What We Learn From Comparison: Some Epistemological Remarks
What We Learn From Comparison: Some Epistemological Remarks

Summary/Abstract: This article deals with the comparisons between testimonies and theoretical workson Nazi and Soviet camps carried on within literary studies. Going beyond the debates aboutpotentially antagonistic memories of those two regimes, the comparison contributes to decom-partmentalizing research, infusing it with new dynamics and methods as well as the adoption ofa renewed approach to the construction of knowledge. Indeed, by conducting textual compar-isons rather than basing their research on the study of facts, the researchers in the field of liter-ary studies were able to question narrative strategies and the positions of certain works with-in their host cultures. Debates on the generic aspects of literary testimonies have thus helpedshift the focus from the specificity of the experiences they described to their status and form.The article then compares the two bodies of texts from the point of view of their possible useas historical sources, and analyzes a few examples of narrative strategies.

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