What is it about?
Taking as its starting point the indifference, if not hostility, of postcolonial criticism to examples of modernization and belatedness outside of the western Europe/ colony dichotomy, this article considers alternative projects of modernization. To this effect, it proposes the concept of incongruous comparison, defined as an attempt to juxtapose ideas, authors, institutions, texts that do not share a common history or geography. Incongruous comparison highlights both the logic and agreement that traditional conceptions of comparison presume and necessitate and the discordant note that this practice actually strikes.
Why is it important?
In order to illustrate this concept of incongruous comparison , the article brings together two unrelated authors, Adamantios Korais, an influential scholar of the Greek Enlightenment, and Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, one of the most important intellectuals in Latin America of the nineteenth century and president of Argentina. Specifically, it examines how each author used the philosophical conflict between barbarism and civilization in their conception of modernization. It concludes by looking at the work of Lucio V. Mansilla, who, by travelling to the territory of the Ranquel people of the pampas, ended up undoing the barbarian/civilization dichotomy.