Antropologizacja literaturoznawstwa a komparatystyka

Abstract

The aim of the paper is comparison of the process of development of cultural anthropology and comparative studies in the perspective of post-war anthropologization of whole humanities and social science. It ought to be emphasized, that this proposition is different from Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek or Michael Riffaterre’s complementarity of comparative literature and cultural studies, cultural theory or cultural critique. Afterward I underline some of the key issues of cultural anthropology, and their application into the comparative literature. Among the others, I analyzed in this article three of them: (1) Practice shows that intercultural communication is possible and effective. In philosophy I would defend the idea of “internal realism” or “pragmatic realism”, or – in different terms – “intentional rationality” (Michał Buchowski). In this approach people act in accordance with the norms, and convictions, beliefs shared in their community (like in Jerzy Kmita’definition of culture). Ergo: all cultures are rational in their own perspective. Based on this issue we could rethink the idea of intercultural translation (borrowed from Stanley Tambiah and supported by Hilary Putnam), and combine those topics with the paradigm central for current comparative literature. (2) Moreover, in this article I presented transformation from Goethe’s idea of ‘Weltliterature’ to David Damrosch’s world literature and the consequences of that process from the perspective of anthropologization of comparative studies. (3) Finally, I combine this approaches with globalization in the gaze of cultural anthropology (especially questions of relativism, multiculturalism, acculturation, intercultural exchange, etc.), and the possible (not only academic but also social) role of comparative literature in (post)modern world.