Chapter 1 - Introduction : Globalization, Global, and World as Keywords for History and Literature

Summary

Abstract

In the twenty-first century, terms such as globalization, global, and world function as key words at the cusp of new frontiers in both historical writing and literary criticism. Members of these distinctive disciplines may appear to be long time intimate lovers when seen from pre and early modern time periods, only to divorce with the coming of Anglophone world history in the twenty- first century. Perhaps history and literary criticism are fully divorced, with historians’ focus on primary sources, empiricism, and debates inside historiography distinguishing themselves from literary critics’ focus on close readings of particular texts as well as questions of form, poetics, and manners of reading. In recent years, works such as Martin Puchner's The Written World, Maya Jasanoff's The Dawn Watch, or the three novels that encompass Amitav Ghosh's Ibis Trilogy, rekindle a variant of history and literature's embrace in a global register. The publication and reception of such books provoke reflection on how these disciplines fit together, possibly in a new globally situated relationship. This essay probes recent scholarship concerning reflections on global history and world literature in the wake of these developments.

Keywords: World history; world literature; global history; planetary history; worldmaking, globalization

In the twenty-first century, terms such as globalization, global, and world function as key words at the cusp of new frontiers in both historical writing and literary criticism. Members of these distinctive disciplines may appear to be long time intimate lovers when seen from pre and early modern time periods, only to divorce with the coming of Anglophone world history in the twenty-first century. Perhaps history and literary criticism are fully divorced, with historians’ focus on primary sources, empiricism, and debates inside historiography distinguishing themselves from literary critics’ focus on close readings of particular texts as well as questions of form, poetics, and manners of reading. One may witness this divide in the exchange in History and Theory between historian Dirk Moses and the now departed Hayden White on the status of history amongst other forms of representing the past. White perceives the very nature of history as a scientific genre of truth-telling, whereas Moses vigorously defends the various methods of specialized historical research, signifying the distance between literary critics and historians in our contemporary age.