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The Absent Cause of World Literature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 April 2013

Robert Folger
Robert Folger*
Affiliation:
Utrecht University, Department of Language, Literature, and Communication, Trans 10, 3512JK Utrecht, The Netherlands. E-mail: r.a.folger@uu.nl
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Abstract

The resurgence of World Literature must be seen in relation to the economization of all spheres of life. Traditional, ‘specialized’ literary criticism replicates literature's power to interpellate subjects characterized by attention. Both literature and state funded literary criticism in research and teaching are currently under siege because they are counter-hegemonic in relation to a lifeworld shaped by a global attention deficit syndrome, which is the bedrock of a hypertrophic consumerism. Recent proposals for writing histories and systematic descriptions of World Literature are complicit with this move because they champion, to the detriment of deep attention, the relevance, mobility, exchange value, and translatability of texts, successfully competing with traditional ‘painstaking’ practices of literary criticism for ever dwindling institutional resources.

Type
Focus: Writing a History of European Literature as Part of a World History of Literature
Information
European Review , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , May 2013 , pp. 252 - 262
Copyright
Copyright © Academia Europaea 2013

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References

References and Notes

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