To World, To Globalize--Comparative Literature's Crossroads

Kadir, Djelal

doi:10.1353/cls.2004.0004

Cited by 43 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…As Djelal Kadir reminds us, ‘comparative literature takes on its significance by what is done in its name and by how those practices become ascertained, instituted, and managed’ (Ref. 8, p. 1). If we bring down the revival of World Literature as the latest thing in comparative studies from the level of lofty theoretical reflection to the basis of institutions and the management and distribution of resources, it becomes clear that it is related to the most fundamental changes in the fabric of our productive relations.…”

Section: A Modo De Conclusiónmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Absent Cause of World Literature

Folger

2013

European Review

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The resurgence of World Literature must be seen in relation to the economization of all spheres of life. Traditional, 'specialized' literary criticism replicates literature's power to interpellate subjects characterized by attention. Both literature and state funded literary criticism in research and teaching are currently under siege because they are counterhegemonic in relation to a lifeworld shaped by a global attention deficit syndrome, which is the bedrock of a hypertrophic consumerism. Recent proposals for writing histories and systematic descriptions of World Literature are complicit with this move because they champion, to the detriment of deep attention, the relevance, mobility, exchange value, and translatability of texts, successfully competing with traditional 'painstaking' practices of literary criticism for ever dwindling institutional resources.

show abstract

Section: A Modo De Conclusiónmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Absent Cause of World Literature

Folger

2013

European Review

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In this broader context of the so-called 'worlding' of literatures (Kadir, 2004), both literary production and literary studies call for a broader foundation. Rather than focusing on the source of literary influence, and the hegemonic centre/periphery paradigm that goes with it, a necessary supplementary framework should emphasise the entire cognitive process that both underpins the creative literary and textual practices across languages and cultures and the theories and methodologies of world literature studies.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Translation and analogical reasoning

Larsen

2023

Orbis Litterarum

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article argues that the dissemination of literatures across historical and cultural divides follow partly random analogical pathways, not least pushed by translations. By contrast, within traditional comparative literature hierarchical centre/periphery models for literary transmissions were to a large extent based on the idea of a unilateral influence moving from dominant source cultures and their canonical writers and texts to other cultures. With the aim of revising this model I will as necessary suggest analogical reasoning, understood as a bi‐directional and non‐hierarchical approach to literary dissemination as it is embedded in translatory, aesthetic and performative practices across languages and cultures. My examples are two: an early nineteenth‐century direct Danish translation from 1805 of William Shakespeare's Hamlet; and an early twentieth‐century case of cross‐media use of an indirect German translation of Chinese poetry in Gustav Mahler's symphonic work Das Lied von der Erde (1908–1909).

show abstract

“…14 And, while not intended as riposte to Damrosch's opportune 'world literature', my own parsing of the term 'world' as verb, and as transitive verb at that, would indicate that what circulates as fungible value to rise to the status of 'world literature' is neither unintended nor aleatory, but as in all markets, it is a product of selection and/or speculation, both actions that cannot be allowed to remain un-imputable in what should be the historical and material rigors of Comparative Literature. 15 Left to the mercy of supposedly anonymous market forces and their absolute randomness -what neoliberalism euphemizes as 'free-market economy' -fungibility and circulation would mean no less a form of totalization where absolute contingency replaces inevitable necessity as inexorable and unimputable hegemonic determinant of what 'world literature' might be.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%