scholarly journals World, Worlds, Worlding: A Review of Pheng Cheah's What Is a World? On Postcolonial Literature as World Literature

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Hall
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
Postcolonial Literature

Review of Pheng Cheah, What Is a World? On Postcolonial Literature as World Literature. Presents an overview of Cheah's argument regarding normativity and temporality in worlds and worlding, a summary of chapters, and an assessment of the book's contribution to philosophy, world literature, and postcolonial studies.

scholarly journals Understanding Currents and Theories in Indian and African Postcolonial Literature: Themes, Tropes and Discourse in the Wider Context of Postcolonialism

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 379-393
Author(s):  
Shivani Ekkanath
Keyword(s):  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
Postcolonial Literature ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
Colonial Literature ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Diasporic Identity ◽  
The Voice ◽  
Diaspora And Transnationalism

The postcolonial narratives we see today are a study in contrast and tell a different tale from their colonial predecessors as minorities and individuals finally have found the voice and position to tell their stories. Histories written about our culture and societies have now found a new purpose and voice. The stories we have passed down from generation to generation through both oral and written histories, continue to morph and change with the tide of time as they re-centre our cultural narratives and shared experiences. As a result, the study of diaspora and transnationalism have altered the way in which we view identity in different forms of multimedia and literature. In this paper, the primary question which will be examined is, how and to what extent does Indian post-colonial literature figure in the formation of identity in contemporary art and literature in the context of ongoing postcolonial ideas and currents? by means of famous and notable postcolonial literary works and theories of Indian authors and theoreticians, with a special focus on the question and notion of identity. This paper works on drawing parallels between themes in Indian and African postcolonial literary works, especially themes such as power, hegemony, east meets west, among others. In this paper, European transnationalism will also be analysed as a case study to better understand postcolonialism in different contexts. The paper will seek to explore some of the gaps in the study of diasporic identity and postcolonial studies and explore some of the changes and key milestones in the evolution of the discourse over the decades.

On Global English and the Transmutation of Postcolonial Studies into “Literature in English”

1999 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-80
Author(s):  
Rita Raley
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
The Other ◽  
Cultural Imperialism ◽  
Diaspora Studies ◽  
Contemporary Culture ◽  
Global English ◽  
The World ◽  
The One ◽  
Language Question

What does it signify to speak of a World Literature in English? In what ways might diaspora studies and transnationalism be linked to the contemporary phenomenon of global English, with a mode of comprehending the world that holds English at its center? What can diaspora studies and transnationalism learn from the “language question” frequently raised in discussions of both cultural imperialism and postcolonial writing? What can they learn from the question of globalism now so ubiquitous in contemporary criticism? How does the Literature in English concept relate, on the one hand, to Edouard Glissant's outline of the “liberation” that results from compromising major languages with Creoles (250), and, on the other, to Fredric Jameson's implicit yearning for a philosophical universal linguistic standard not circumvented by linguistic heteroglossia (16-7)? These questions outline the conceptual terrain of this article, in which I read the discursive transmutation of the discipline of Postcolonial Studies into “Literature in English” as both symptom and cause of the emerging visibility of global English as a recognizable disciplinary configuration situated on the line between contemporary culture and the academy. Over the course of this article, I chart this discursive transmutation and its necessary preconditions—the critical investiture in the “global,” the renewed attention to dialects, the abstraction of the “postcolonial”—as a way of articulating profound reservations about the “new universalisms,” of which Literature in English is a primary instance.

Comparing the Literatures

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Damrosch
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
Literary Analysis ◽  
Cultural Resources ◽  
Johann Gottfried Herder ◽  
Comprehensive Overview ◽  
Great Opportunity ◽  
Road Map ◽  
Institutional Forces ◽  
Gayatri Spivak

