Konferenzen, Tagungen

The Work of World Literature

Beginn
20.06.2019
Ende
21.06.2019

What is the relation between literary theory and world literature? Literary studies today tries to reckon with and transcend the parochialism and Eurocentrism of its tradition by adopting transnational, transhistorical, transcultural, translocal perspectives and by exploring the potential of the term ‘world literature’. This large-scale shift of the discipline has been accompanied by a ‘global turn’ within literary theory, resulting in a renewed interrogation of the relation of literature to the world at large and of the ethics and politics of literature in a globalizing world. These developments – the turn to world literature and the global turn in literary theory – are understood sometimes as antagonistic, sometimes as complimentary to one another. While world literature is often presented as an antidote to theory, it is also clearly constituted by a very specific theorizing of literature and as such invites further theoretical challenges and reflections.

The work of Derek Attridge demonstrates the critical and theoretical potential of the encounter between world literature and literary theory. In The Singularity of Literature (2004), Attridge insists that the book is complemented by his work in literary criticism on to the South African writer J. M. Coetzee, published the same year, J. M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Reading. It is as if the theory of literature – of literature in general – emerges out of a particular literary encounter, in this instance with a postcolonial writer pre-occupied with geopolitical, historical, and ethical limits – not least the limits of literature itself. And it is no coincidence that, while Attridge is critical of an oversimplified mapping of politics onto literature, his theory of literature involves politically charged terms such as singularity, otherness, exclusion, response, responsibility, as well as justice and hospitality.

Responding to Attridge’s recent The Work of Literature (2015), a group of scholars will reflect on the correspondences between world literature, literary theory, and the world writ large. The symposium sets out to explore the limits but also the liminality of literary theory and the historical, geopolitical and theoretical frameworks that inform and perhaps also tacitly delimit world literature.

Programme

Thursday, 20 June 2019
19:30 Keynote by Derek Attridge

Friday, 21 June 2019
Workshop with Derek Attridge

10:30 Morning coffee
10:45 Introduction by Francesco Giusti and
Benjamin Robinson
11:00–13:00: Panel I
13:00–14:30: Lunch break
14:30–16:30: Panel II

In English

With

Derek Attridge
Karima Laachir
Rashmi Varma
Dirk Wiemann
Jarad Zimbler

Organized by

An ICI Event organized by Francesco Giusti and Benjamin Lewis Robinson

Quelle der Beschreibung: Information des Anbieters

Forschungsgebiete

Literaturtheorie, World Literature/Weltliteratur
Transnationalität

Links

Ansprechpartner

Einrichtungen

ICI Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry

Verknüpfte Ressourcen

Institutionen

ICI Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry
Datum der Veröffentlichung: 29.04.2019
Letzte Änderung: 29.04.2019