Reading the World, Reading the Self

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 479-496
Author(s):  
Laura Lucia Rossi
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
The Self ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
The Core ◽  
The World ◽  
Transparent Objects ◽  
Meaning Production

This article is a reflection on the wordy and worldly characters of literary texts that invites us to focus on how their referentiality unfolds in the act of reading. The article focuses in particular on the necessity for world literature to factor in the subjective involvement of the reader entailed by literary communication. It does so by firstly revisiting the old debate about referentiality and contextualization of literary texts in literary studies, and specifically within world literature, which is particularly concerned with understanding the boundaries of literary communication. It then analyses how the worldly and wordy components of literature can be brought together by considering the act of reading as the core of meaning production and as a process of generative construction, which, when based on the interaction between readers and distant texts, like in the specific case of world literature, has the possibility to maximize its potential. Engaging with Iser's and Poulet's phenomenological approaches to the act of reading, the article argues against the vision of literary texts as transparent objects and encourages scholars working on world literature to embrace the translucency and generative potential that literature offers, inviting them to embrace aesthetic and anthropological perspectives so as to understand works of world literature as tools for interpretation both of the world and of ourselves.

Boatmen, Wastrels, and Demons: Figures of Literature

CounterText ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simona Sawhney
Keyword(s):  
Social Studies ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Sanskrit Text ◽  
Modern Democracy ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
The World ◽  
National Literatures

Engaging some of the questions opened by Ranjan Ghosh's and J. Hillis Miller's book Thinking Literature Across Continents (2016), this essay begins by returning to Aijaz Ahmad's earlier invocation of World Literature as a project that, like the proletariat itself, must stand in an antithetical relation to the capitalism that produced it. It asks: is there an essential link between a certain idea of literature and a figure of the world? If we try to broach this link through Derrida's enigmatic and repeated reflections on the secret – a secret ‘shared’ by both literature and democracy – how would we grasp Derrida's insistence on the ‘Latinity’ of literature? The groundlessness of reading that we confront most vividly in our encounter with fictional texts is both intensified, and in a way, clarified, by new readings and questions posed by the emergence of new reading publics. The essay contends that rather than being taught as representatives of national literatures, literary texts in ‘World Literature’ courses should be read as sites where serious historical and political debates are staged – debates which, while being local, are the bearers of universal significance. Such readings can only take place if World Literature strengthens its connections with the disciplines Miller calls, in the book, Social Studies. Paying particular attention to the Hindi writer Premchand's last story ‘Kafan’, and a brief section from the Sanskrit text the Natyashastra, it argues that struggles over representation, over the staging of minoritised figures, are integral to fiction and precede the thinking of modern democracy.

Against Global Literary Studies

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacob Edmond
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Literature ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
Institutional Frameworks ◽  
The World

Abstract Literary studies has taken a global turn through such institutional frameworks as global romanticism, global modernism, global anglophone, global postcolonial, global settler studies, world literature, and comparative literature. Though promising an escape from parochialism, nationalism, and Eurocentrism, this turn often looks suspiciously like another version of Anglo-European imperialism. This essay argues that, rather than continue the expansionary line of recent decades, global literary studies must allow other perspectives to draw into question its concepts, practices, and theories, including those associated with the terms literature, discipline, and comparison. As a settler colonial (Pākehā) scholar in Aotearoa New Zealand, I attend particularly to Māori literary scholars from Apirana Ngata, Te Kapunga Matemoana (Koro) Dewes, and Hirini Melbourne to Alice Te Punga Somerville, Tina Makereti, and Arini Loader. Their work highlights the limitedness of global literary studies in its current disciplinary guise. Disciplines remain important when they bring recognition to something previously marginalized, as in the battle to have Māori literature recognized within Pākehā institutions. What institutionalized modes of global literary studies need, however, is not discipline but indiscipline: a recognition of the limits of dominant disciplinary objects, frameworks, and practices, and an openness to other ways of seeing the world.

scholarly journals Tradition Versus and Modernity in Laila al-Juhani’s The Waste Paradise: An Intertextual Approach

