Odious Comparisons Across & Beyond the Early Global World

In his 1996 essay “Why Comparisons Are Odious,” W.J.T. Mitchell observed that if “difference and identity are the potent and inevitable terms in a new comparativism grounded in culture, it may be important to remind ourselves how insidious comparison can be, how invidious and odious.” Although written in response to the emergence of comparative cultural studies, Mitchell’s essay points to both the risks of comparison and to how the oft-acknowledged ‘odiousness of comparison’ delimits the critical horizons of comparative and early global studies. Although comparative work in premodern studies typically focuses on historically verifiable instances of interconnection and translation, scholars such as Adam Miyashiro [Kānaka Maoli], Zrinka Stahuljak, and Rebecca de Souza have argued persuasively that asynchronous, disconnected, transcultural comparisons can provide methods for a truly global, decolonized premodern studies.

By seeking dialogue between the fields of comparative literature and early global studies, this two-day symposium, sponsored by the CMRS Center for Early Global Studies, explores not just what makes comparison odious but also asks what is generative about odious comparisons. In experimenting with comparative approaches to the early global past which are unshackled from the necessity of linearity, continuity, or connectivity, our fifteen speakers ask whether we can compare apples and oranges and how such comparisons might generate new, destabilizing ways of knowing.

Organized by Basil Arnould Price (SUNY Oneonta) and Nancy Alicia Martínez (Comparative Literature)

Register to attend in Royce 306

Event Schedule