis based on the ideas of interdisciplinarity and universalism and would not have the French school’s strictness and limitations and would be much more liberal. According to this school, any work could be compared, regardless of whether it is literary or not (33).
The French school argued that comparative literature must limit its emphasis to studying the works which belong to two different languages (Cao 56). American school was a kind of reaction against the French school and put aside all its rules such as the restrictions in the use of the sources or influences. Jost (1974) has also stated that importance of studying literary works together, regardless of their national origins once “they are ideationally or factually related, as soon as they belong to the same aesthetic category or genre, or as soon as they illustrate the same themes or motifs” (13). In addition, he has referred to the various types of studies in the realm of comparative literature, including studies in relations and analogies, movements and trends, genres and forms, or themes and motifs (24).
Remak proclaims that, “comparative literature should not be regarded as a discipline on its own but rather as a connecting link between subjects or ‘subject areas’” (qtd. in Enani 39). A comparison thus can be made between two or more different literatures and between literature and other fields of cognition (music, painting, sculpture, architecture, philosophy, sociology, psychology, religion, chemistry, mathematics, physics, etc)” (46).
It can be announced that according to Remak, the comparatist should not be involved in the problem of nationalism, which is the American school’s main difference from the French school. American school of comparative literature is mainly occupied with parallel theories, which states that there is a relationship among the literatures of different cultures with the same social development whether or not there is relation or influence between the works of different cultures. (Enani 42)
In addition, the critics of comparative literature look for limiting the structures to meet reciprocated awareness of the literatures and literary figures of different cultures (Enani 41-43). It is also worth mentioning that in the 1890s Charles Mills attempted to differentiate the American school from the French school by asserting that the subject “should be seen as ‘nothing more or less’ than literature philology. . ., by insisting on the importance of psychology, anthropology, linguistics, social science, religion and art in the study of literature” (47). The following sections are devoted to discussing the standpoints of some Arab scholars and Arab world towards comparative literature and its current status in Arab world.
3. Comparative literature in the Arab world
According to Khezri (2015), comparative literature in the Arab world was met with severe political, religious and literary reactions (41), since comparative literature was considered a western threat to Islamic values and an understatement of the importance of Arabic literature. In the 1970s and 1980s, Arabic comparative literature expanded and became a university subject in the Arab World. Like the western, Although in the beginning of the comparative literature, the Arab world critics were practicing the French school, this changed with the advent of the American school (Khezri 43).
Abda Abood (1999) is one of the Arab theorists of comparative literature who has stated his opinion towards the American school by declaring that this school does not overlook the main ideologies of the French school but it seeks to leave them behind. Thus, it deals with the internal scopes of those works and their formal or aesthetic spirit (46). In fact, Abood’s main argument is that the literary work is likely to lose its artistic value by depending upon the feature of influence. Hence, as emphasized by Abood, the modern Arab researchers have tried to disregard the main outlook of the French school by declaring that it would weaken the literary works’ validity (Abood 41).
Abood has also argued that comparative literature’s main goal has been to provide historical descriptions through a close analysis of the texts or contexts (14). Abood (1999) mainly supports Wellek’s impression of the difference between literature and literary study by describing the first as an inspired art while the second as a science which enables the scholars to explain the artistic or aesthetic features of the national literature or the literary work (30-31). Consequently, national literatures cannot be analyzed without considering other literatures.
Abood (1999) states that comparative literature is not the studying the phenomena of influence among national literatures but a type of critical studies that surpasses the process of influence while at the same time it does not abolish it. Abood (1999) emphasizes that it is necessary for Arab critics to receive foreign literatures in the Arab world. He believes that comparative literature is important in solving issues in contemporary Arabic literature (4-5).
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4. A Short Introduction to Feminism
The word “Feminism” that is rooted in the nineteenth century is initially derived from French and refers to the women’s movement in this period. Feminism is in fact a movement which means to achieve socio-economic, moral, religious, political, educational, and legal equality for women.
“Feminism” is an ideology that was established in order to promote the equal economic, political and social rights and chances for women. In the 1960s that political activism for women’s rights started to grow, two groups began their activities, including a middle-aged group of specialized women who encouraged legislative restructuring, and a younger assembly of women who preferred radical changes (Collins and Bilge 38). Feminism is known to be divided in three waves (Schrupp et al. 51-84).
The first wave (1830’s –early 1900’s) had its roots in women’s attempts to achieve equal contract and property rights. The second wave (1960’s-1980’s) chiefly focused on the workplace, sexuality, family, and reproductive rights. This wave is often considered as being preoccupied solely with middle class white women’s problems. However, many of the women supporters of the above-mentioned groups were not satisfied with this wave, since their voices were not heard; therefore, they decided to address gender equality anxieties. This decision was then the main motivation behind the third wave’s establishment (1990s–present) (Nicholson 131).
As stated, the third wave of feminism started in the early 1990s as a response to the botches of the second wave, challenging or rejecting the second wave’s definitions of femininity which focused mainly on the experiences of upper middle-class white women. The third wave has its origins in the mid-1980s. Many feminist leaders of black feminism were after making their race-related subjectivities accepted. The important feminists in relation to this study are briefed in the following section.
The French author and philosopher Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) is known for writing numerous novels and monographs on philosophy, politics, and social issues, essays, biographies, and an autobiography. However, her treatise The Second Sex published in 1949 is regarded as her most famous work which is a thorough investigation of women’s domination. It is mainly about a moral revolution. Simone de Beauvoir accepted Jean-Paul Sartre’s precept “existence precedes essence; hence “one is not born a woman, but becomes one” (qtd. in Simons 193). Her investigation chiefly is about the social construction of women as the other.
