Globalization and literature Research Papers (original) (raw)

This paper aims to analyze the main arguments of the Manifeste pour une littérature-monde en français and to emphasize some critical implications that are not only limited to the so-called francophonie, but that define a contemporary way... more

This paper aims to analyze the main arguments of the Manifeste pour une littérature-monde en français and to emphasize some critical implications that are not only limited to the so-called francophonie, but that define a contemporary way of characterizing supranational spaces. Indeed, this manifesto presents a paradox: it criticizes the francophonie, a transnational space, because of its lack of transnationalism. However, one can understand this paradox by considering the main point of this text that superimposes a global imaginary on the linguistic criterion. According to this juxtaposition, the use of a language can never be subsumed by a sharply delineated geographical space, because in the era of globalization this kind of space is fluid, liquid – it is permanently redrawn by the mobility of the writers and their imaginary. Through the example of some paradigmatic writers, like K. Ishiguro, A. Mabanckou, A. Neuman or S. Rushdie, we will demonstrate that this liquid transnationalism is particularly relevant for theorizing and modeling the nomadism or the in-betweenness of so many contemporary authors. We will also prove that this liquidity leads to a maximization of the transnationalism since it makes possible the enlargement of every transnational space to the global world.

Extended review and discussion of Emily Apter's "Against World Literature: On the Politics of Untranslatability" (New York: Verso, 2013). The book's most powerful argument, in my view, is that the "untranslatable" profitless excreta of... more

Extended review and discussion of Emily Apter's "Against World Literature: On the Politics of Untranslatability" (New York: Verso, 2013). The book's most powerful argument, in my view, is that the "untranslatable" profitless excreta of the world's literatures are both the matter with which to rethink comparison and the limits of the inflationary World Literature industry.

This book chapter draws on the 1935 Paris Writers’ International Congress for the defense of culture as a historical legacy, which documents how European intellectuals in the mid-1930s deliberated on the nature of Europe as a cultural... more

This book chapter draws on the 1935 Paris Writers’ International Congress for the defense of culture as a historical legacy, which documents how European intellectuals in the mid-1930s deliberated on the nature of Europe as a cultural entity and as an historical region. The congress is presented as an important chapter in transnational intellectual and literary history, and a European historical case in developing awareness to the importance of agency beyond the confines of the nation state. Exploring the different epistemological perspectives located in the writers’ congress as a central documentation of the history of the idea of Europe as a cultural region is interpreted as in important impulse to reflect on the historicity of a conception of Europe, not as an association of nationalities but rather as a community of different regions with manifold cultural traditions. The congress is presented as a critical juncture for understanding Europe as a trans-regional cultural constellation, both at the reflective and empirical levels, as its participants engaged with key questions related to dynamics of regions. The 1935 Congress in Paris is, at the same time, an important historical source and a lieu de mémoire for the development of an open concept of regions that understands cultural regions as spaces for transformation and innovation.

For almost three decades, “global culture” has been a significant area of inquiry for communication studies researchers. A portmanteau of “global” and “culture,” “global culture” can be conceived as a whole way of life of the world’s... more

For almost three decades, “global culture” has been a significant area of inquiry for communication studies researchers. A portmanteau of “global” and “culture,” “global culture” can be conceived as a whole way of life of the world’s people, and also, cultural works that are produced and commonly consumed by people who live within and across many countries, not just one country. Taking this broad definition of global culture as a useful heuristic, this chapter contextualizes, summarizes, and critically assesses three narrower meanings of “global culture.” These articulations of global culture include: 1) mediated sociality as a whole way of life (e.g., the “global village”); 2) an Empire’s universalization or trans-nationalization of a particular way of life (e.g., “cultural imperialism”); and, 3) cultural works that are financed, produced, circulated and consumed by people across the borders of nation-states (e.g., “global popular culture”).

In: Bernaschina, Vicente / Kraft, Tobias / Kraume, Anne (Hg.): Globalisierung in Zeiten der Aufklärung. Texte und Kontexte zur ‚Berliner Debatte’ um die Neue Welt (17./18. Jh.). Teil 1. Frankfurt am Main - Bern - New York: Peter Lang... more

In: Bernaschina, Vicente / Kraft, Tobias / Kraume, Anne (Hg.): Globalisierung in Zeiten der Aufklärung. Texte und Kontexte zur ‚Berliner Debatte’ um die Neue Welt (17./18. Jh.). Teil 1. Frankfurt am Main - Bern - New York: Peter Lang Edition 2015, pp. 27-55.

