Comparative Cultural Studies and the New Weltliteratur , livre ebook

Comparative Cultural Studies and the New Weltliteratur
Comparative Cultural Studies Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek, Series Editor
The Purdue University Press monograph series of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies publishes single-authored and thematic collected volumes of new scholarship. Manuscripts are invited for publication in the series in fields of the study of culture, literature, the arts, media studies, communication studies, the history of ideas, etc., and related disciplines of the humanities and social sciences to the series editor via e-mail at < clcweb@purdue.edu >. Comparative cultural studies is a contextual approach in the study of culture in a global and intercultural context and work with a plurality of methods and approaches; the theoretical and methodological framework of comparative cultural studies is built on tenets borrowed from the disciplines of cultural studies and comparative literature and from a range of thought including literary and culture theory, (radical) constructivism, communication theories, and systems theories; in comparative cultural studies focus is on theory and method as well as application. For a detailed description of the aims and scope of the series including the style guide of the series link to < http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweblibrary/seriespurdueccs >. Manuscripts submitted to the series are peer reviewed followed by the usual standards of editing, copy editing, marketing, and distribution. The series is affiliated with CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture (ISSN 1481-4374), the peer-reviewed, full-text, and open-access quarterly published by Purdue University Press at < http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb >.
Volumes in the Purdue series of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies include < http://www.thepress.purdue.edu/series/comparative-cultural-studies >
Elke Sturm-Trigonakis, Comparative Cultural Studies and the New Weltliteratur
Lauren Rule Maxwell, Romantic Revisions in Novels from the Americas
Liisa Steinby, Kundera and Modernity
Text and Image in Modern European Culture , Ed. Natasha Grigorian, Thomas Baldwin, and Margaret Rigaud-Drayton
Sheng-mei Ma, Asian Diaspora and East-West Modernity
Irene Marques, Transnational Discourses on Class, Gender, and Cultural Identity
Comparative Hungarian Cultural Studies , Ed. Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek and Louise O. Vasvári
Hui Zou, A Jesuit Garden in Beijing and Early Modern Chinese Culture
Yi Zheng, From Burke and Wordsworth to the Modern Sublime in Chinese Literature
Agata Anna Lisiak, Urban Cultures in (Post)Colonial Central Europe
Representing Humanity in an Age of Terror , Ed. Sophia A. McClennen and Henry James Morello
Michael Goddard, Gombrowicz, Polish Modernism, and the Subversion of Form
Shakespeare in Hollywood, Asia, and Cyberspace, Ed. Alexander C.Y. Huang and Charles S. Ross
Gustav Shpet’s Contribution to Philosophy and Cultural Theory , Ed. Galin Tihanov
Comparative Central European Holocaust Studies , Ed. Louise O. Vasvári and Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek
Marko Juvan, History and Poetics of Intertextuality
Thomas O. Beebee, Nation and Region in Modern American and European Fiction
Paolo Bartoloni, On the Cultures of Exile, Translation, and Writing
Justyna Sempruch, Fantasies of Gender and the Witch in Feminist Theory and Literature
Kimberly Chabot Davis, Postmodern Texts and Emotional Audiences
Philippe Codde, The Jewish American Novel
Deborah Streifford Reisinger, Crime and Media in Contemporary France
Imre Kertész and Holocaust Literature, Ed. Louise O. Vasvári and Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek
Comparative Cultural Studies and the New Weltliteratur
Elke Sturm-Trigonakis
Translated from the German by Athanasia Margoni and Maria Kaisar
Purdue University Press West Lafayette, Indiana
Copyright 2013 by Purdue University. All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cataloging-in-Publication data on file at the Library of Congress.
Cover image: The painting Constellations (acrylic on canvas 50x50 cm) is by Pavlos Vassiliadis (Thessaloniki), 2005. Copyright release by Pavlos Vassiliadis to Purdue University Press.
