Towards a Spectral Theory of World Literature

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-68
Author(s):  
Karim Mattar
Keyword(s):  
Spectral Theory ◽  
European Society ◽  
World Literature ◽  
The Novel ◽  
World Systems ◽  
Miguel De Cervantes ◽  
General Lack ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Stage Play ◽  
World Systems Analysis

In the Introduction, I provide a detailed exposition of my spectral theory of world literature. After discussing the parameters of the contemporary world literature debate, I then seek to redress what I note has been its general lack of attention to the concept of “literature” on which Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s and Karl Marx’s original formulations of a “world literature” were founded. I outline a genealogy of this concept that traces it back to the conditions of European society in the early 19th century, and on these grounds suggest that global capitalist modernity be identified as the repressed origin and condition of possibility of world literature. From here, I proceed to elaborate on the historical constitution of world literature with reference to world-systems analysis, Orientalism, and the theory of spectrality. I argue that premised on their superseding of alternate global practices and modalities of “literature” and “the literary” in modernity, yet always-already haunted by these, world literature and its forms – the novel, the lyric poem, and the stage play – are constituted in the logic of spectrality. To flesh out this argument, I demonstrate the spectral infection and inflection of the novel form itself as initiated by Miguel de Cervantes.

Specters of World Literature

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karim Mattar
Keyword(s):  
Literary History ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
The Novel ◽  
World Systems Theory ◽  
Literary Forms ◽  
Local Literature ◽  
Local Literatures ◽  
Stage Play ◽  
Classical Arabic

This book draws on Edward Said, Aamir Mufti, Jacques Derrida, and world-systems theory to address the institutionalized construct of “world literature” from its origins in Goethe and Marx to the present day.  It argues that through its history, this construct has served to incorporate if not annul local literatures and the concept of “local literature” itself, and to universalize the novel, the lyric poem, and the stage play as the only literary forms appropriate to modernity.  It demonstrates this thesis through a comparative reading of the reinscription of the classical Arabic-Islamic concept of “adab” as “literature” in the modern, European sense in Egypt, Turkey, and Iran in the 19th to mid-20th centuries.  It then turns to the Middle Eastern novel in the global contexts of its production, translation, circulation, and reception today.  Through new readings of novels and other literary works by Abdelrahman Munif, Naguib Mahfouz, Orhan Pamuk, Azar Nafisi, Yasmin Crowther, and Marjane Satrapi, and with reference to landmarks of Middle Eastern and world literary history ranging from the Mu‘allaqāt and Alf Layla wa Layla to Don Quixote, it argues that these texts—like “world literature” itself—are constitutively haunted by specters of the literary forms and traditions, of the life-worlds that they expressed, cast aside by modernity.  In the case of the Middle Eastern novel, it is adab and all that it encompassed in the classical Arab-Islamic world that is suppressed or othered, but that spectral, yet returns in new, genuinely worldly constellations of form.

scholarly journals SOCIAL IDEAS DISTRIBUTION IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY

2021 ◽  
pp. 31-43
Author(s):  
Никита Николаевич Равочкин
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Narrative Approach ◽  
World Systems ◽  
Research Strategies ◽  
Social Transformations ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
The Social ◽  
Psychological Knowledge ◽  
World Systems Analysis

