Extractive Modernity at Large

Animals have prowled literature from its beginnings in the ancient world through medieval bestiaries and out from the margins of the novel in the modern era. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, animals’ literary presence has generated increasing critical interest. Animal studies, a relatively new interdisciplinary field, calls attention to the accelerating exploitation of animals in the period of industrial modernity and questions what it is possible to know about animals’ own experiences. Foundational theoretical approaches to understanding the historical and philosophical condition of thinking about animals—John Berger’s “Why Look at Animals?” (1972), Thomas Nagel’s “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” (1974), and Jacques Derrida’s “The Animal That Therefore I Am (More to Follow)” (2002)—propose a fundamental aporia or gap between human and animal experiences, and they caution against the projection of anthropocentric categories onto animal lives. Many novels from this recent period likewise treat animals as charismatic strangers. Yet other contemporary literature sometimes reimagines human-animal relationships to insist on affinity and continuity. In such novels, animals prompt diverse and often experimental stylistic choices that put pressure on the novel’s traditional association with everyday life, the individual self, the boundaries of the nation, and empirical observation more broadly. Still, many recent novels remain essentially committed to a realist tradition. Some of these—most notably by J. M. Coetzee—depict relations of care between humans and often vulnerable or dependent animals that prompt reflection on the meaning of ethical action. In novels that purport to narrate from animals’ own perspective, writers likewise meditate on the ethics of interspecies relations as they use language innovatively in an effort to realistically evoke the sensorium of another species. Pushing the boundaries of realism, other novels reinvent the animal fable, using varying degrees of fantasy to imagine wild or domesticated animals as tropes that reflect upon human embodiment, community, and politics. Whether realist or fabulist, the novels of contemporary postcolonial and world literature particularly explore the power and limits of mapping histories of human belonging and domination onto animal figures, even as they often highlight the limitations of these comparisons. Not all of these approaches are equally invested in creating a literature that could materially impact the lives of animals in an era of diminishing biodiversity. However, uniting this varied and ever-growing array of novels is a question of how literature can represent the lives of intimately entangled bodies in a globalizing world.

may–june 2013 • 43 cover feature Bangladesh on the World Stage Featuring K. Anis Ahmed, Tahmima Anam, Maria Chaudhuri, Farah Ghuznavi, Sudipta Chakma Mikado, and Mahmud Rahman Guest-edited by David Shook photo : getty images / channdan mitra cover feature 44 World Literature Today B eneath the twin pillars of Bangla-language poets Rabindranath Tagore and Kazi Nazrul Islam—icons so revered that enormous statues of twin doves, in their honor, adorn the streets of Dhaka—and owing to a linguistic loyalty tied to Bangladeshi nationalism, begun with the Language Movement in the 1950s and its refusal to abandon Bangla for the externally enforced and mandatory use of Urdu by politically dominant West Pakistan, English-language literature in Bangladesh has taken longer to assume its role in the subcontinental boom pioneered by writers from India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. But now that a new generation of English-language prose writers like Tahmima Anam, K. Anis Ahmed, Maria Chaudhuri, Mahmud Rahman, Farah Ghuznavi, and Khademul Islam have emerged, the nation’s literature is poised to extend beyond its own boundaries and the boundaries of the subcontinent. These writers use English as a medium to connect to the larger corpus of world literature, a rejection of the insularity of contemporary Bangla-language literature, which is an expansive , if closed, system. This has not always been the case: during the 1970s and ’80s, Banglalanguage writers read widely, often in English, despite their loyalty to the Bangla language. Mahmud Rahman recounts a conversation with Mahmudul Haque about the inspiration for his novel Onur Pathshala—a 1965 story from the New Yorker. The title of his novel Jibon Amar Bon was inspired by Pasternak’s poem “Sister My Life.” The emergence of English-language writing from Bangladesh does not represent a downtick in the production of Bangla-language literature, but hopefully will encourage a greater engagement with world literature for its Bangla-language counterpart. The English fluency required to write creatively does, to some degree, represent a level of education not available to all Bangladeshis. To assume all Bangladeshis speak Bangla is also a mistaken notion. Several indigenous communities, especially near the border of Myanmar, speak and write other languages, like Chakma, a related but unintelligible language from the Chittagong Hill Tracts. In its commitment to minority languages, World Literature Today’s showcase of contemporary Bangladeshi literature includes two poems by the emerging Chakma-language poet Sudipta Chakma Mikado, translated into English for the first time, that represent both the linguistic and social oppression faced by the Chakma people. The stories and poems in this showcase merely scratch the surface of contemporary Bangladeshi literature, a rich and richly varied sampling from one of the world’s most heavily populated nations, an emerging economic player with a strong tradition of artistic production. Los Angeles David Shook’s debut collection of poems, Our Obsidian Tongues, was published earlier this year; the Los Angeles launch takes place this month at the Neutra VDL. His current projects include a series of experimental translations with Mario Bellatin, a retranslation of Ernesto Cardenal’s La Hora Zero, and editing the Manifestoh! series of world literature manifestos for Insert Blanc Press. Shook lives in Los Angeles with his wife, where he edits Molossus and Phoneme Media. Bangladesh on the World Stage An Introduction David Shook photo : travis elborough ...