To Kostis
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter One
Goethe’s Weltliteratur and the Career of an Idea
Chapter Two
Hybrid Literary Texts and Philological Paradigms
Chapter Three
New World Literature and a Systemic Organization of Hybrid Fiction
Chapter Four
Forms/Types of Poetic Multilingualism and Interferences, Metamultilingualism, and Transtextuality
Chapter Five
Multilingualism as Poetic Strategy
Chapter Six
Nomadic Biographies in New World Literature
Chapter Seven
Transnational Spaces, Places, and Layers of Time
Conclusion
Works Cited
Index
Acknowledgments
A book in the humanities is always the result of the scholar’s solitary work of reading and writing—of the “loneliness of the long-distance runner”—in cultural and literary scholarship. My first and most important thank you is to my spouse, Konstantinos Trigonakis, who accompanied me with his emotional, intellectual, and—last but not least—financial support. Scholarship in the humanities also springs from many conversations and brainstorming and I thank my colleagues at Aristotle University Katerina Zachou and Alexandra Rassidakis, for the inspiring discussions about the concept of New Weltliteratur ; Athina Sioupi, for her advice for the linguistic parts of the book; Georges Freris, who opened the wide horizon of the Francophonie to me; and Eleni Georgopoulou, for her critical reading of the German version of the book during a hot Greek summer. I also thank Karin Boklund-Lagopoulou and Yiorgos Kalogeras, as well as his spouse, the linguist Linda Manney, for their helpful suggestions: they were among the first to suggest an English translation of the book and always had an open ear to my questions concerning not only the subject of the book but also the academic environment beyond Europe. The project of the translation and publication of my book in English would have not been realized without the invitation and encouragement of Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek—editor of the Purdue University Press monograph series of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies—to whom I express my gratitude for his enthusiasm, his support, and his editing of my book, including suggestions of new material in several languages.
Comparative Cultural Studies and the New Weltliteratur is a substantially revised and updated version of my Global playing in der Literatur. Ein Versuch über die Neue Weltliteratur (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2007) and I thank the publisher for the copyright release of the book. Athanasia Margoni and Maria Kaisar performed an excellent translation and working with them was a pleasure. Further, the Adamas Foundation had the kindness to finance part of the translation of Global playing in der Literatur and I am grateful for this recognition of my work. Last but not least, I am indebted to Pavlos Vassiliadis (Thessaloniki) for the permission of his 2005 painting Asterismoi ( Constellations ) for the front cover image of my book.
Introduction
The title of the book is Comparative Cultural Studies and the New Weltliteratur in order to refer to the two main axes of my argumentation: the theoretical framework of comparative cultural studies—with its emphasis on interdisciplinarity, the contextual approach, and evidence-based methodology—and Goethe’s idea of Weltliteratur understood in today’s situation of globalization.
Since the 1960s and increasingly since the 1980s there has been a continuous boom of “transnational” fiction which can hardly be classified under the rubric of “national literature” as it breaks the mold of the national in terms of language and content. Azade Seyhan describes “transnational literature as a genre of writing that operates outside the national canon, addresses issues facing deterritorialized cultures, and speaks for … ‘paranational’ communities and alliances” (10). Seyhan exemplifies the discourse about transnational literature using texts from US-American Chicana literature and German-language texts by Turkish-German writers, and by doing so she studies literatures “outside the nation” (as is the title of her study). One possibility is to locate such texts outside of nation and another is to locate them under the heading “minority literature” or “intercultural literature” within a national literature. In order to escape this dilemma, I prefer the more neutral term “hybrid literature,” even if hybridity is a term that has lost its sharpness owing to its almost inflationary use. I agree with the view of Thomas Meyer that “all cultures … are hybrid at heart” and that the “homogeneity [of] fictions, where they should draw their consecration from, [are] always late political fabrications, which remove the supposedly doubtful from the hybrid original process through an act of decisive nostrification and transform its products into a secure, undivided ownership of the members, one that no one can raise claims on” (34; unless indicated otherwise, all translations are by Athanasia Margoni and Maria Kaisar; note: quotations from primary texts are more often than not from the original in English translation). On this basis, Néstor Garcí