Wordliness, Worlds, And Worlding of Literature

Abstract

Based on Said’s understanding of literature’s worldliness, Hayot’s concept of literary worlds, and Cheah’s interpretation of worlding, the article – itself an example of “traveling theory” (Said) – proposes to treat world literature in a “secular” perspective, i.e., as an asymmetrical world-system that conditions a transcultural and translinguistic semiosis of literary worlds. The literary world-system, which arises from and is dependent on and responsive to the modern world-system of capitalism (see Warwick Research Collective) channels interliterary exchange in a way that is homologous to the economic inequality between the centers, which are capable of accumulating surplus value, and the peripheries, which enable the global dominance of the centers by providing the market, labor, and resources for the goods produced or distributed by the centers.