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (10) ◽  
pp. 1197-1202
Author(s):  
Mohammed Abdullah Abduldaim Hizabr Alhusami
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Short Story ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Saudi Women ◽  
The Core ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
Story Writer

The aim of this paper is to investigate the issue of intertextuality in the novel Alfirdaws Alyabab (The Waste Paradise) by the female Saudi novelist and short story writer Laila al-Juhani. Intertextuality is a rhetoric and literary technique defined as a textual reference deliberate or subtle to some other texts with a view of drawing more significance to the core text; and hence it is employed by an author to communicate and discuss ideas in a critical style. The narrative structure of Alfirdaws Alyabab (The Waste Paradise) showcases references of religious, literary, historical, and folkloric intertextuality. In analyzing these references, the study follows the intertextual approach. In her novel The Waste Paradise, Laila al-Juhani portrays the suffering of Saudi women who are less tormented by social marginalization than by an inner conflict between openness to Western culture and conformity to cultural heritage. Intertextuality relates to words, texts, or discourses among each other. Moreover, the intertextual relations are subject to reader’s response to the text. The relation of one text with other texts or contexts never reduces the prestige of writing. Therefore, this study, does not diminish the status of the writer or the text; rather, it is in itself a kind of literary creativity. Finally, this paper aims to introduce Saudi writers in general and the female writers in particular to the world literature.

scholarly journals KONSEP DIRI SEORANG DA'I

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 207
Author(s):  
Noormawanti, Iswati
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
The Self ◽  
Self Concept ◽  
Social Aspects ◽  
The Core ◽  
Self Development ◽  
The World ◽  
Entire Complex ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Beliefs And Attitudes

The concept of self is an understanding of the attitude of the individual towards himself so that it results in the interaction of two or more people. Self-concept is a factor that communicates with others. The concept of self is the views and attitudes of individuals towards themselves, characteristics and individual and self-motivation. The self-view includes not only individual strengths but also weaknesses and even failures. This self-concept is psychological, social and physical. Self-concept is our views and feelings about ourselves, which include physical, psychological and social aspects. The concept of self is not just a descriptive picture, but also an assessment of ourselves, including what we think and how we feel. Anita Taylor defines self-concept as "all you think and feel about you, the entire complex of beliefs and attitudes you hold abaout yourself '. Human behavior is a product of their interpretation of the world around them through social interaction. Behavior is often a choice as a feasible thing to do based on how it defines the existing situation. The definition they give to other people, situations, objects and even themselves determines their behavior. So it is individuals who are considered active to regulate and determine their own behavior and environment. While the core of the individual is consciousness (consciousness). self-development depends on communication with others, which shape or influence themselves

scholarly journals ‘THE RULE OF THREE’ IN THE GROWTH STORIES – GANGBAIK LEE’S DRAMA “LIKE LOOKING AT THE FLOWER IN THE MIDWINTER”

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 11-22
Author(s):  
Mansu KIM
Keyword(s):  
Fairy Tale ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Real ◽  
Final Destination ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Core ◽  
Rule Of Three ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The World

This paper focused on the structure of the growth stories, especially in surveying Gangbaek Lee’s (이강백) drama “Like Looking at the Flower in the Mid-winter (동지섣달 꽃 본 듯이)”. It is structured by ‘rule of the three’. In this text, three sons go to seek their mother, they experience the tests three times. Third son wins the game because he succeeds to find his true and alternative mother. It is similar to the story of English fairy tale “Three Little Pigs”.  In Freudian terms, the characters of the both texts are superego, ego and id. The core of the growth story is that third son (id) wins the first son (superego) and the second son (ego) by using his own energy (meaningful labor). In Levi Strauss’ terms, the contrast between the third and the others can be schemed the contrast between culture and nature. Lee’s drama presents the third son as the real hero who overcomes two elder brothers. The first is so conservative (oversleep), the second is so selfish (overeat). Two brothers were too political or too ideal to become a true, humanistic and warm-minded adult. In his view, ‘drama’ related to the third son is the most humanistic and warm-minded action in the world. These both stories are based on the plot ‘rags to riches’ which contains the success of the poor and powerless. In other words, the poor and weak child can grow to the true hero, and reach the final destination, according to the Gustav Jung’s expression, ‘the Self as a Whole’.

