TY - BOOK ID - 220331 TI - All the difference in the world : postcoloniality and the ends of comparison AU - Melas, Natalie AU - Stanford University Press PY - 2007 SN - 9780804731973 0804731977 9780804731980 0804731985 PB - Stanford, California Stanford university press DB - UniCat KW - Comparative literature KW - anno 1900-1999 KW - Caribbean Area KW - Caribbean literature KW - History and criticism. KW - 82.091 KW - 82:93 KW - Vergelijkende literatuurstudie KW - Literatuur en geschiedenis KW - 82:93 Literatuur en geschiedenis KW - 82.091 Vergelijkende literatuurstudie KW - History and criticism KW - Caribbean area KW - Littérature caribéenne KW - 20e siècle KW - Histoire et critique KW - Littérature caribéenne KW - 20e siècle UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:220331 AB - This book is about culture and comparison. Starting with the history of the discipline of comparative literature and its forgotten relation to the positivist comparative method, it inquires into the idea of comparison in a postcolonial world. Comparison was Eurocentric by exclusion when it applied only to European literature, and Eurocentric by discrimination when it adapted evolutionary models to place European literature at the forefront of human development. This book argues that inclusiveness is not a sufficient response to postcolonial and multiculturalist challenges because it leaves the basis of equivalence unquestioned. The point is not simply to bring more objects under comparison, but rather to examine the process of comparison. The book offers a new approach to the either/or of relativism and universalism, in which comparison is either impossible or assimilatory, by focusing instead on various forms of "incommensurability"-comparisons in which there is a ground for comparison but no basis for equivalence. Each chapter develops a particular form of such cultural comparison from readings of important novelists (Joseph Conrad, Simone Schwartz-Bart), poets (Aimé Césaire, Derek Walcott), and theorists (Edouard Glissant, Jean-Luc Nancy). ER -