All'incrocio tra critica letteraria e filosofia, il volume esplora la scrittura di Elena Ferrante e il rapporto tra soggettività e narrazione, individuando tre diverse partizioni. Mitopoiesi rilegge il rapporto mitologico madre-figlia che... more

All'incrocio tra critica letteraria e filosofia, il volume esplora la scrittura di Elena Ferrante e il rapporto tra soggettività e narrazione, individuando tre diverse partizioni. Mitopoiesi rilegge il rapporto mitologico madre-figlia che percorre L'amore molesto, I giorni dell'abbandono, La figlia oscura e La spiaggia di notte, per pensare altrimenti le relazioni di disparità, approdando alla "storicizzazione delle genealogie femminili". Diaspora esamina L'amica geniale, scorgendo nella "fantasia di autofiction" un dispositivo narrativo che permette di accedere alle temporalità in divenire delle soggettività in fuga. Performatività setaccia La frantumaglia e L'invenzione occasionale, facendo emergere un'"autorialità diffratta", che articola un'inedita istanza narrativa - polifonica e relazionale - del Global Novel: la "narratrice traduttrice". Questo volume rende così visibile come Elena Ferrante - voce femminile e, al contempo, affermativamente depersonalizzata - si inserisca in un "multiverso temporale transfemminista", dove solo le soggettività impreviste e postumane sono in grado di trasformare il potere dello storytelling in potenza poethica.

Refugee Literatures: Migration, Crisis, and the Humanities JNT: Journal of Narrative Theory invites submissions exploring the life and work of refugees as they engage the humanities today. Just as the mid-twentieth century refugee crisis... more

Refugee Literatures: Migration, Crisis, and the Humanities JNT: Journal of Narrative Theory invites submissions exploring the life and work of refugees as they engage the humanities today. Just as the mid-twentieth century refugee crisis shaped the emergence and development of aesthetic and theoretical movements around World War II, the mass movement of displaced peoples today stems from a convergence of forces concomitantly reshaping art and humanistic thought, from economic globalization to climate change, neoliberalism, neoimperialism, resurgent nationalisms, violence against black, latinx, Muslim, and queer peoples, and the waning securities of sovereignty and citizenship. In light of these crises, refugees and other undocumented peoples have come to appear less an exception to an otherwise stable world order and more like harbingers of things to come –– embodiments of the " new normal " in a world of permanent insecurity. And yet, Edward Said once warned that an impulse to universalize the refugee might lead scholars to ignore the particularities of the refugee's plight and to " banalize their mutilations. " Alive to Said's warning and to the need to give voice and critical attention to the lives of the violently displaced, this special issue asks how writings by and about refugees –– past and present, real and imagined –– might intersect with the work of the humanities to engender democratic life in a precarious world. When refugees speak, how do they tell their stories? What narrative, poetic, rhetorical, and legal forms have they used to give account of their lives? How has the emergence of new forces and dynamics of migration over the last century affected these forms? What are the archives of refugee history and life? How do refugee narratives engage scales of literary study such as national, transnational, world, global, and planetary literature? Where does migration studies fit into the humanities today? What are the advantages and dangers of taking up the refugee as a figure of comparison with other precarious subjects: the poor, students, the indebted, black and queer peoples? What can longer literary histories of migration and exile tell us about the contemporary crises? Please submit essays of 25-35 pages (no less than 6250 words) and in MLA style (8 th edition) to the Special Issue Editors, Hadji Bakara at hbakara@umich.edu and Joshua L. Miller at joshualm@umich.edu. (Address inquiries to the Special Issue Editors as well). Submission Deadline September 1, 2018.

Literatura y globalización: la narrativa hispanoamericana en el siglo XXI (espacio, tiempo, géneros) repasa algunas de las cuestiones que han estado y están en el punto de mira del latinoamericanismo y que presentan alguna novedad o... more

Literatura y globalización: la narrativa hispanoamericana en el siglo XXI (espacio, tiempo, géneros) repasa algunas de las cuestiones que han estado y están en el punto de mira del latinoamericanismo y que presentan alguna novedad o
diferencia en la forma de percibir y analizar los textos literarios de la región con respecto a un pasado, el del siglo XX, todavía reciente. Partiendo de aspectos vinculados al espacio y al tiempo, el ensayo aborda, en un primer momento, la
configuración de nuevas cartografías, la condición posnacional y transterritorial de algunas obras recientes, así como la creación desde el ámbito hispanoamericano de toda una serie de imaginarios y representaciones de la globalización. Y termina
analizando los cambios acontecidos en el campo literario del mundo hispánico en las últimas décadas, en particular en lo que se refiere a los géneros literarios.