Literary studies are being transformed today by the expansive and disruptive forces of globalization. More works than ever circulate worldwide in English and in translation, and even national traditions are increasingly seen in transnational terms. To encompass this expanding literary universe, scholars and teachers need to expand their linguistic and cultural resources, rethink their methods and training, and reconceive the place of literature and criticism in the world. This book integrates comparative, postcolonial, and world-literary perspectives to offer a comprehensive overview of comparative studies and its prospects in a time of great upheaval and great opportunity. The book looks both at institutional forces and at key episodes in the life and work of comparatists who have struggled to define and redefine the terms of literary analysis over the past two centuries, from Johann Gottfried Herder and Germaine de Staël to Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, Franco Moretti, and Emily Apter. With literary examples ranging from Ovid and Kālidāsa to James Joyce, Yoko Tawada, and the internet artists Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, the book shows how the main strands of comparison—philology, literary theory, colonial and postcolonial studies, and the study of world literature—have long been intertwined. A deeper understanding of comparative literature's achievements, persistent contradictions, and even failures can help comparatists in literature and other fields develop creative responses to today's most important questions and debates. Amid a multitude of challenges and new possibilities for comparative literature, the book provides an important road map for the discipline's revitalization.

Introduction: Religion and the Novel

2019 ◽  
pp. 3-33
Author(s):  
Christina Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Postcolonial Literature ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Religion And Literature ◽  
Religious Other ◽  
Role Of Religion ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter introduces the topic of religion and literature, theorises the novel as a secular genre, and develops a concept of religion as the other in the Arabic novel. It begins with a discussion of the relationship between religion and literature, identifying imagination, metaphorical language and mythos as areas of overlap, before turning to the question of religion and the Arabic novel as a modern form which eschews faith and dogma but is nevertheless packed with religious themes, images, characters, language and intertextuality. This is accounted for by the form’s secularism, which is theorised in terms of Charles Taylor’s conditions of belief. Literary secularism is not static and stable however, thus religion emerges as the other in the Egyptian novel, with all the ambivalence which alterity characteristically entails. This religious other calls into question postcolonial studies’ over-valorisation of the East/West binary insofar as it has obscured the critical role of religion in Arab postcolonial literature and identity.

3Postcolonial Theory

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-62
Author(s):  
Edward Powell
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
Literary Form ◽  
Form Features

Abstract This chapter covers selected research in postcolonial theory published in 2018, beginning with books and edited collections before discussing journal special issues. Literary form features in many of these works, particularly as reconsiderations of ‘minor’ genres and their relationship to capitalism. Meanwhile, the place of postcolonial studies itself within capitalism came under new scrutiny, along with that of world literature.

On Islands and Deserts

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-236
Author(s):  
Tristan Leperlier
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
Literary Field ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Local Practices ◽  
Rachid Boudjedra ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
Do So

Abstract This article argues for the necessity for world literature and postcolonial studies to examine both global hierarchies of literary legitimacy and those local practices which might challenge them, and give perspectives for other significant geographies. To do so, it focuses on the bilingual and transnational Algerian literary field; this requires different levels of interconnected analysis, namely of the two linguistic subfields, the intermediary level of national literary field and the two Francophone and Arabophone transnational literary fields. Trajectories and literary works of three very different yet linked writers, Rachid Boudjedra, Tahar Djaout and Tahar Ouettar, are examined in turn. The article traces both the global and linguistic inequalities to which they were subjected as well as their practices in order to argue that they reveal unexpected vectors of circulation between spaces and languages. Finally, this piece explores how and why each writer reinvents a world within their desert novels, that is, by narrating wanderings in the desert that are also explorations of national identity.

“From Postcolonial Literature to World Literature”

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 467-487
Author(s):  
Kuei-fen Chiu
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
Documentary Film ◽  
Chinese Literature ◽  
Japanese Literature ◽  
Postcolonial Literature ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Mainland Chinese ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Literary Historiography ◽  
Award Winning

Abstract Starting with an analysis of the award-winning literary documentary Le Moulin, this paper argues that the film’s reconstruction of Le Moulin Poetry Society in colonial Taiwan suggests world literature as an alternative framework for studying Taiwan literature within cross-cultural contexts. Taiwan literature has been predominantly studied as “postcolonial literature” vis-à-vis Japanese literature and, more recently, “Sinophone literature” in relation to mainland Chinese literature. Instead of deliberating on the subjugated position of Taiwan literature in relation to dominant literatures, the documentary film celebrates the avant-garde experimentation by Le Moulin Poetry Society and underscores the connection of Taiwan literature to world literature through the mediation of Japanese writers. Its employment of what can be called “performative historiography” to fulfill this task raises significant questions about the reinvention of literature, literary canonization, and literary historiography in a new age.

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