Death of a Discipline (review)

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s book belongs to a short but dense tradition of retrospectives, proposals, and jeremiads on the topic of Comparative Literature, a discipline always in search of itself. Delivered in 2000 in the Wellek Library lecture series at Irvine, Death of a Discipline is one of the obligatory books of this decade for comparatists. While I cannot imagine anyone endorsing it in large, many readers will find much to agree with in little, including brilliant observations and suggestions that are scattered throughout the book’s one hundred pages. The utopian aspect of Spivak’s critique of Comparative Literature does not diminish its urgency or its impact.