Abstract: The article builds on the contributions of this special issue in order to point to the racial, linguistic, and epistemic hierarchies embedded in Acta Comparationis Litterarum Universarum. The discussion is situated within the broader genealogy of European humanism and its foundational dichotomy between humanitas and anthropos. In dialogue with Sylvia Winter, Nishitani Osamu, and Naoki Sakai Shih emphasizes the journalʾs reproduction of colonial and racialized distinctions between so-called civilized and primitive cultures. Of particular interest to the author of the “Afterword” is the journal’s ambiguous engagement with subaltern cultures of the Austro-Hungarian Empire – Romanian and Romani literature.
Keywords: comparative literature, Acta Comparationis, humanitas and anthropos, subaltern cultures.
Acknowledgement: This work was funded by the EU’s NextGenerationEU instrument through the National Recovery and Resilience Plan of Romania—Pillar III-C9–18, through the project A Global History of Romanian Comparatism: A Case Study in Inter-Imperial Comparative Literature (1877–1944), PNRR-III-C9–2023-I8-CF 22/27.07.2023, contract no. 760276/26.03.2024.
