It feels like just yesterday, doesn't it, that we were all so sure about what 'English Literature' even meant? Raymond Williams, back in 1981, already saw the cracks forming. He pointed out how the very idea of 'Literature' itself was becoming a slippery concept, and then there was the whole 'English' part – was it about the language, or the country? And if it was the country, well, which country? Just England, or also Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and all those places that became part of the Commonwealth? It’s a question that still echoes, perhaps even louder now.
These days, the ground beneath literary studies feels even more unsettled. We've been through the 'culture wars,' grappling with what's considered 'great' literature and whether our studies have been too Eurocentric. Then there's the relentless march of the market, often dictating what gets attention, and the humanities themselves seem to be under constant pressure to prove their 'instrumental' value, rather than just being a space for contemplation.
And if that wasn't enough, the world itself is throwing curveballs. Political shifts within the UK, the expansion of Europe, and yes, even the ongoing global entanglements in places like Iraq and Afghanistan – these aren't just headlines; they ripple through how we understand ourselves and our place in the world. At the heart of it all, this vast, often opaque phenomenon of 'globalisation' looms large. As Hirst and Thompson put it so well, there's this widespread feeling that national borders are dissolving, that global processes are now the main drivers, and that national economies and strategies are becoming less relevant. The idea is that a truly global economy is emerging, dominated by market forces and transnational corporations that answer to no single nation.
It's no wonder, then, that people working in literary studies are calling for a serious rethink. The old ways of doing things, the established structures and assumptions, are being questioned. In Comparative Literature, for instance, scholars are asking: why bother comparing texts at all? And how do we even do it in a world that's both more connected and more dominated by English than ever before? Similarly, American Studies is moving away from its insular, nation-centric roots, trying to embrace more global and comparative perspectives instead of seeing itself as somehow exceptional.
It’s a challenging, but also incredibly exciting, time. The very definition of what we study, and how we study it, is up for grabs. It’s less about clinging to old certainties and more about exploring the complex, interconnected world we actually live in, one story, one perspective at a time.