This article analyses the changing trends of globalization and modernity that transform the social and individual perceptions. In postcolonial era, globalization proves to be an impetus that precipitates the tension between tradition and... more

This article analyses the changing trends of globalization and modernity that transform the social and individual
perceptions. In postcolonial era, globalization proves to be an impetus that precipitates the tension between tradition and modernity. This article studies the competing forces of tradition and modernity as dramatized in Kamila Shamsie’s Salt and Saffron (2000). The novel is a playful account of past memories revisited and preserved by family lore. It is also an appropriation of those traditional views in the modern scene by the members of new generation. Therefore, the novel becomes a microcosm of traditional versus modern values conceived by the family members of Dard-e-dil family. The novel is an effective display of past Muslim cultural and political glory yet it revisits the current issues of identity,
displacement and immigration. The article situates the story of Dard-e-dils within the theoretical context of globalization
and postcolonialism, and reads the flux and change that the Pakistani fiction reflects as it enters a new realm of changed
national, social and individual perception in the post–partition and postcolonial era.

This article analyses the 2006 novel Wizard of the Crow by Kenyan author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o in a post-Cold War context as a postcommunist picaresque novel. Using the instruments of postcommunist and world-systems theory and comparing the... more

This article analyses the 2006 novel Wizard of the Crow by
Kenyan author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o in a post-Cold War context
as a postcommunist picaresque novel. Using the instruments
of postcommunist and world-systems theory and comparing
the novel to Eastern and Central European postcommunist
writing, it shows how the concerns and aesthetics of both
post-totalitarian discourses overlap. It is argued that postcolonial
and postcommunist literature describes a crisis of identity
symptomatic of all post-dependence cultures and represents
discursive resistance to global capitalist modernity in which
the meaning of the truth (historical, moral, cultural) has been
destabilized. Emphasizing that any ideology can be a source of
violence and colonization, Ngũgĩ’s novel, like the novel of his
Slovakian counterpart Peter Pišťanek, calls for the breaking
down of the traditional political binaries –Marxist/liberal, communist/fascist, socialist/capitalist, patriarchal/feminist –opening
up space for new meanings.

Monografía (en Castellano)

A review essay on recent Zimbabwean writing published in the magazine n+1.

edited by Ottmar Ette & Gesine Müller

mimesis Romanische Literaturen der Welt Band 54 herausgegeben von Ottmar Ette

Interview of the noted Marathi poet, translator and critic Saleel Wagh. He was associated with Royist movement in early part of his career.

Bu yazıda, Avrupa ve Amerika kıtaları odağında, edebiyat tarihi yazımının bir tarihi sunulmaya çalışılacaktır. Bu girişimin, aslında “imkânsız” bir proje olduğu baştan söylenmelidir. Her şeyden önce, sınırları belli bir yazıda, çok geniş... more

Bu yazıda, Avrupa ve Amerika kıtaları odağında, edebiyat tarihi yazımının bir tarihi sunulmaya çalışılacaktır. Bu girişimin, aslında “imkânsız” bir proje olduğu baştan söylenmelidir. Her şeyden önce, sınırları belli bir yazıda, çok geniş bir literatürün ancak bir minyatürü sunulabilir. Üstelik sınırlarınız ne kadar geniş olursa olsun tarih yazıcısı olmak, bu yazıda değinilecek, acımasızca eleştirilmiş birçok problemi yeniden üretmek anlamına gelmektedir ve indirgemecilik bunlardan yalnızca bir tanesidir. David Perkins, edebiyat tarihi yazmanın mümkün olup olmadığını sorguladığı Is Literary History Possible? (1993) adlı kitabında, edebiyat tarihi kuramını tartışacağını özellikle belirttikten sonra aynı noktaya parmak basmıştır: Bir edebiyat tarihi yazmaya kalksa kitabında eleştirdiği birçok sorunlu yöntemi benimsemek zorunda kalacağını itiraf etmiştir (s. ix).
[....]
Edebiyat Tarihi Yazımının Doğuşu
Bağlamdan Metne Doğru Edebiyat Tarihçiliği
Eleştirmenle Tarihçinin Buluşma Noktası
Metinden Okura Doğru Edebiyat Tarihçiliği
Ulusal Bağlamların Arasında Karşılaştırmalı Edebiyat
Edebiyatın Yeni Tarihyazımı
Uluslararası Bağlamdan Dünya Edebiyatına
[....]
Bu saptamaların gösterdiği üzere, post-modernizmin ve postyapısalcılığın ikili karşıtlıkların ve kültürel özcülüğün yapısını söken tüm kuramsal çabasına karşın, uygulamada hiyerarşik yapılar kemikleşmiştir. Bağlam ya da örneklem küresel boyutta genişletilse bile merkezin tahakkümü, çeperi ekonomik ve politik boyutlarda etkisi altında tuttuğu gibi, dil ve edebiyat alanlarında da koşullandırmaktadır. Casanova’nın yirminci yüzyıl ve öncesinde saptadığı edebi rekabet ortamı bugün de varlığını koruyor görünmektedir. Üstelik küresel edebiyat tarihi yazımı, anayurdu olan coğrafyalarda bile kuşatıcı idealine ulaşmaktan çok uzaktır. Küreselciliğin paradoksal biçimde ürettiği monolog, çeperin söze katılmasıyla bir diyaloğa dönüşmediği sürece de edebiyat tarihi yazımının kendisini doğuran zihniyetten özgürleşemeyeceği anlaşılmaktadır.

