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unique result of this kind of interaction occurs: the exploration of possibility as possible, and thus as similarity-in-difference. In such moments of recognition, what is both disclosed and concealed as other and different becomes appropriated as possibility.
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The imaginative process of reading back-and-forth in the conversation of one's own tradition with another requires a genuine openness to unforeseen possibilities, the potential smaller and larger transformations of the self of the person who genuinely enters an encounter. As a literate conversationalist, the comparativist progresses through a reflective, gradual dialogue with the compared, conversational other, a conversation the conclusion of which one cannot theoretically predict. |
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The conversation model envisions a reading which must be reflectively performed, in which one is articulate but never completely so; what one has to say is in part determined by what one hears, reads, at any given point. One comes to the comparison with something to contribute, while yet remaining vulnerable to the implications of what one might hear. Only if the other is allowed to speak, can the conversation proceed. Our extended initiation into the world of the Advaita Text has taken into account the risks implied by an encounter with this complex, thoughtful and demanding "other," including the likelihood that the reader will become inextricably involved in a new Text and hence in its formulation of the world. Conversations, once begun, are sometimes not easily ended; sometimes the partners quarrel, occasionally they fall in love. As the Advaitins might put it, the conversation between the Texts instigates a desire to know which comprehensively transforms those who dare to read. |
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iv. The Comparative Tension: Metaphor, Epiphor and Diaphor |
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The event of resignification that occurs in comparison and rereading is helpfully illuminated also by attention to metaphor. One can entertain the idea that by the activities of comparative reading the compared texts are placed in tension, extended and transformed, as new meanings are articulated for each precisely in their juxtaposition. |
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