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The lights dim. The students stir nervously, not sure of what to expect of the strobe light and the background music from "Thriller." The student course guide had recommended American Humor in Literature and Politics, but no one had been able to locate a living survivor to provide a personal testimony. Two middle-aged men of spacious girths enter the room and begin calling the roll. One looks like he might be a Democrat. The other one doesn't. As they alternate calling student names, crack terrible puns, and climb in and out of fright wigs and false noses, it begins to dawn on the class why no Ishmael has stepped forward to tell the story of American Humor.

In her article "National Literatures as Intimate Expression and the Problem of Teaching World Literatures" Kette Thomas analyzes the fundamental tension embedded in the discourse on teaching world literatures. Thomas focuses on models which contextualize the problem around the subject of allegiance either to the reader or the author rather than the commonly limited geographical, national, and politically defined complex. Focus on the reader or author is often made at the expense of the "other," but it is the tension and communication between them that offers possibilities for the development of the discipline of comparative literature (against Eurocentrism and the nation approach) and the fields of world literatures and comparative cultural studies.

"Der öffentlichkeitswirksame Umgang mit der erzählenden Literatur ist Ausdruck unserer neuen Beliebigkeitskultur. Infotainment macht Literaten zu Showstars und degradiert ihre Texte zur literatur- und politikfernen Ware. Die deutsche Teilung wies den Literaten Rolle und Themen zu. Seit der staatlichen Einheit haben die Literaten als Intellektuelle in Deutschland ihre Funktion gänzlich eingebüßt. Ihre Rolle als Repräsentanten und gutes Gewissen der bundesrepublikanischen Identität ging mit der deutschen Einheit verloren. Romane sind die einfühlsamen Berichte zur Lage der Nation. Als Souffleure des Zeitgeistes liefern die Literaten mit ihrer Prosa - und nicht mit ihren Statements - Zeitdiagnosen. Ihre Revue an Deutschlandbildern enthält in kondensierter Form die politische Brisanz der Vereinigung. Lesen ist der Königsweg für Wissenserwerb. Literatur setzt Wirklichkeitserfahrung in Sprache um. Die lesende Erfahrung mit erzählender Literatur wappnet gegen totalitäre Ansprüche und liefert Rüstzeug für komplexe, differenzierte Identitäten." (Autorenreferat)

Between 1969 and 1979, Edward Said redefined American comparative literature, coining phrases, supplying a new critical pantheon (Vico, Schwab), and, above all, devising a method. Falling between generations and facing two different kinds of continental èèmigrèè——one philological, the other textualist——Said outmaneuvered the latter by reinterpreting the former. In a two-pronged move, he unleashed an arsenal of arguments against both new critical formalism and its latter-day avatars in ""theory."" With these arguments, his authority was penetrating and atmospherically felt as he chipped away at the edifice of traditional comparative literature by emphasizing the situatedness of form and the transitive intelligence of humanist intellectuals.