The symbiotic relationship between exile and belonging is most visible in the writer’s deployment of his/her art to document experiences of the past and their impact on the feelings and well-being of his/her people in the periods represented in the work(s). This paper explores exile experience and belonging in the African poetry with special reference to Olu Oguibe’s selected poems. Upon the publication of his first collection titled Gathering Fear, Oguibe registers his presence in the African global and contemporary literature is his unequivocal attachment to his Nigerian Nation. He goes against all assumptions led by the West against Africa and he succeeds at integrating with other cultures to be prominent as his contemporaries like Achebe, Sonika, and Tanure Ojaide. In the light of this, both of Edward Said and Oguibe share the same perspectives about the significance of belonging to homeland and deploy their exile experiences and poetry to defend their national and regional culture against all types of westernization. Exile- Belonging- Olu Oguibe- Edward Said- World Literature- African poetry- Integrity- national faith

This essay explores how recent Latin American fiction has responded to the marked intensification of colonial-extractivist landgrabs, enclosures, and the plunder of natural resources in the region following the global primary commodities boom of the early 2000s. My specific interest is in the connections that exist between primitive accumulation, sexist violence, and finance capital. These connections have been highlighted by Indigenous, peasant, and feminist groups resisting the post-2000 advance of commodity frontiers into hinterland zones. But they have also been mapped in a new wave of gothic, noir, and horror fiction by Latin American women writers, including Mónica Ojeda, Samanta Schweblin, Mariana Enríquez, Selva Almada, and Agustina Bazterrica. The essay situates this literary outpouring in the context of neoextractivism – a term that has emerged as a key concept for many Latin American critics analysing the expansion in frontier-led plunder and its articulation with sexist violence and new forms of financial extraction. I then turn to the specific case of Mexico and Fernanda Melchor’s 2017 novel Hurricane Season (Temporada de hurucanes). Hurricane Season repurposes gothic, horror, and detective fiction conventions to address both the history of resource exploitation, patriarchal domination, and financial terror in Mexico, as well as the impact of spiralling femicides, drug war capitalism, and the expansion of extractive activities in the country since the turn of the century.

