Writing the World

The evident interconnectedness of the contemporary world, the increasingly porosity of borders and the development of communication technology necessarily forces us to think about literature on a global level. The study of World Literature, of what exactly World Literature entails, what it includes, and of how we, as readers, students and academics, can successfully tackle the global literary production effectively, allows us to access a wider, more inclusive perspective on the production of texts and culture in the world, while taking into consideration the dense network of international links we are inevitably a part of. From approximately the second half of the 20 th century, the academic debate regarding the choice of methodology for the study, teaching and analysis of World Literature, has become more heated and controversial, and it still hasn't exhausted itself. The chronological correspondence between the beginning of World Literature studies and the publication of seminal texts on post-colonial studies is not a coincidence: the Warwick Research Collective, amongst a variety of scholars holding a similar view, identifies an inherent connection between the issue of world literature studies and post-colonial (and neo-colonial) discourse: '"World literature" is in the first instance an extension of comparative literature, and might be understood as the remaking of comparative literature after the multicultural debates and the disciplinary critique of Eurocentrism' 1 .

" Literature argues not by articulating premises and conclusions but by prompting its audience to develop them for itself. " 0. It is tempting to address at length in an abstract fashion the forceful and condensed premise that we are supposed to examine, discuss and argue about as a tool to re-theorize not only critical interpretation but the process, structure and ethics of literary communication; it is all too tempting because it would allow us to display and exploit a vast array of concepts borrowed from the history of poetics, rhetoric and reception. But most of the questions that have intrigued me in the past fifteen or twenty years about globalization, World Literature, postcolonial fiction, translatedness, etc. and that the liminal statement or proposition quoted might help me solve or at least reformulate or reset, invite me on the contrary to remain sober in this respect and limit myself to exposing briefly my understanding or misunderstanding of the basic assumptions behind this statement. 1) " Literature argues " Literature, whether it argues or not and however it does it, is presented as an entity that resembles a human subject insofar as it is the subject of acts of speech. It is not only a regime of discourse, or a code. The letter of literature, its text is not treated as an arbitrary collection of signs or a dead archive but as the living locus of an intentionality, it is not self-contained, autotelic, it seeks to produce effects. 2) " literature prompt[s] its audience " " Literature " is not seen as the totality of the situations, agents and processes involved in the production, transmission and exchange of aestheticized/aestheticizable acts of speech, but more probably as a corpus of texts in which a will-to-do is deposited and that is activated by reading. Therefore, as an event, it takes place within a space-time oriented by classical communicational directionality, a message being conveyed from a sender to a receiver. 3) " its audience to develop them for itself " The end user (receiver/interpreter) of " literature " is collective and autonomous. The extent to which its members or component parts (individual readers) collaborate to unify the reception field or develop conflicting interpretations is not specified any more than the nature of the bond between literature and audience: is it a merely pragmatic bond, or reciprocal belonging, or an ongoing negotiation between forces? This crucial question is left open and it is mainly through this indeterminacy that we can try to apply the proposed maxim to the reception-programming strategies of postcolonial fiction and assess its productivity without questioning at this stage the assumptions revealed in 1) and 2).

The South Atlantic Quarterly, 2001

Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies, 2017

The paper approaches the question of global literature and its putative public by reviewing some of the major debates about world literature (Damrosch; Spivak; Casanova; Moretti) and focusing on the contribution of Alexander Beecroft and his notion of literary ecologies. The institutions officially and unofficially governing the world republic of letters (publishing houses, literary prizes, and so forth) are briefly reviewed and criticized (following Parks; Owen; Coletti). I then address the “global literary ecology” by looking at a few recent examples from Africa, first that of J. M. Coetzee, and then briefly that of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, as well as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, in order to question the viability or desirability of the de facto Anglophone hegemony in the world republic of letters. I conclude by rehearsing the position more or less against global literature (with Spivak and Apter) and for a renewed philology and multilingualism in the spirit of Auerbach and Said.

Literature and the Making of the World: Cosmopolitan Texts, Vernacular Practices, 2022

This open access book positions itself at the intersection of world literature studies, literary anthropology and philosophical critiques of 'world' and 'globe' concepts. Doing so, it investigates how literature imagines and shapes worlds for its readers through linguistically specific cosmopolitan-vernacular dynamics, both at the level of textual engagement and on a material level of textual production and circulation. Moving from textual analyses in Part One – 'Worlds in Texts' – to combined analyses of texts, media and agents in the literary field in Part Two – 'Texts in Worlds' – the concerns of these nine chapters range from multilingualism, genre and style to material forms such as the little magazine or the scrapbook archive and finally to activities such as travel (as a writing profession) and literary promotion. With this focus on practice – which geographically engages with Constantinople, China, Russia, western Europe, North America, southern Africa and India – contributors demonstrate methodologically how world literature studies can bring the empirically specific detail to bear on global modes of analysis. It is precisely through such a dual optic that the world-making capacity of literature becomes apparent.

