Darcy Gauthier, University of Toronto

Dear Dean Gertler,

I am writing to you as a concerned PhD student at the Centre for Comparative Literature. I have just read through your 40 page outline of the changes you intend to make to the Faculty of Arts and Science. Though I believe that this is a valuable document that highlights many of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to the Faculty, I would like to express my deepest disappointment towards your proposal to amalgamate several independent programs into a School of Languages and Literatures. I realize you have received many letters already, and so I apologize for your time in reading this one meagre addition to the mounting protest. However, as a student, I would like to implore you to consider my pleas and the pleas of many others -- both within the University and without, from students and professors, graduates and undergraduates, locally and internationally -- to consider a different way of resolving the financial problems of the Faculty that will not devastate the research and teaching that is being done in these disciplines.

I am disappointed to see many progressive suggestions within your document compromised elsewhere by the proposed new School. For one, you have rightly written in your document that “the most challenging problems of our complex, interconnected world do not always fall neatly into academic disciplines, or even professions” (14), and I agree upon the importance of “exploiting the breadth across the University through strong interdivisional partnerships” (18). The argument for ‘interdivisional partnerships’ is a convincing one. In this respect, your proposed courses in “Big Ideas” are interesting and valuable and I trust that first year undergraduates will benefit from being immersed in scholarship coming from diverse “disciplinary streams” (14). Linda Hutcheon’s own groundbreaking work with her husband, Michael Hutcheon, on the intersection of opera and medicine would be a valuable model for such an interdisciplinary and collaborative approach to teaching and research. Your suggestion for a course showcasing how neuroscience, economics, and philosophy each approach “the mind” could also be a fascinating and important point of departure for new students to the University, one that rightly highlights the fragility and permeability of various disciplinary boundaries. Indeed, as Linda Hutcheon writes in a recent article on the dismantling of Comparative Literature, “to deal with the complex realities of today's world, we need to be able to think outside our disciplinary silos, to think across those borders that separate us from speaking to and learning from others in diverse fields with fruitfully differing perspectives” (truth-out.org, July 19, 2010). Of course, interdisciplinary research and teaching of this kind is already being pioneered at several places in the UofT: EAS for one is already a successful interdisciplinary department, and Comparative Literature by definition is interdisciplinary as well.

As an aside, I notice that you do not in fact use the term “interdisciplinary”, and opt instead to use “multidisciplinary”. I would like to know if you are drawing a distinction here between ‘multi-’ and ‘interdisciplinarity’, or whether these terms are interchangeable. I wonder because the Faculty of Arts and Science is in the most obvious sense already multi-disciplinary -- in the sense that it houses multiple disciplines. Multidisciplinarity is not, however, necessarily interdisciplinary. Perhaps it is a small point, but when I think of this term ‘multidisciplinary’, I imagine multiple yet discrete disciplines whose “ideas” are not always conversant with each other in a meaningful, mutually implicating way. They perhaps reside side-by-side, but their conversations run parallel to each other rather than overlapping. Interdisciplinarity, on the other hand, addresses the connections between these disciplines, as well as their inscrutable differences. Rebecca Comay frames the distinction quite well in the context of Comparative Literature when she says that “it’s not just about multiplying the number of disciplines you can juggle -- it’s about experimenting with different frames of reference” (rabble.ca, July 12, 2010). I trust that the “Big Ideas” program will keep this distinction in mind when it attempts to negotiate various disciplinary frameworks.

Let me reiterate that I applaud your efforts to promote “interdivisional partnerships”. However, I would also like to express my serious misgivings about whether or not the proposed School of Languages and Literatures will be contributing to this program of ‘interdivisionality’, or interdisciplinarity, or even multidisciplinarity -- unless by multiple disciplines we mean two: Literatures and Languages. I cannot understand how sending non-literature and non-language professors back to their respective disciplines -- history, philosophy, French, Latin American Studies, etc. -- can be fostering, in your own words, “the multidisciplinary comprehensiveness and strength of the faculty” (14). It seems instead that this will be reversing the progress made towards a more interdisciplinary approach to teaching and research at the UofT. As Linda Hutcheon has said in the same article quoted above, “the move back to departmental disciplinary hegemony and what will be perceived as a Eurocentric focus will be seen by many as a retrograde step for an institution that had prided itself, and rightly so, on its vibrant interdisciplinary and transnational/global intellectual environment of cultural exchange”. Narrowing the interdisciplinary focus down to mere instruction in languages and literatures is far from a championing of, and more like an attack on, interdisciplinary studies. It goes without saying that Comparative Literature in this proposed school will cease to function as a nexus of interdisciplinary work. Hutcheon goes on to argue that language departments, such as EAS, do not just teach language, and Comparative literature does not just teach literature: “neither language nor literature exists in a vacuum”. How could a school of Languages and Literatures, one that is very explicit about its intentions to send faculty who teach neither languages nor literatures back to their respective disciplines, be anything but such a vacuum?