According to de Beauvoir, this is the main reason in women’s oppression; Simone de Beauvoir contends that feminism should move forward (qtd. in Simons xv). The Second Sex is de Beauvoir’s assessment of patriarchy and the unsatisfactory position of women. Believed as one of the most important and earliest works of feminism, at the time of its publication The Second Sex received great criticism (Simons xv). Four years later, the first English-language edition of The Second Sex was published in America, but it is generally measured to be a shadow of the original.
Patricia Hill Collins (born 1948) is regarded as a very important figure due to her attempts to developing the concept of Intersectionality (Collins and Bilge 18). The theory of Intersectionality that is one of the main concepts in the present study has a close association with the situation in which domineering organizations of a society, such as racism and sexism do not function independently, but are rather interconnected and unceasingly influence on each other (Collins and Bilge 25). This theory was first established during the 1960s in relation to the growth of a drastic form of feminist movement. The term was first established in 1989; however, it started to cover a more expanded domain and in the discussion of black feminism.
In the feminist theory, Intersectionality is mainly used to refer to the principal way of theorizing the link between different forms of oppression. As mentioned, Patricia Hill Collins as a remarkable feminist developed the concept of Intersectionality in her book, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, published in 1990. According to her, many different points such as race, class, gender, and sexuality can be influential in a woman’s repression (Collins 61).
The American feminist Bell Hooks (focused mainly on the analysis of the different insights of black women and the development of feminist characteristics. Her first full-length book was titled as Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism, which was published in 1981. Hooks assumed her penname, the name of her great-grandmother, to honor female heritages. Hooks later on established a support group for black women called the Sisters of the Yam, which she later used as the title of a book, published in 1993 in order to appreciate black sisterhood.
Intersectionality is defined in many ways, but its overall message is the acknowledgement of diversity when studying domineering systems and their effects on different groups of people. Intersectionality means to examine the experiences of women within their intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and also focuses on their historical and cultural context. It can be claimed that in order to apply feminism for the portrayal of all women, black critics searched for a standpoint that could embrace race, class, and gender (Collins 34). It was mainly due to the fact that Intersectionality came to existence because these notions all needed to be established as being interconnected.
According to intersectional theory, human identities are multi-faceted, because they consist of numerous socially and culturally interwoven features such as race, class, gender, and sexuality. Intersectionality can also be used as a way to examine how different sociocultural categories interlink and intersect, and thus build different sorts of unequal relations within society (Lykke 50). Thus, those unequal relations or power differentials can be identified as power/disempowerment, recognition/misrecognition, dominance/subordination, and in/exclusion (p. 51).
In Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, Collins has developed how race, class, and gender domination intersect; she elaborates on how they are “grounded in interdependent concepts of binary thinking, oppositional difference, objectification, and social hierarchy” (71). She has also indicated that, “the dominant ideology of the slave era fostered the creation of several interrelated, socially constructed controlling images of Black womanhood, each reflecting the dominant group’s interest in maintaining Black women’s subordination” (72).
Before the term “Intersectionality” was even coined, black feminists and other colored women were trying to find a theoretical agenda that would capture the intricacies of their experiences. One of the principal forms of this challenge can be seen in the “Black Feminist Statement” determined in 1974. It is mostly about the statement that if black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free since their freedom would require the annihilation of all the oppressive organizations (Crenshaw 109).
Yet, it was not until 1989 that the theoretician Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term that is about the ways through which women of color would be disregarded by antiracist and feminist rules in legal theory (Crenshaw 111). In her paper “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Politics”, this critic has suggested that women of color are “theoretically erased” by feminist theories (Crenshaw 131). As a result, Intersectionality theory can be very useful in better understanding the characteristics of literature, because this theory investigates how different features may intersect in a society and shape women’s different experiences of gender, race and other identity categories.
Identities most commonly mentioned in relation to Intersectionality are class, race, sex, ethnicity, religion, age and sexuality. These identities or categories are said to interact by mutually strengthening or weakening each other and thereby inequality. Lykke (2010) stresses these categories in her definition of Intersectionality,
Theoretical and methodological tool to analyse how historically specific kinds of power differentials and/or constraining normativities, based on discursively, institutionally and/or structurally constructed sociocultural categories such as gender, ethnicity, race, class, sexuality, age/generation, dis/ability, nationality, mother tongue and so on, interact, and in so doing produce different kinds of societal inequalities and unjust social relations. (50)
The dilemma of the African and African-American women is mostly based on racial and sexist repression that continually demote them, while class also has great significance. The importance of Intersectionality is that it strengthens the bonds between women through the understanding of universality of women’s human rights.
This article provided a brief introduction to the field of comparative literature. First, there was a discussion of comparative literature as the multinational investigation of literature through comparison and then its two schools were briefly introduced. The theory of feminism and intersectionality was also briefed in order to help in studying the notion of Other. As was mentioned earlier comparative literature is a method that can be employed in literature in a two-fold way; by using other disciplines in/for the study of literature and by the inclusion of the other, be that a marginal literature. This article showed how comparative literature can make use of feminism and the theory of intersectionality to study the marginalized and “othered” literature of west. Thus portraying the two-fold benefits of the comparative literature.
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