In introducing this special issue on South African and Irish literature and culture, this essay offers a critical overview of the field of comparisons between these two former colonies. Though the cultural output of both sites is often figured as exceptional or incomparable, there is a constant drumbeat of popular comparisons between South Africa and Ireland, and the disciplines of history, political science, and conflict resolution have long compared Irish and South African trajectories in the twentieth century. Comparisons often rely on an assumed solidarity or affinity based on a shared colonial history, but the radically different economic and political realities of the two sites make such assumptions unstable. This introduction suggests it is time for a more nuanced set of comparative studies that recognize the profoundly asymmetrical relations between South Africa and Ireland, as well as the potential limits of comparative practice, and yet the gains from bringing together two anomalous postcolonial case studies. Drawing on the work of Peter D. McDonald, the essay makes a case for listening carefully to the idiosyncrasies of a “tangled archive” of South African–Irish relations in order to shed light on what postcolonial comparison might look like in the twenty-first century.

在介绍有关南非和爱尔兰文学与文化的特刊时，本文对这两个前殖民地之间的比较领域进行了批判性概述。尽管两个站点的文化输出通常被认为是出色或无与伦比的，但南非和爱尔兰之间的流行比较一直在不断鼓动，历史学科，政治学和解决冲突的历史长期以来将爱尔兰和南非的轨迹进行了比较。二十世纪。比较经常依赖于基于共同殖民历史的假定的团结或亲和力，但两个地点的经济和政治现实截然不同，使这种假设变得不稳定。引言表明，现在该是进行更细微差别的比较研究的时候了，这些研究认识到南非和爱尔兰之间的深刻不对称关系，以及比较实践的潜在局限性，然而，将两个反常的后殖民案例研究结合在一起所获得的收益。本文以彼得·麦当劳（Peter D.McDonald）的著作为依据，仔细聆听了南非-爱尔兰关系“纠结档案”的特质，以阐明二十一世纪后殖民时期的比较情况。世纪。