Многомерные и сложные изменения реалий, которые можно наблюдать в современной общественной жизни, происходят под влиянием множества самых различных факторов. Однако даже невзирая на произошедший в социальных науках идеационный поворот, большинство исследователей все еще настаивают на материалистических интерпретациях этих процессов. Неполнота таких объяснений соответствующим образом порождает пробелы, которые требуют нетривиального и своевременного социально-философского осмысления. Включение идеальных параметров способно преодолеть порочный круг, заданный пониманием трансформационных процессов через многочисленные материальные изменения. Настоящая статья посвящена рассмотрению дистрибуции социальных идей как самостоятельного фактора, объясняющего преобразования в современном мире. Теоретико-методологическую базу исследования составили современные научные работы и разработанный автором мультипарадигмальный подход изучения социальных преобразований, учитывающий положения акторносетевой теории, неоинституционализма, мир-системного анализа, нарративного подхода, теории фреймов и ряда других исследовательских установок. Определено, что дистрибуция социальных идей уходит корнями еще в античные социально-философские концепции, но обретает действенную мощь лишь в Новое время. Показана тесная связь понимания дистрибуции идей с рациональной деятельностью. Выявлено, что в современном мире на основании комбинирования традиционных методов транслирования идей акторы все чаще прибегают к их сочетанию с психологическими знаниями и компьютерными технологиями. На основе анализа современности установлено, что неиссякаемый плюрализм методов дистрибуции и переход в иррациональную плоскость дает больший прагматический эффект и в духе классической праксиологии позволяет оптимизировать ресурсы, используемые влиятельными субъектами при дистрибуции идей в процессе инициирования и проведения социальных преобразований. Multidimensional and complex changes in realities that can be observed in contemporary social life occur under the influence of many very different factors, but even despite the ideational turn that has taken place in the social sciences, most researchers still insist on materialistic interpretations of these processes. The incompleteness of such explanations accordingly generates gaps that require nontrivial and timely socio-philosophical reflection. The inclusion of ideal parameters is able to overcome the vicious circle set by the understanding of transformational processes through numerous material changes. This article is devoted to the consideration of the distribution of social ideas as an independent factor explaining transformations in the contemporary world. The theoretical and methodological basis of the study was made up of modern scientific works and a multi-paradigm approach to the study of social transformations developed by the author, taking into account the provisions of the actor-network theory, neoinstitutionalism, world-systems analysis, the narrative approach, the theory of frames, and a number of other research strategies. It has been established that the distribution of social ideas is rooted in ancient socio-philosophical concepts, but gains effective power only in Modernity period. The close connection between understanding the distribution of ideas and rational activity is shown. It was revealed that in the contemporary world, on the basis of a combination of traditional methods of broadcasting ideas, actors increasingly resort to their combination with psychological knowledge and computer technologies. Based on the analysis of the contemporary period, it has been established that the inexhaustible pluralism of distribution methods and the transition to an irrational plane gives a greater pragmatic effect and, in the spirit of classical praxeology, allows to optimize the resources used by influential actors in the distribution of ideas in the process of initiating and carrying out social transformations.

The Shabaḥ of Modernity: World-Systems, the Petro-Imperium, and the Indigenous Trace

2020 ◽  
pp. 71-109
Author(s):  
Karim Mattar
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
The Novel ◽  
World Systems ◽  
Poetic Tradition ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Politics And Culture ◽  
The World ◽  
Novelistic Form

This chapter provides a new reading of Abdelrahman Munif’s five-volume epic of Gulf petro-modernity, Cities of Salt, in the context of the world literature debate. Considering how this novel has been framed for international audiences since its translation into English, I start with John Updike’s response to Munif as “insufficiently Westernized” to have produced a novel. This response, I argue, is symptomatic of a world literature that conceives of “the literary” only according to “Western” norms and models. I then offer a corrective based on what I show to be Munif’s spectral characterization of Bedouin resistance leader Miteb al-Hathal. A “shabaḥ” (specter), this figure hovers at the interstices of modern oil state that had overwritten or incorporated his world, and, unassimilable, haunts it – indeed, the novel – with the revolutionary memory of its own abuses. Drawing on a wide range of primary and secondary sources, I trace Munif’s spectral inf(l)ection of novelistic form through a discussion of questions of indigeneity; Bedouin oral poetic tradition; and the dialectics of Gulf “petro-modernity” in relation to Bedouin history, politics, and culture. In sum, this chapter articulates the linkage between world literature, Orientalism, modernity, the novel, and spectrality at the heart of this book.

Postcolonial world literature: Narration, translation, imagination

Thesis Eleven ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 072551362199470
Author(s):  
Dirk Wiemann ◽  
Shaswati Mazumdar ◽  
Ira Raja
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
Single Units ◽  
Critical Perspective ◽  
Neoliberal Globalization ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Postcolonial Criticism ◽  
Colonial Expansion ◽  
The World

