ABSTRACT
The forces of insurgency and counterinsurgency constitute some of the factors and conditions under which contemporary literature is produced and circulated. Counterinsurgents must know enough about local narratives and societies to reconcile them to global counterinsurgency culture. Comparative literature has mostly disregarded the weaponization of culture under the counterinsurgency doctrine crafted for US military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, released as Army Field Manual 3–24 and published simultaneously by the University of Chicago Press. Perhaps “counterinsurgency” seems retrograde, recalling earlier “small wars” in Algeria and Indochina, Northern Ireland, and Central America. There are numerous other reasons why comparative literature should take note of counterinsurgency. Disentangled from counterinsurgency, comparative literature would be the name of a resistant discipline whose practices and goals are not directed to maximizing the number of reconcilables or eliminating irreconcilability in the world.
