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In a special 2004 issue of Comparative Literature Studies devoted to "World Literature and Globalization," I considered the possibilities of "world" as a verb, as a transitive verb, to be exact.1 Once "to world" is read as transitive, the ensuing question about the binomial "world literature" would logically become "which world are we worlding literature into and why?" And, concomitantly, from what position are we worlding world literature?
On this occasion, I invite us to consider the verb "to compare" as an intransitive verb. Logically, this would lead to the grammatical subject of comparison as something or someone other than us, the comparatists. The focus in "to compare" as intransitive verb would fall on what it is that compares and how. For our disciplinary purposes, the focus would fall on literature. This focus is not an insignificant event, especially for those in comparative literature who confess to no longer be reading any literature. Arbitrary as the proposed exercise might appear, I believe it could possibly shed some light on the dual phrases "comparative literature" and "world literature" that on this occasion we consider in counterpoint.
Let us first take the verb "to compare," not as what we are wont to do, but as what would be done by the verb's subject if the verb were intransitive. What compares, how, and to what effect? And, in the case of comparative literature, if the agential subject we designate for the verb is "literature," the question then is how does literature do so? Once we claim that literature is the verbal agent, that literature compares, intransitively, and we can then describe it adjectivally by what it does and call it "comparative," how does this "comparative literature" differ from what we now understand by the phrase? And what might this difference between comparative literature as literature that compares intransitively and comparative literature as predicate of our own professional performance as transitive action of comparing reveal about the phenomenon? Once we understand comparative literature in this context, then we could move to the next logical question with which we are tasked by the topic of this seminar. Namely, how could this atypical phenomenon of comparative literature as something that does the comparison without an object predicate relate to what we...