Texts and Images in a National, Comparative, and World Context

Abstract

"To choose among national, comparative, and world literatures is a false choice. They are complementary. We cannot deny that we have nations today, partly created from internal colonization, and that colonization went hand in hand with external colonization.... The linguistic, cultural, and political borders of countries have changed over time, so territory is not the only way to look at literatures.... There is no one centre, but identity and otherness, unity and multiplicity are bound together. There are many national, comparative, and world literatures. Texts and images are mobile and multiple, even if they can also be used to assert identity. The one and the other are intertwined, and the same is true in fields, and in the ways we divide and unite under the rubric of literature."