This article considers James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man as a postcolonial Bildungsroman avant la lettre, in part because it establishes an attitude toward Bildung that looks beyond idealist and nationalist... more

This article considers James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man as a postcolonial Bildungsroman avant la lettre, in part because it establishes an attitude toward Bildung that looks beyond idealist and nationalist consolations toward something like global belonging. Central to this vision of the novel as a global form is the philosophical concept of world-making, which I argue conditions the way Joyce’s protagonist, Stephen Dedalus, understands his own formative desires. This understanding drives him, ultimately, to abandon the options laid out for him by colonial society; to embrace his own inner life and the moments of aspiration that are its outward and visible signs; and to imagine a world in which his “wayward instincts” would count as forms of aesthetic accomplishment. This relationship to inner life entails a relationship to the future that differs from conventional progressive models of self-formation. In A Portrait, Joyce describes a temporality on the order of the future perfect (future anterior) that belongs to the world of the work and the inner life of the artist whose creative power links him to his creation. A temporality of aspiration posits a time for the triumphant recognition of one’s own Bildung, a standpoint that redeems the path toward it from error and misprision. His formative quest is grounded in a relationship between aspiration and freedom that was first articulated by German idealist philosophers like G. W. F. Hegel and Friedrich Schiller. As a child, his sense of freedom at first feels like a new form of bondage; but he soon learns resist the designs others have on him and to follow his own aspirations. His turn to art is the only option left to a young man whose experience of the world has failed to live up to what he could imagine. The bird-girl scene exemplifies the moment when he discovers the power of creating a world and opening himself to the world of others, a power he consciously wields as he composes his villanelle. Through canny and salutary misrecognitions, he moves from his early childhood experiences of méconnaissance, to the moment on the strand and his aesthetic elaboration of it, finally to arrive at a moment of creation, in which the world he creates opens him to the world at large in a new and hopeful way. This, I argue, is the force of the novel’s conclusion, the corrective gaze the young artist casts on his own narrative, from the perspective of his journal entries, which bring his inner life directly into contact with the life of others. Stephen’s Bildungsuche, which liberates him from the world so that he might create a new one, offers a template for postcolonial and global writers who grapple with constraints on freedom and deficits in cultural capital that make aesthetic education all but an impossible dream. In this respect, Joyce bequeaths to postcolonial and global fiction the template for a world in which aspiration forces a heroic path toward the future and new destinies for Bildung.

Based on a survey of 8,041 Christians in three countries (Angola, Central African Republic, and Kenya), and using four languages (English, French, Portuguese, and Swahili), this article analyzes respondents' reading habits and focuses... more

Based on a survey of 8,041 Christians in three countries (Angola, Central African Republic, and Kenya), and using four languages (English, French, Portuguese, and Swahili), this article analyzes respondents' reading habits and focuses especially on the analysis of favorite authors examined in terms of language, religion, and nationality.

Idos de la mente es hasta el momento la novela cumbre del escritor tijuanense Luis Humberto Crosthwaite por ser la síntesis de una carrera literaria fundamentada en la escritura de textos narrativos breves, precisos en el uso del lenguaje... more

Idos de la mente es hasta el momento la novela cumbre del escritor tijuanense Luis Humberto Crosthwaite por ser la síntesis de una carrera literaria fundamentada en la escritura de textos narrativos breves, precisos en el uso del lenguaje y amplios en posibilidades de lectura. En ella se ponen en juego la economía del lenguaje, la brevedad, el virtuosismo intertextual, la polifonía por medio de la presencia de un fractal de voces narrativas y registros textuales. Es una obra que hace justicia no sólo a los referentes culturales y literarios del norte de México, sino que es ejemplo de cómo ha cambiado nuestro canon literario.