CFP
It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism--this slogan has been associated with different contemporary thinkers, most notably Fredric Jameson, a comparatist whose passing in 2024 was itself felt by many as the end of an era. In Jameson’s thought, however, there is an even more binding slogan, urging us to always historicize. One way to historicize the imagery of the end under capitalism would be to trace its workings in the idea of world literature. Historically, world literature has been grasped as a force of mediation in a disintegrating world, and in some discussions, including one instigated by Jameson, it has even been related to the critical stage of capitalism.
This special issue of CLCWeb unearths a surprising discourse of crisis in what has been canonized as the debate on world literature. Europe-wide since the Revolutions of 1848, the discussion on world literature has become a global concern of literary authors and scholars alike. Starting with the events of 9/11 and the ensuing Global War on Terror, those involved in the debate have acknowledged the impact of global crises on their interest in world literature. But world literature has always been contemplated as a possible cure to a potentially global crisis, from the crisis of post-Napoleonic Europe in the age of Goethe to the most recent global health crisis. Almost invariably, the possibility of world literature has been imagined along with the end of the world, if not the end of capitalism.
For J. W. von Goethe himself, world literature gave Europe the opportunity to reimagine itself after the Napoleonic Wars; for disciples of Goethe such as Fritz Strich and Erich Auerbach, world literature provided an opportunity for the world to reconstitute itself after the two World Wars. For Karl Marx, on the other hand, world literature was a symptom of--rather than the cure for--the creative destruction of the modern world; and for Marxists, notably Fredric Jameson and Aijaz Ahmad, the bipolar world of the Cold War was resisted by a third-world literature. A world literature in translation was championed by Maxim Gorky following the October Revolution, and by René Etiemble following the revolution of May ’68. In the aftermath of May ’68, Edward Said translated Auerbach’s seminal essay on Goethe’s world literature; in the midst of the Global War on Terror, Said went on to publish the translation of Pascale Casanova’s provocative book on world literature. Gayatri Spivak offered her own provocation in response to the War on Terror, and Emily Apter even wrote the book Against World Literature--before the COVID-19 pandemic revived world literature for the likes of Orhan Pamuk and David Damrosch.
Today, all these different kinds of conditions--from imperialism, to class and world war, to institutional appropriations of worldwide protest movements, to global health crises--threaten to merge into an anthropocenic world crisis. In turn, any of these types of conditions can fuel a renewed discussion of world literature and world culture as ways of mediating this world crisis. The debate ought to therefore be approached as a debate on world history as much as world literature. The question of what is world literature should no longer be treated separately from the question of when, where, and by whom this question is posed. As a result, looking at how people have imagined world literature can help us see how they have perceived world crises; following future discussions of world literature can alert us to potential world crises they might foreshadow; and, finally, retooling world literature in this way can enable us to bring an entire humanities discipline into the age of public humanities.
With these and related goals in mind, this special issue welcomes contributions that relate the world literature debate to larger issues of world literature as, among other things, a late capitalist commodity, a site of postmodern culture wars, a stand-in for a concept of world history, a bastion of Eurocentrism, a source of anti-Eurocentrism, a project born of internationalist utopianism, and an invitation to a monolingual dystopia.
We invite original contributions with abstracts of 250 words, a 100-word bio, and 5 keywords by March 31st, 2025; and full articles of 5000–8000 words, or critical reviews of 3000 words, by September 30th, 2025.
Please contact special issue editor Dr. Jernej Habjan [Jernej.habjan@zrc-sazu.si] with abstracts and questions.