There are other areas of your document with which I am in agreement. For one, you have written that “we are well recognized as a research powerhouse in all three major sectors of the Faculty,” and that “[a] large number of our graduate units enjoy very strong reputations internationally for the excellence of their programs” (4). I could not agree more. Our strengths in research and our international reputation are without question. Indeed, the Centre for Comparative Literature is one of the University’s strongest internationally recognized programs. Its annual graduate colloquium attracts scholars from around the world. Its students garner prestigious government scholarships, including the addition of a Vanier scholar this year. Well respected professors of international renown have come to the Centre to teach seminars -- for example Julia Kristeva, who has already written you a letter protesting the closure of the Centre.

For these reasons and many more, I am certain that the dismantling of the Centre will undermine the Faculty’s international -- not to mention domestic -- prestige, which we both agree is one of its key strengths. Letters of protest from many highly reputable international -- as well as local -- sources attest to this fact. Moreover, I gather that the widely held opinion of students within the program now is that they would not have considered applying to the University of Toronto, or would have accepted admissions offers from other serious Comparative Literature programs, had they known that the University of Toronto’s program would lose its autonomous status and be transformed into a mere collaborative degree. Such a program does not present itself as a very attractive offer to students who are serious about studying Comparative Literature. I know I speak for many students in the program when I say that I worry about the value my degree will have coming from the death throes of a soon to be defunct centre. Could you honestly say that as a member of a hiring committee looking for a Professor of East Asian Studies, or German, or Comparative Literature, you would choose an applicant with a degree in “Languages and Literatures” over one with a more specialized degree in those fields?

I also worry that the new school will not allow for the same research and teaching opportunities as the Centre for Comparative Literature. The research that I do as a PhD student does not fall neatly into any national literature, and actually extends beyond literature into theatre and cinema. Moreover, it draws upon the contributions of psychoanalytic, poststructuralist, and phenomenological discourses, and where would I find the theoretical guidance for this project without any body within the school dedicated to issues of theory and criticism? I don’t see how my project can be continued meaningfully without the scholarly ethos of the Centre for Comparative Literature as support.

You need only look at the course offerings of the Centre to see that what it offers would not be possible elsewhere. Where, for example, would a course on Lacanian psychoanalysis, or on Benjamin’s Arcades Project, or in Neoprimitivist discourses, fit in the School of Languages and Literatures? And if it could fit, why not call it the School of Comparative Literature? For, it seems that this flexibility regarding national, linguistic, and disciplinary boundaries would indeed make it into a large Comparative Literature department. If you admit that this sort of work will not not fit, then you must concede that you are diminishing the humanities, not enriching them; if you admit that these projects will fit, then you will have to concede that the focus of this school ought to be much broader than Language and Literature, and would in fact be no different from a Comparative Literature program, in which case you should not be dismantling the Centre, but making it the focal point of the School. Indeed, you say that the new School intends to enrich students’ language comprehension and their appreciation of “multiple literatures in a broadly comparative perspective” (15), which would lead one to draw the conclusion that Comparative Literature, which has comparativity and excellence in languages as its guiding principles, would hold a key position within this school. Thus it is surprising to see that Comparative Literature is the one discipline that is being dissolved and made peripheral. The argument that Comparative Literature has already succeeded in its mission and that its methodologies have successfully been disseminated to other disciplines, thus rendering it redundant, is a faulty argument, as well. The ‘mission’ of Comparative Literature is constantly evolving and adapting, and so is never really definitively accomplished.


I am also in agreement when you write that “we are fortunate to be situated in the middle of Canada’s largest metropolis and one of the world’s most culturally diverse and vibrant urban regions” (5). However, I find that the validity of this statement to be compromised by the creation of this School of Languages and Literatures. The cultural diversity of the UofT is one of the very reasons why I chose to do my graduate work here in Toronto. This is why I find it so upsetting that you are deciding to turn many of its unique, culturally diverse programs into a melting pot of languages and literatures. It should be evident from the protest arising out of Japanese and Chinese language media that the Asian community, for one, is skeptical of the “global community” that this school proposes to be manufacturing. I would like to argue that what makes Toronto such a vibrant and culturally diverse urban region is its tolerance towards a diversity of local communities, no matter how small or fledgling. If we appreciate this, should we not adopt the same tolerance towards the proliferation of smaller units on campus (6)?

In fact, your document explicitly mentions “the large size of the institution” as being a challenge to “student engagement and a sense of community amongst our students” (10). For this reason, I find it difficult to see how further enlarging and homogenizing the Faculty of Arts and Science can do anything other than aggravate this problem. The individual units you intend to dismantle already have their own communities. I can serve as witness to the communities present already at the Centre of Comparative Literature and the Department of East Asian Studies. I am speaking not only of graduate communities: you will notice from the heavy undergraduate contingency in our protests in the department of EAS that there is not only a community already in existence at the undergraduate level, but that this community is in fact very engaged, and strongly opposed to what you believe will be “enhancing” their academic experience. I for one don’t think that a sense of community will be fostered by gutting current communities that have developed on campus. On the contrary, creating a mega-school of languages and literatures will be posing a threat to the communities that have already developed around and between the local home-bases of the various units you intend to dismantle.