In this paper a focus would be made to track the details of Contemporary World Literature in English as a whole with an inclination towards the theme of violence in Vijay Tendulkar’s The Vulture in particular. The Contemporary World Literature provides an insight into social, moral and political aspects of human culture which is why one can identify oneself with the rest of the human populace. In a way, the theme of violence acts as a stimulus in this direction. The world literature has contained ‘violence’ in terms of conflicts in all social levels, whether it is with oneself, between family members, between communities or between nations, since ages. Any such kind of conflict arises from negative emotions in an individual such as fear, distress and sorrow. As a result, the individual is likely to feel forsaken and helpless and may turn to the literature world in order to understand his/her own experiences and the similar experiences of others. This paper offers examples from the past, running through the Middle Ages and extending to the present time. Moreover, there is an explanation of how violence in the antiquity is different from the violence in the existing period. An existential approach is made while defining the same: which is a 20th century philosophical movement emphasizing the uniqueness of human existence struggling through making choices between destiny and free will. Beside this, a segment has been included that deals with the prevalence and type of violence found in Indian Writings in English highlighting patriarchal and communal issues.

World literature is a historical concept that can only be established and practiced through translation into the native language. Translations in East Asia are accompanied with intentional misreading or unintentional misunderstandings. World literature as imagined in Korea, China, and Japan is neither singular nor politically equal. Problematizing the spirit of the age and imagination of translations in East Asia in the first half of the 20 th century provides new perspectives that the methodologies of comparative literature or translation studies cannot capture. Translations of A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen and “The Last Lesson” by Alphonse Daudet are a great example for demonstrating how contemporary European literature is incorrectly interpreted and reproduced in East Asia’s historical context. On the other hand, the difference of viewpoints between The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck and Moment in Peking by Yutang Lin is produced through translations by the ideological transformation of China as the other and East Asian self-representation. Translation is a cultural praxis and effect that actualizes “East Asian World Literature” and brings it to historical movements.

Towards a new global gender order? <i>Gendered States of Punishment and Welfare: Feminist Political Economy, Primitive Accumulation and the Law</i>

This introduction examines the two main questions explored in the special issue: What does the Cold War’s interweaving of international politics and global war disclose about contemporary world literature discourse? What does world literature (as idea, program, and, more importantly, as reality of writing and reading beyond the framework of the nation-state) tell us about the Cold War and its discursive reliance on rhetorical ambiguity? We depart from the major approaches to literature’s relationship with the Cold War that focuses on how the latter is represented by literature or how literature responds to the Cold War. We also do not simplistically consider the Cold War as only naming an epoch in world history, or world literature as the totality of literary works and circulation networks spurred by a partly frozen global conflict at the heart of the twentieth century.

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsJacob EdmondJacob Edmond works on theories and practices of comparison in modern and contemporary literature with a particular focus on generic and inter-art boundary crossing, new media, and globalization in avant-garde poetry in Russian, Chinese and English. He is author of A Common Strangeness: Contemporary Poetry, Cross-Cultural Encounter, Comparative Literature (Fordham University Press, 2012), co-editor of Recentring Asia: Histories, Encounters, Identities (Brill, 2011), and co-editor and co-translator of Yang Lian's Unreal City: A Chinese Poet in Auckland (Auckland University Press, 2006). His articles have appeared in journals such as Comparative Literature, Contemporary Literature, Poetics Today, and The China Quarterly. He is associate professor in English at the University of Otago, New Zealand. Email: jacob.edmond@otago.ac.nz

Bai Xian-yong is one of the most important writers in contemporary Chinese and world literature. His masterpiece Taipei People, a collection of fourteen short stories, presents a gallery of Chinese mainland émigrés to Taiwan in 1949 in the wake of Chinese civil war. As a classic of Taiwanese modernism, Taipei People features an emotional sensitivity and a lingual novelty comparable to those of James Joyce’s Dubliners. Its English version was translated by the author and Patia Yasin, and edited by George Kao, the co-founder of Renditions. The paper attempts to compare and contrast the renowned short story, “A Touch of Green,” with its original Chinese, focusing on some sentences, phrases, proper nouns and the title itself, whose English renditions might not be considered tantamount to their original Chinese – a Chinese so crisply and creatively converging both classical beauty and colloquial flavor that only Bai Xian-yong the Chinese novelist knows how to craft. The research argues that if equivalent English rendition abiding by the principle of optimal fidelity exists as the promise land for the promotion of Taiwan literature across the world, future literary translators may need to adopt a multi-etymological strategy to represent the whole picture of Bai’s well-wrought works.

