What’s in a Name

It pains me to write this, but lately I have been wondering: is it time to pull the plug on “literary universality”?I do not mean conceptually, of course. Professor Hogan has spent decades amassing indisputable evidence that literary universals exist. It is simply an empirical fact that many aspects of verbal art recur in genetically and areally distinct language traditions at a rate far greater than we would expect by chance. As far as I can tell, there is no way that this can be denied by anyone who takes a good-faith look at the data.But the problem, as Professor Hogan notes, is that scholars in literary studies (and in the humanities generally) often refuse to adopt such a good-faith position. So entrenched is their dispositional opposition that they have decided in advance that the notion of universality cannot possibly hold merit—and if they do not reflexively dispute the evidence that yes, some aspects of literature show meaningful universality, then they simply proceed to ignore it, continuing with their anti-universalist outlook as if the field of literary universal studies did not exist. As Hogan writes elsewhere, it is thus “rather an understatement to say that the idea of universals is widely misunderstood” (“Stories,” 332).Hostility to universality seems only to be growing, as the academic world (rightly) becomes increasingly invested in matters of diversity and inclusion, and as (again, rightly) the theoretical lenses of critical race studies and postcolonial studies become increasingly influential. Scholars of race and postcolonialism have long challenged notions of universality, noting that there has been a coercive historical tendency to (disingenuously) enshrine as “universal” that which aligns with a white, male, European, and heterosexual worldview—so an investment in anything that smacks of universality today is usually taken as a direct challenge to these vital fields. (Indeed, in one instance, I was accused by an onlooker of launching a “backdoor attack” on race and post-colonial studies just for pointing out that the study of literary universals is, in fact, an area of research that exists.) In my own particular field of early modern literary studies, we may look, for example, to a recent article by Harry R. McCarthy, which recalls the 2019 meeting of the British Shakespeare Association: some “white delegates,” McCarthy recalls, “insist[ed] on the ‘beauty’ of Shakespeare’s language and his ‘universality’,” statements that are said to have “centrali[zed] the white ownership of Shakespeare” (138). To speak of Shakespeare’s universality, then, is to open oneself to a charge of racism, and it is thus not surprising that we can point to a number of works from 2023 alone that align Shakespeare’s supposed universality with racism and white supremacy: Farah Karim-Cooper denounces the “white ‘universalist’ prism” of Shakespeare studies, noting that “the perception of Shakespeare as a universal genius . . . was born during [a] period of oppression” (17), Ambereen Dadabhoy and Nedda Mehdizadeh argue that teaching that Shakespeare is universal is “in service to white supremacy and a disservice to students” (10), and Emily Weissbourd suggests that “the myth of Shakespeare as universal is endowed by unmarked whiteness,” advising that we actively work toward “decentering the myth of Shakespeare as explicitly universal and implicitly white” (207, 206). It is hardly shocking, then, when Hogan observes that “when I mention literary universals, a surprising number of people seem to think I have in mind some sort of fascistic assertion of group superiority” (“Stories,” 333).It is absolutely, unequivocally true that nineteenth- and twentieth-century colonial education systems propagated the idea of Shakespeare’s universalism as instruments of imperial control, designed to subjugate native populations and impose a white British perspective as normative. So it is perfectly reasonable (and completely necessary) to discuss how Shakespeare’s reputation as a “universal author” emerges from a violent, oppressive history. But the problem, however, is that this imperial context is thought to be the beginning and the end of the issue when it comes to Shakespeare’s universality. It does not seem to matter, as Professor Hogan has consistently pointed out, that genuine claims to universality, by definition, cannot be used in the service of white supremacist or racist arguments. It does not seem to matter that it is both possible and sensible to separate bad-faith claims of pseudouniversality—the coercive statements made by imperialists, reflecting the “myth” of Shakespeare’s universality—from good-faith observations about patterns of cross-cultural regularity and consistency—the kinds of statements made by scholars of literary universality, reflecting Shakespeare’s genuine universality. And it certainly does not seem to matter that plays such as Romeo and Juliet, The Winter’s Tale, King Lear, and Hamlet share a number of prototypical structural and affective features with works from countless different literary traditions, as Professor Hogan’s research has so importantly shown over the years. For many scholars today, in both Shakespeare studies and beyond, the term universality is simply understood to reflect a singular, indefensible concept. This, unfortunately, seems unlikely to change.Which brings me back to my original question: is “universality” a concept too poisoned to be resuscitated in literary studies? Is it time to retire the word? Not actually retire it, of course—there are still many instances where those invested in literary universal studies will want to retain it, and I am not suggesting that we radically alter the name of our research area—but I wonder if something of a rhetorical rebooting might be advantageous for those working in the field. In the target article, Professor Hogan himself notes that “I often write ‘cross-cultural’, rather than ‘universal’” (254), and in my own work I am certainly finding myself using universal less, preferring instead to talk about patterns of cross-cultural similarity, consistency, regularity, or ubiquity (on ubiquity, see Saucier et al.). Besides avoiding the knee-jerk response to universality, these terms also sidestep the fact that those outside the field of literary universal studies almost inevitably believe that the notion of universality exclusively refers to absolute universals—and this assumption that we are talking about a rigid, binary absolutism further alienates them from the kind of work we are actually trying to do. Though I remain committed to the study of human universality—in the nuanced sense of the word that is understood by scholars in literary universal studies—I am trying more and more to find alternate ways to discuss the same general concepts, but in a way that does not carry the ideological baggage (see Irish).One day, I hope, the field of literary universal studies will become familiar enough to the general population of literary scholars that elaborate preambles about our methodology—and painstaking definitions about what we do and do not mean by universal—will become unnecessary. But we are fighting an uphill battle, and we have a long way to go. For this reason, part of me sincerely believes that we should, somewhat counterintuitively, more consciously downplay the notion of universals in our discussion of universality. To speak of recurring patterns, points of similarity, and cross-cultural consistencies, it seems to me, may make our work more palatable to audiences outside our subfield. The simple fact is that the word universal is too much of trigger across most of the humanities—it instantly closes the mind of those who hear it and makes them settle on an assessment of our work before they actually give it fair thought. It is quite sad, I acknowledge, that this is the case—but in the interest of self-preservation, it may be time to (largely) take the universals out of universality

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