You draw attention to weaknesses in “active and collaborative learning” (6), but I do not believe this new School will create new synergies between the different programs involved. Assuming that by corralling them all into one administrative umbrella you will be fostering an environment for collaborative learning is an overly simplistic and naive understanding of the complexity -- the history, the methodologies, the identities -- of each of these unique disciplines. For example, I am a student who studies Japanese literature. Why would arbitrary administrative and even physical proximity to other units inspire or influence me to take courses in their field, or to incorporate them into my research? Slavic Languages and Literatures, despite being present in the same room, would still be as distant from my research as it is now. This is not to disparage other literatures and languages. Far from it. I think that what is most disparaging is to assume that the study of these literatures and languages is so superficial as to be easily assimilated into a single body of research and teaching. To assume that they are all in some fundamental way the ‘same’ and assimilable is at best naive, at worst imperialist. Those who are serious about studying a few well-chosen literatures for their research will not be enticed by the sort of literary and linguistic dilettantism that assumes one can simply jump from one to the other with ease just because the space between them has been made more compact.

Respect for the diversity between and even within the plurality of studies being amalgamated would be a good start towards a more subtle vision of global community. It would require that we respect the local and the peripheral, and respect the particularities of all these valuable disciplines, rather than heavy-handedly lumping them together in a way that, I must say, seems rather haphazard and disrespectful of their very divergent histories, projects, and identities. Much like all languages and literatures, not all Centres and Departments are alike.

I realize I am straddling a paradox here: I applaud interdisciplinarity and comparativity, while I also affirm the inherent differences that separate cultures, languages, and disciplines. This paradox is one that that is carefully walked by all students of Comparative Literature. As Eva Kushner has written, “from their earliest days comparative literature studies have lived in a paradox: they presuppose universals at work within human literatures and cultures, and seek to bring them to light through the examination of the diversity of these literatures and cultures” (“Literature in the Global Village”, Journal of Intercultural Studies, no.19, 1992: 54-61). Kushner proposes that Comparative Literature has evolved beyond its original methodologies -- ones of simple binary opposition, comparison and contrast, between Europe and its Other, between centre and periphery -- to adopt a more flexible method with “respect for the diversity and for the differentials of specific objects.” Comparative Literature has evolved into a discipline that respects the “permanence of cultural specificities.” With this methodological emphasis, Comparative Literature is indeed one of the disciplines most able to negotiate the true complexities and paradoxes of “global citizenship.” This is why I believe that especially without the guidance of Comparative Literature, this new School of Languages and Literatures will be nothing other than a placeless and disarticulated melting-pot of cultural homogeneity -- one wherein, just as in the actual global sphere, asymmetrical or oppressively homogenizing forces at work on the economic level will trump any superficial celebratory optimism regarding the pluralization and hybridization of cultural contents.

I don’t know if any of my concerns will be of any influence to your decision. In fact, I have my doubts, despite your emphatic assurance, that these “organizational changes” are even for the purpose of “preserving -- and indeed, strengthening -- scholarship and teaching in these fields”. For, are they not also explicitly for the purpose of “reducing overhead costs” (16)? It is true that you are saying we can have it both ways, that “the current conjuncture presents us with a number of promising opportunities to enhance our strengths and address our weaknesses” (7). Your report is full of such dialectical compromises: small-group and large-group learning; graduate and undergraduate education; international and local opportunities for community involvement; and so on. The dialectic most fundamental to this proposal, however, is the one that I find most difficult to reconcile: that of “academic excellence” and “financial constraint.” That is not to say that I believe fiscal frugality and academic rigor are incompatible, but rather that I believe a true compromise between the two has not yet been presented. In other words, I am sure a solution can be reached in which no program needs to be bluntly sacrificed wholesale in the name of fiscal prudence.

I apologize in advance for the use of such a cliched analogy, but I am sure you are familiar with Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal. Therein, Swift laments that the number of children born to poor Irish families has become an economic burden on the state. Therefore, as they are of no worth alive, he satirically recommends that they be made economically productive by being sold as food to the rich. It is my belief that you are making a similar proposal that the University of Toronto lighten its economic burden by devouring its young. I entreat you to see the absurdity of this decision and to attempt, instead, to form a truly modest proposal, one in which no program need be devoured. Perhaps your School will save some money, but by liquidating all of these programs, the long term effects to the University -- its intellectual, as well as, in the long term, its financial worth -- will be devastating.


Yours,


Darcy Gauthier,
Centre for Comparative Literature, PhD student
Toronto, Canada


CC:
David Naylor, President, University of Toronto
Cheryl Misak, Provost, Faculty of Arts and Science
Dr. Neil ten Kortenaar, Director, Centre for Comparative Literature
Dr. Jill Ross, Graduate Coordinator, Centre for Comparative Literature
Save Comparative Literature Campaign

Paper letter to follow