Abstract: In "The Variation of Chinese Literature and the Formation of World Literature" Shunqing Cao and Lu Zhai discuss how Chinese works of literature entered other countries' literary circles through variation, and became an essential part of world literature. Both ancient Chinese literature and contemporary Chinese literature have undergone textual circulation, language translation and cultural filtering before becoming part of world literature, all of which are the reasons why literary variation occurs. According to Cao and Zhai, the occurrence of variation is a key factor for Chinese literature to become world literature, and an important foundation for the formation of world literature. A country's literature absorbs the characteristics of other countries' literature through variation, thus adapting to the cultural background and reading habits of other countries' readers in terms of language and style, in order to enter the world literature market. Variation may lead to a certain loss of nationality in literary works, and result in significant differences from the original texts. However, the formation of world literature does not come at the cost of eliminating nationality; variation facilitates the formation of world literature.

Abstract: In "World Literature, Industrialization, and the Two Faces of Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction" Yiping Wang discusses contemporary Chinese science fiction against the backdrop of the influence of world literature and the development of industrialization in China. Wang argues that two sides represented respectively by Liu Cixin and Han Song constitute the feature of contemporary Chinese science fiction. The side characterized by the works of Liu Cixin is the close connection with world science fiction and the positive attitude and consistency with technological innovation and industrialization in China while the other side has Han Song as its representative, whose works, with similarities to high literature of world canons and the mainstream Chinese literature, reflect on the development of technology and industrialization focusing on individuals and disasters in the shadow of modernization. These two sides join together in the illustration of the basic image of science fiction in contemporary Chinese literature. By absorbing the essence of world literature and echoing the concerns of the nation, contemporary Chinese science fiction surmounts the hierarchy of literary genres and make its way into the active center of world literature.

The issue of modernity with regard to the function of translation has been one of the most cutting-edge theoretical topics in both Chinese and international contexts, especially in dealing with globalization and world literature. As we know, modernity functioned both politically and culturally in the Chinese context. And large-scale translation in the 1920s and 1930s played an important role in constructing the modern Chinese literary canon. This literary and cultural translation has also led to serious debate among China’s intellectuals. The great achievements in modern Chinese literature can never be neglected, especially from the perspective of world literature; for through such large-scale literary and cultural translation, modern Chinese literature has come closer and closer to the mainstream of world literature, carrying on direct dialogues with its international counterparts — a role that will function dynamically in the reconstruction of world literature. This essay therefore calls for another large-scale translation in the current age of globalization: translating contemporary Chinese literature into the major world languages and deconstructing the West-centric framework of world literature. In the Chinese context this is another stage of modernity, and it is one that will contribute a great deal to the remapping of world literature in the age of globalization.

