South-south comparison – comparing the “rest” beyond the West

Resumen

It is a commonplace to accuse comparative literature of Eurocentrism, and the accusation is undoubtedly justified for most of the history of the discipline. Although since the turn of the twenty-first century the discipline, both in its traditional European and North American strongholds and in other regions, has widened its scope to take in many (if still not all) literatures previously neglected or marginalized, the primary term in most comparisons involving non-Western or with a more recent term Global South literatures still remains Western literature. Only very recently has there emerged a form of comparison directly engaging several Global South literatures and cutting out any Western reference literature. Such South-South comparison can take various forms, several of which are discussed in my article. I also argue that the principle of such comparisons can likewise be extended to comparisons between so-called minor or smaller literatures, even if originating in the Global North or the West, that hitherto have suffered a comparable neglect in relation to a very few European-language literatures that traditionally have been at the center of the discipline of comparative literature.