“What Hides in Comparison”

Abstract

This chapter analyzes the ways in which comparative method and analysis conceal particular knowledge formations especially with respect to race, gender, ability, and sexuality even as it presents itself as a rational and neutral research tool. Such an approach conceals how comparative instantiations have always been a part of U.S. liberalism and the construction of white supremacy. The unrelenting use of comparison as a methodological and ideological tool across the political spectrum both naturalizes and dulls it analytic usefulness. Political cartoons used in the United States and Puerto Rico throughout the twentieth century provide evidence for these methodological limits. Comparison is deployed as a methodological tool that scaffolds both (white) (neo)colonialist projects as well as presumed revolutionary nationalisms.