Introduction: Comparing Queerly, Queering Comparison

Abstract

What does it mean to compare? The answer to this question is often taken for granted: highlighting both similarities and differences between what is being compared. The comparative essay is one of the most common of undergraduate writing exercises, but when one notices how frequently students use arguments that go something like “A and B are both alike and different,” one realizes that the key question is not what is a comparison but when is a comparison worth making. How many teachers have found themselves pointing out to students that, of course, A and B are both alike and different; if they were not different at all, B would be A. If they did not have anything in common, what would be the point of comparing them? A strong comparative argument thus needs to be more specific than simply stating that A and B are both alike and different; it also needs to assert how they are alike and different and why these similarities and differences are relevant. The heart of comparison, one could then say, lies somewhere between almost totally different but not quite and almost the same but not quite; analyzing what exactly lies in this in-between could be said to be the work of comparison and comparative studies. Yet while one might think comparison is essential to comparative studies, at least one well-known comparatist has argued otherwise.