Is Comparative Literature Ready for the Twenty-First Century?

In her article, "Is Comparative Literature Ready for the Twenty-First Century?" Eva Kushner observes that throughout its history, comparative literature has internalized as part of its own objectives and directives a major challenge: The need to renew its problematics and curriculums in response to the inherent diversity of literature within culture. She emphasizes that the vitality of the discipline depends on an authentic pluralism capable of resisting the dominance of unanalyzed hierarchies and universals. Acknowledging that the entire history of world literature remains the potential material of comparative literature studies, Kushner favours an "open system" approach. The concept of an open system may be paradoxical but it is not selfcontradictory: Its openness guarantees that access to canonization will be truly global while its systematicity guarantees that all data will be treated with equivalent criteria. Finally, Kushner favours an inductive rather than a monumentalizing approach to literary history and considers theory as a reflective process rather than an a priori framework. Eva Kusher, "Is Comparative Literature Ready for the Twenty-First Century?" page 2 of 8 CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 2.4 (2000):