"Today's World Literature might better be called Global Literature. World calls up aspirations to true universality—"We are the world!"—while global, through no fault of its own, evokes phenomena like global capitalism and global warming the good and bad effects of which are by no means universally felt. Global, in other words, implies worldwide processes that polarize the conditions of the world's people (including, presumably, their literary condition). Through globalization, the US and China can become equally unequal! Writers aren't to be blamed for this situation, or not much. The question is what we make of it.
Global Literature can't help but reflect global capitalism, in its triumph, inequalities, and deformations. In the English language, World Literature has its signature writers: Rushdie and Coetzee at the lead, and Kiran Desai, Mohsin Hamid, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie among the younger charges. It has its own economy, consisting of international publishing networks, scouts, and book fairs. It has its prizes: the Nobel, of course, but more powerful and snazzier is the Man Booker, and the Man Booker International. Its political arm is PEN. And it has a social calendar full of literary festivals, which bring global elites into contact with the glittering stars of World Lit. Every year, sections of the dominant class fly from Mexico City to have Julian Barnes sign books in Xalapa, or from Delhi to Jaipur to be seen partying with Mario Vargas Llosa. The Hay Festival, started in Hay-on-Wye in rural Wales, now has outposts in Dhaka, Beirut, Nairobi, and elsewhere. "Hay Festival in Cartagena de Indias" is an accidentally funny phrase — Sí, hay festival — redolent of a strange new intimacy between global north and south.
What happens at these festivals? No debate; no yelling; some drinking; lots of signing of books. They are like peace conferences, though the national constituencies haven't been consulted. They represent the state of World Literature at the present time. Everywhere, a political writer has acquired a quieter global successor. Insurrectionary Gordimer has given way to the sedulously horrified Coetzee; ranting Grass to mourning (and deceased) Sebald; angry Rushdie to shitty Rushdie."
- Editors at World Lite
H/T Dipo Oyeleye on Facebook who says of this long but worthwhile read:
"This is a good read on "World literature." It confirms my cynicism on the emergence of recent elitist literary productions from the global South, especially Africa. Our writers are consistently drifting towards a politically and aesthetically sterile literature. Their desire to appeal to a "global audience" for the next literary prize is detrimental to truth-telling and creative production of subversive narratives expected of a real internationalist literature."
Fighting words! Read on...
- Ikhide
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