Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

World Literature, Globalization, and The Loss Of Stories: On the Political Economy of Narrative Today

World Literature, Globalization, and The Loss Of Stories: On the Political Economy of Narrative... Abstract‘World literature’ has several distinct meanings. Most important for the present study, it may refer to the products of increased interaction across literary traditions in a globalized political economy. The resulting ‘global literature’ involves extensive convergence in narrative practices. The result is a diminishing of cultural diversity in storytelling. Globalization may also lead to certain sorts of divergence. This may seem to partially counterbalance the convergence. However, in an unequal, global economy, divergence is most often guided by hegemonic cultural practices, even if this occurs negatively. Specifically, such divergence commonly operates through identity-based repudiation of global standardization with a consequent simplification and distortion of putatively indigenous traditions. Thus, in unequal global conditions, both convergence and divergence have the effect of reducing the diversity of narrative cultures. In consequence, the globalization of literature may have deleterious effects on the aesthetics - and indeed the ethics and politics - of narrative. The essay ends with some possibilities for reversing this trend. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Cognitive Semiotics de Gruyter

World Literature, Globalization, and The Loss Of Stories: On the Political Economy of Narrative Today

Hogan, Patrick Colm
Cognitive Semiotics , Volume 4 (2): 17 – Dec 1, 2012
Download PDF
17 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/de-gruyter/world-literature-globalization-and-the-loss-of-stories-on-the-hRS0aXtbSg

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
de Gruyter
Copyright
© 2013 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co.
ISSN
2235-2066
eISSN
2235-2066
DOI
10.1515/cogsem.2012.4.2.88
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Abstract‘World literature’ has several distinct meanings. