CHAPTER 7 Allegorizing Modernism: J. Swaminathan and the Question of Uneven Development in Art SANDIP K. LUIS “Time is denuded of its progressional ballast: it goes haywire.” —J. SWAMINATHAN “Even the ahistorical must be historically explained” —FREDRIC JAMESON There is little wonder as to why Comparative Studies could be seen as an exemplary modern discipline, as the discursive category of the ‘modern’ itself is profoundly comparative. But if the discipline’s very conditions of possibility are provided by modernity, then on what ground can we inhabit it when modernity’s foundational premises—above all, the narratives of ‘progress’ and ‘development’—are challenged? It is this principal problem that serves to be the background of this essay in which I will try to demonstrate how fruitful a comparative approach could be when it does not shy away from using the Marxist category of ‘uneven development’ and taking the question of social hierarchy on board. Focusing on the writings of J. Swaminathan (1928-1994), a leading modernist artist-critic and institution builder from India, through the theoretical and historical perspectives offered in the discipline of Marxist