|
This course will discuss the global history of nationalism, examining, in particular, how Third World writers negotiate the nation as the paradigmatic, “world-historical” (“universal”) frame of cultural self-formation. It will pose a number of questions raised by a set of Anglophone Third World writers and texts, including: How, where and by whom are “world history” and “world literature” produced? In what languages and in what forms are “world history” and “world literature” recognized? What exclusions do the categories “world history” and “world literature” perform? Can literary and cultural texts help to shape or re-shape national or transnational realities and futures? Or do they bear any relationship at all to what they purport to represent? As we examine how formal experiments bolster textual arguments for economic and cultural democracy, we will also seek to assess each text’s capacity to recognize and to tolerate social antagonism.
|