ariel: A Review of International English Literature, 2016

Avant-garde and experimental writings have been associated with a wide range of political perspectives and agendas, including emancipatory struggles for social justice, "progressive" ideologies, militant actions, repressive regimes, and allegedly apolitical forms of creative expression. This special issue focuses on a radical strand of experimental world literature, one that participates critically and creatively in the ongoing struggle for affirmative social transformation in a globalizing world. This kind of radical literary experiment is indebted, at least in part, to the revolutionary ideas and practices of the nineteenth-century avant-garde, which inaugurated and inspired "a range of social postures and strategies for artists by which they could differentiate themselves from current social and cultural structures while also intervening in them" (Orton and Pollock 142). This spirit of avant-gardism 1 continued to stimulate the emancipatory agendas and fictions of the twentieth century, including its anti-colonial, democratic, feminist/queer, and ecological movements. Such experiments have contributed to a radical imagination, understood as an ongoing and collective effort "to think critically, reflexively and innovatively about the social world" (Haiven and Khasnabish 2). However, in our contemporary era of neoliberal capitalism and stillincomplete decolonization, we suggest that radical experimental writing now faces distinctive creative challenges as it seeks to surpass the known limits of globalization's own world-making experiments and to inaugurate new forms of collective knowledge and coexistence. This special issue investigates how contemporary experimental world literature mediates the scales, locations, and practices of globalization's world-making activities through its radical interventions. To frame the "problem" of experimental writing in a globalizing world, this introduction calls for a materialist world literary critique of writing that tests new propositions about social transformation and articulates alternatives to

2013

When I aim to learn about a civil war or a revolution in a part of the world I know little about, my first impulse is to find a novel. Only afterwards do I compile a professional bibliography. In the language of this volume, I initially bypass the mode of worlding constituted by social science and by Western IR. Instead, I turn first to the transgressive worlding of fiction. How might this make sense even for a professional academic? Reading a novel and reading a professional article call for different dispositions. We are suspicious, alert and guarded when reading a scientific account. In contrast, while reading a literary narrative our "guard" is down. What raises our guard?

Post-Global Aesthetics: Twenty-First Century Latin American Literatures and Cultures. Edited by Gesine Müller and Benjamin Loy, 2022

Pourquoi ne cesse-t-elle pas d’écrire?—Amid a global pandemic, unprecedented environmental catastrophes, feminicides and genocides, rampant socioeconomic inequalities, and an increasing number of forced displacements, Blanchot’s question returns with the wit of a provocation, if not with the weight of an accusation. The accusatory tone may prevail in light of the ever-growing number of writers—critics and literary practitioners alike—who insist not only upon writing, but upon writing about writing. The premise of my essay is that the defense of both literary practice and criticism depends largely on the robustness of our answer to the question: “Why keep writing [about writing] literature?” I will rehearse a response to this inquiry by looking at two 21st-century Latin American novels: Rodrigo Hasbún’s El lugar del cuerpo and Conceição Evaristo’s Sabela. Both Hasbún and Evaristo’s works feature fictional writers who reflect upon their writing processes whilst their own sense of worldliness crumbles: in the case of El lugar del cuerpo, the protagonist explores what writing might mean from the perspective of a "yo" shattered by the experiences of migration and assault; in Sabela, the narrator explores the potency and the perils of transcribing the collective memory of an environmental catastrophe which threatens her community’s ancestral bases. Although the characters’ reflections are catalyzed by scarring circumstances, writing is not rendered as the suture of trauma or as a means to an end, but as an always-ongoing process whose value lies precisely in the pliancy and unexpectedness of its itinerary. Furthermore, writing is depicted not as a solitary, self-enclosed activity, but as a porous, erratic, and transformative praxis sensitive to its surroundings. From the characters’ viewpoint, to write means to venture into an embodied experience radically open to rather than severed from the ecology that envelops it. I argue that this permeability and its unpredictable outcomes are most welcome in a (post-) global cultural economy which, amidst the corrosion of its material grounds, still feeds on the reification of the self and on the commodification of well-contoured identities. In this context, following the trails of permeable, open writing trajectories might not bring about the fascinating absence de temps or the kairotic disruption of the political, but it may help us grasp the texture of subjectivities in process, the dynamics of worlds in ruins, and the potentialities of ecologies in the making.

Journal of Higher Education and Research Society: A Refereed International, 2022

This research article delves into the intricate relationship between globalization and fiction, shedding light on how literature serves as a powerful medium for exploring the multifaceted dimensions of this global phenomenon. Drawing on a range of literary works, including Don DeLillo's "Cosmopolis," Robert Newman's "The Fountain at the Center of the World," Ian McEwan's "Saturday," Arundhati Roy's "The Ministry of Utmost Happiness," and Aravind Adiga's "The White Tiger," we examine the portrayal of global movements from both pro- and anti-globalization perspectives. These novels provide a unique window into the complexities of globalization, addressing issues such as economic dominance, resistance, social justice, and the personal experiences of individuals caught in the tide of global change. The analysis also encompasses the viewpoints of prominent thinkers like Joseph E. Stiglitz and Noam Chomsky, who offer critical insights into the economic and political ramifications of globalization. Through these literary and intellectual lenses, the article explores how globalization shapes society, culture, and individual lives, sparking debates about its consequences and the possibilities of a more equitable global order. In a world where globalization is an undeniable force, this article underscores the significance of fiction as a tool for deeper understanding and critique, ultimately highlighting the intricate interplay between literature and the globalized world. The power of storytelling has historically extended beyond mere entertainment, serving as a reflection of society, a chronicle of culture, and a prophetic voice for the people. As we enter an era marked by "Global Social-cultural Awareness," it becomes imperative to employ postcolonial tools and techniques to critically analyze globalization through the lens of fiction. This research article delves into the multifaceted aspects of globalization, drawing connections to significant global events such as the 9/11 phenomenon, the emergence of the New American Empire, and the ensuing Global War on Terror. We contend that these violent occurrences are integral to the phenomenon we commonly refer to as "Globalization."