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not prolong it indefinitely nor is it claimed that the connection is a necessary one. |
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Thus explained, superimposition reflects what often occurs in comparison, intentionally or unconsciously. A member of one religious tradition superimposes a text from another tradition upon one from her or his own, remembering the difference, remembering when the superimposition is begun and when it is finished, and performing it not as an example of some deeper sameness, but for the sake of that enhancement which occurs through the partial identification and the subsequent defamiliarization that occurs due to superimposition. The familiar is seen anew, read differently because there is superimposed upon it something significantly different. |
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One may of course wish to explore further the implied evaluative moment in superimposition, in cognizance of Sankara's observation that the superior is to be imposed on the inferior in a purposeful superimposition. The comparativist will have to decide whether to identify one tradition as superior to the other, estimating the practical advantages that would accrue from an explicit evaluation of that sort; she or he will have to ask whether the projected comparison does not in fact intend just such an enhancement of the more familiar text, even if this intention has not been stated explicitly. In the preceding pages I have referred more neutrally to a juxtaposition of texts, rather than to the superimposition of one upon another; but there is no reason to perform comparisons exclusively from a strictly neutral position. |
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iii. The Comparative Conversation |
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Drawing on the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer, David Tracy draws our attention to the advantages of conversation as a model for the way we appropriate texts, as we learn from an "other" who for a moment stands near us in an ongoing conversation, an other with whom we converse, and who is neither the same as us nor entirely different. Conversation |
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occurs if, and only if, we will risk ourselves by allowing the questions of the text. We must follow those questionshowever initially different, other, or even strangeuntil the |
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