The Work of World Literature: 19 (Cultural Inquiry)

The contentious discourse around world literature tends to stress the world in the phrase. This volume in contrast asks what it means to approach world literature by inflecting the question of the literary. Debates for against and around world literature have brought renewed attention to the worldly aspects of the literary enterprise. Literature is studied with regard to its sociopolitical and cultural references contexts and conditions of production circulation distribution and translation. But what becomes of the literary when one speaks of world literature? Responding to Derek Attridges theory of how literature works the contributions in this volume explore in diverse ways and with attention to a variety of literary practices what it might mean to speak of the work of world literature. The volume shows how attention to literariness complicates the ethical and political conundrums at the centre of debates about world literature.In this volume: Derek Attridge on the work of translationLorna Burns on world literature and postcolonialismFrancesco Giusti on gestural communityBenjamin Lewis Robinson on the world without literatureRashmi Varma on extractivism and indigeneity Dirk Wiemann on a literary ethics of commitmentJarad Zimbler on world literary criticismWith an afterword by Emil Apter