INTERVIEW: GALIN TIHANOV

Abstract

Q: Literary history, be it national, local, or regional, is perhaps the most conservative form of literary study, with many claiming that the method is outmoded. What can literary histories do to overcome both the risk of obsolescence and their inherent conservatism? A: It seems to me imperative to come to terms with the fact that literary histories are a product of modernity; they typically begin as national accounts of cultural uniqueness, more often presumed than real. Early in the 19th century there appear the first macroregional literary histories, e.g. that by Sismondi, who is today best remembered as an economist and a social thinker; he wrote a history in several volumes of what he called “the South of Europe,” essentially a panoramic (and mosaic) history of the literatures in the Romance languages (but not of Romanian literature). How do we move onwards from the strictures imposed by the birthmarks of modernity with its teleological rationale? I have written briefly on this in an article on the challenges literary history faces in the 21st century. Today, I would add the following: literary history has to navigate the new concerns of anthropocentrism and, more widely, of a post-humanist world; without this, it would struggle to perform a meaningful role beyond a cultural space confined and fuelled by national(ist) agendas.