Futures of Spectrality

2020 ◽  
pp. 300-307
Author(s):  
Karim Mattar
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
The World ◽  
Per Se

In the Conclusion, I consider the wider implications of the book. Addressing the question of whether spectrality – and by extension (Derridean) theory per se – has a future in literary studies given the “postcritical” turn that scholars such as Rita Felski have recently called for, I suggest that it indeed does. This book, I affirm, is nothing if not a contribution to and expansion of the project of critique for the world literature debate. Through its reading of the Middle Eastern novel as metonym and metaphor of such, it will have sought to reorient world literature around the paradigmatic critical figure of the specter. Moving forwards, our task and indeed responsibility is one of expanding this analysis to the world in endless critique.

Polysystems Redux: The Unfinished Business of World Literature

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 272-281
Author(s):  
Debjani Ganguly
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
World Systems ◽  
Unfinished Business ◽  
Republic Of Letters ◽  
Systems Model ◽  
Literary Space ◽  
The World

AbstractIn responding to Muhsin al-Musawi’s two-part essay on the Arabic Republic of Letters, this essay proposes a rethinking of the world systems model in global literary studies in terms of a polysystems framework. Rather than trying to fit literary worlds—ancient, premodern, modern—within a single Euro-chronological frame culminating in a world capitalist systems model—where the non-European worlds appear as invariably inferior—it is worthwhile to see them as several polysystems with variable valences within a heterotemporal planetary literary space. This approach offers a comparative reading of the emergence of three language worlds—Sanskrit, Persian, and Arabic—and urges us to rethink the totality of the world literary space as a diachronic field that generates overlapping, multiscalar, comparative histories of literary polysystems.

scholarly journals Dimension of Dialectic Politics

2004 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-28
Author(s):  
Mahendra Bhushan Thapa
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
The Self ◽  
View Point ◽  
Law And Order ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
Human Interest ◽  
The Core ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
The World

The world is guided by power politics. The power politics is the core process for regulating human behaviour activised in the society. The society is regulated and maintained with the provision of law and order sanctioned by power politics. Everybody has strong willingness for gaining power for the fulfilment of the self-interest and also for the betterment of the society. But from the view point of human nature, self-interest is more stronger than the interest in the society. The objective of this article is to analyze power politics for the fulfilment of human interest based on the struggle for power. Journal of Political Science Vol.7(1) 2004 20-28

Blogs as Corporate Tools

2009 ◽  
pp. 128-133
Author(s):  
Michela Cortini
Keyword(s):  
Web Sites ◽  
Iraq War ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Virtual Community ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Core ◽  
Corporate Blogs ◽  
The World ◽  
Intense Debate

According to The Weblog Handbook (Blood, 2003), Weblogs, or blogs as they are usually called, are online and interactive diaries, very similar to both link lists and online magazines. Up to now, the psychosocial literature on new technologies has studied primarly personal blogs, without giving too much interest to corporate blogs. This article aims to fill such a gap, examining blogs as corporate tools. Blogs are online diaries, where the blogger expresses himself herself, in an autoreferential format (Blood, 2003; Cortini, 2005), as the blogger would consider that only he or she deserves such attention. The writing is updated more than once a day, as the blogger needs to be constantly online and in constant contact with her audience. Besides diaries, there are also notebooks, which are generally more reflexive in nature. There are long comments on what is reported, and there is equilibrium in the discourse between the self and the rest of the world out there, in the shape of external links, as was seen in the first American blogs, which featured an intense debate over the Iraq war (Jensen, 2003). Finally, there are filters, which focus on external links. A blogger of a filter talks about himself or herself by talking about someone and something else and expresses himself or herself in an indirect way (Blood, 2003). In addition, filters, which are less esthetic and more frequently updated than diary blogs or Web sites since they have a practical aim, are generally organized around a thematic focus, which represents the core of the virtual community by which the filter lives.

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