Postcolonial criticism has repeatedly debunked the ostensible neutrality of the ‘world’ of world literature by pointing out that and how the contemporary world – whether conceived in terms of cosmopolitan conviviality or neoliberal globalization – cannot be understood without recourse to the worldly event of Europe’s colonial expansion. While we deem this critical perspective indispensable, we simultaneously maintain that to reduce ‘the world’ to the world-making impact of capital, colonialism, and patriarchy paints an overly deterministic picture that runs the risk of unwittingly reproducing precisely that dominant ‘oneworldness’ that it aims to critique. Moreover, the mere potentiality of alternative modes of world-making tends to disappear in such a perspective so that the only remaining option to think beyond oneworldness resides in the singularity claim. This insistence on singularity, however, leaves the relatedness of the single units massively underdetermined or denies it altogether. By contrast, we locate world literature in the conflicted space between the imperial imposition of a hierarchically stratified world (to which, as hegemonic forces tell us, ‘there is no alternative’) and the unrealized ‘undivided world’ that multiple minor cosmopolitan projects yet have to win. It is precisely the tension between these ‘two worlds’ that brings into view the crucial centrality not of the nodes in their alleged singularity but their specific relatedness to each other, that both impedes and energizes world literature today and renders it ineluctably postcolonial.

On translating Emily Brontë’s style in Wuthering Heights into Arabic

Babel ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fatima Muhaidat
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
Figurative Language ◽  
Material Objects ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Considerable Effort ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
Arabic Translation ◽  
Wuthering Heights

Abstract Translating Emily Brontë’s (1818–1848) Wuthering Heights (1847) into Arabic is a complex and multifaceted task. This paper explores the challenges involved in this task by discussing distinctive features of Brontë’s style and their counterparts in Mamdouh Haqqi’s Arabic translation of the novel. Stylistic features under focus include lexis, figurative language, and structure. As for Brontë’s lexis, it intricately knits elements like characters, setting, and themes. To take their readers to the unpredictable world of Wuthering Heights, translators try to find Arabic equivalents suggesting the associations and connotations of the Source Text (ST) style. Among the obstacles translators need to overcome are lexical gaps, as some lexicalized thoughts and experiences in English have no lexicalized equivalents in Arabic. Resorting to paraphrases may result in sacrificing the compactness of the source text (ST) and losing some shades of meaning. Further complications result from dealing with figurative language. Conveying Brontë’s imagery, personifications, and references to abstract notions in terms of material objects requires thoughtful consideration. Furthermore, the structure of Brontë’s language significantly expresses characters’ attitudes and other subtle traits. Less vivacious translations are expected when the function of expressions in the ST eludes translators’ attention. Throughout the discussion, suggestions are made to provide readers of the text in Arabic with better access to the ST. At the same time, the researcher acclaims Haqqi’s translation which reflects a considerable effort to make a landmark of English/world literature accessible to Arab readers.

Stranger Fictions

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca C. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Arabic Literature ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Reading Practices ◽  
Global Circulation ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Arabic

Zaynab, first published in 1913, is widely cited as the first Arabic novel, yet the previous eight decades saw hundreds of novels translated into Arabic from English and French. This vast literary corpus influenced generations of Arab writers but has, until now, been considered a curious footnote in the genre's history. Incorporating these works into the history of the Arabic novel, this book offers a transformative new account of modern Arabic literature, world literature, and the novel. This book rewrites the history of the global circulation of the novel by moving Arabic literature from the margins of comparative literature to its center. Considering the wide range of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century translation practices, the book argues that Arabic translators did far more than copy European works; they authored new versions of them, producing sophisticated theorizations of the genre. These translations and the reading practices they precipitated form the conceptual and practical foundations of Arab literary modernity, necessitating an overhaul of our notions of translation, cultural exchange, and the global. The book shows how translators theorized the Arab world not as Europe's periphery but as an alternative center in a globalized network. It affirms the central place of (mis)translation in both the history of the novel in Arabic and the novel as a transnational form itself.

A Thousand and One Nights and the Novel

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard van Leeuwen
Keyword(s):  
Magical Realism ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Arabic Literature ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The West ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries ◽  
Modern Arabic

This chapter examines the influence of Alf layla wa layla (A Thousand and One Nights), the ingenious Arabic cycle of stories, on the development of the novel as a literary genre. It shows that the Nights helped shape the European novel in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The chapter first explains how the French translation of the Nights and its popularity in Europe led to its incorporation in world literature, creating an enduring taste for “Orientalism” in many forms. It then considers how the Nights became integrated in modern Arabic literature and how Arabic novels inspired by it were used to criticize social conditions, dictatorial authority, and the lack of freedom of expression. It also discusses the Nights as a source of innovation for the trend of magical realism, as well as its role in the interaction between the Arab world and the West.

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