telle diversité dans les textes liminaires d’André Breton qu’ils finissent par dépasser les catégories de Genette. Chez Jean Giono, l’ego prend le dessus et ce qui devait être, par exemple, une présentation des plus beaux passages de Virgile se transforme en ode à Giono par Giono. En ce qui concerne Henri Michaux, son désir d’établir un lien avec les lecteurs dans ses préfaces s’oppose à sa phobie de la médiatisation des œuvres et de leurs auteurs. D’autres travaux examinent les préfaces écrites par Yves Bonnefoy et par les oulipiens Georges Perec et Paul Fournel. Les genettiens ne manqueront pas de lire cet ouvrage; ils ne seront pas les seuls. University of Arizona Alain-Philippe Durand NATUREL, MIREILLE. Proust et le fait littéraire. Genève: Slatkine, 2010. ISBN 978-2-74531981 -4. Pp. 283. 71,75 FS. Naturel’s book is a complex, meandering map of Proust’s immersion in the literary world. She describes the various forms of Proust’s literary influence as “multiples rhizomes” (269). This metaphor works well for her analysis of the “fait littéraire.” Much like a subterranean rhizomatous system supports clusters of plants above the ground, an expansive bundle of interconnected and usually unseen processes, strategies, and influences undergird a novel and connect it to other works. The first three parts concern elements that shaped the publication of À la recherche du temps perdu: the influence of newspapers, particularly as a venue for prepublications as Proust moved from the fragment to the whole work; exchanges and friendships that shaped Proust’s and other authors’ works; anxiety about publishing; intertexts by Flaubert, Bourget, Loti, and Farrère; intrigues around literary prizes; reactions of contemporary readers and critics; and negotiations with publishers and editors. The last parts (4 and 5) explore ongoing processes that influence the reader’s experience of the novel, including Proust’s impact on contemporary novels, the ‘lieux de mémoire,’ such as Tante Léonie’s house in Illiers-Combray and memoirs recounting first meetings with Proust, and the collecting and selling of manuscripts, rare editions, and letters. Naturel deploys wide-ranging approaches to flesh out La recherche’s genesis and reception, deftly combining genetic criticism, biography, a usually broadly thematic but at times close literary analysis, and detective work (tracking down certain editions, manuscripts, and letters). Her method returns critical attention to the author, but much differently from what Sainte-Beuve prescribed and Proust criticized. Rather than presenting a static vision of the relation between author, work, and milieu, Naturel focuses on the dynamic, reciprocal processes that produce literature. Proust’s novel emerged under certain influences and conditions . At the same time, he diligently shaped the reception and publication of his book, thereby influencing its very milieu. La recherche reflects this two-way dynamic, portraying an author’s work on some of the processes surrounding literary production. The narrator’s article in Le Figaro is a mise en abyme of Proust’s efforts at moving from prepublication to novel. Furthermore, like Proust, who worked on some of the concrete details of his books’ publications, the narrator is concerned with the material qualities of books as a “support du sens” (8), from his sensitivity to the signifier to the appearance of book jackets. Naturel portrays not an artistic mystic but an author who shrewdly used his social and literary 190 FRENCH REVIEW 86.1 relations, controlled his public image, and was involved in the practical facets of publishing. Retracing the origin of the work and exploring its continued reverberations in contemporary literature, the argument and its transitions seem at times whimsical , even somewhat arbitrary. But this meandering is, to a large extent, a reflection of the complex task of following the many proliferations of ‘le fait littéraire.’ While a totality is neither the goal nor a possibility, Naturel pays little attention to current literary phenomena, such as Proust’s presence on the Internet or in popular culture. Another loose end in the argument: Naturel suggests that Proust was a precursor in his engagement with the complex social processes surrounding literature. A comparison with other writers of the time or an explanation...

The article is devoted to the analysis of the so called impossibility theorem, according to which democracy, state sovereignty and globalization are mutually exclusive and cannot function to the full extent when present simultaneously. This theorem, elaborated in 2011 by Dani Rodrik, a famous economist from Harvard University, poses a fundamental problem about the prospects of the global scalability of political institutions of the nation-state. Is it in principle possible to globalize executive, legislative and judicial branches of power, civil society, and democracy, or is it necessary to limit globalization in order to preserve democracy and nation-state? Rodrik’s conclusions, in essence, make one give up hopes to create global democratic order against the background of global capitalism. On the basis of the Stanford School of Sociological Institutionalism and the reconstruction of the historical materialism by Jürgen Habermas, the author refutes Rodrik’s theorem. The author’s analysis shows that not only is it possible to build democratic order at the global level, but also that it already exists in the form of the world culture that includes such norms as electoral democracy, nation-state, civil society and other institutions of Modernity. The world culture reproduces fundamental social values, playing the role of social integration for the humanity, while global capitalism provides for its material reproduction, playing the role of system integration. However, since globalization is a more dynamic process than the development of the world culture, between material and ideational universalism arises a gap, which in its turn is fraught with various kinds of political and economic crises.