TY - JOUR A1 - Wiemann, Dirk A1 - Raja, Ira A1 - Shaswati, Mazumdar T1 - Postcolonial world literature BT - Narration, translation, imagination JF - Thesis eleven : critical theory and historical sociology N2 - Postcolonial criticism has repeatedly debunked the ostensible neutrality of the ‘world’ of world literature by pointing out that and how the contemporary world – whether conceived in terms of cosmopolitan conviviality or neoliberal globalization – cannot be understood without recourse to the worldly event of Europe’s colonial expansion. While we deem this critical perspective indispensable, we simultaneously maintain that to reduce ‘the world’ to the world-making impact of capital, colonialism, and patriarchy paints an overly deterministic picture that runs the risk of unwittingly reproducing precisely that dominant ‘oneworldness’ that it aims to critique. Moreover, the mere potentiality of alternative modes of world-making tends to disappear in such a perspective so that the only remaining option to think beyond oneworldness resides in the singularity claim. This insistence on singularity, however, leaves the relatedness of the single units massively underdetermined or denies it altogether. By contrast, we locate world literature in the conflicted space between the imperial imposition of a hierarchically stratified world (to which, as hegemonic forces tell us, ‘there is no alternative’) and the unrealized ‘undivided world’ that multiple minor cosmopolitan projects yet have to win. It is precisely the tension between these ‘two worlds’ that brings into view the crucial centrality not of the nodes in their alleged singularity but their specific relatedness to each other, that both impedes and energizes world literature today and renders it ineluctably postcolonial. KW - Postkoloniale Theorie KW - Weltliteratur KW - Emily Apter KW - oneworldness KW - relationality KW - singularity KW - untranslatability Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/0725513621994707 SN - 0725-5136 VL - 162 IS - 1 SP - 3 EP - 17 PB - Sage CY - London [u.a.] ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Wiemann, Dirk T1 - Being Taught Something World-Sized BT - 'The Detainee's Tale as Told to Ali Smith and the Work of World Literature T2 - The Work of World Literature N2 - This paper reads ‘The Detainee’s Tale as told to Ali Smith’ (2016) as an exemplary demonstration of the work of world literature. Smith’s story articulates an ethics of reading that is grounded in the recipient’s openness to the singular, unpredictable, and unverifiable text of the other. More specifically, Smith’s account enables the very event that it painstakingly stages: the encounter with alterity and newness, which is both the theme of the narrative and the effect of the text on the reader. At the same time, however, the text urges to move from an ethics of literature understood as the responsible reception of the other by an individual reader to a more explicitly convivial and political ethics of commitment beyond the scene of reading. KW - Ali Smith KW - anagogy KW - ethics KW - Refugee Tales KW - singularity KW - world literature Y1 - 2021 SN - 978-3-96558-011-4 SN - 978-3-96558-012-1 SN - 978-3-96558-013-8 SN - 978-3-96558-022-0 U6 - https://doi.org/10.37050/ci-19_07 SN - 2627-728X SN - 2627-731X VL - 2021 SP - 149 EP - 172 PB - ICI Berlin Press CY - Berlin ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wiemann, Dirk ED - Robinson, Benjamin Lewis T1 - Being Taught Something World-Sized BT - 'The Detainee's Tale as Told to Ali Smith' and the Work of World Literature JF - The Work of World Literature N2 - This paper reads ‘The Detainee’s Tale as told to Ali Smith’ (2016) as an exemplary demonstration of the work of world literature. Smith’s story articulates an ethics of reading that is grounded in the recipient’s openness to the singular, unpredictable, and unverifiable text of the other. More specifically, Smith’s account enables the very event that it painstakingly stages: the encounter with alterity and newness, which is both the theme of the narrative and the effect of the text on the reader. At the same time, however, the text urges to move from an ethics of literature understood as the responsible reception of the other by an individual reader to a more explicitly convivial and political ethics of commitment beyond the scene of reading. KW - Ali Smith KW - anagogy KW - ethics KW - Refugee Tales KW - singularity KW - world literature Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.37050/ci-19_07 SN - 2627-728X SN - 2627-731X SP - 149 EP - 172 PB - ICI Press CY - Berlin ER -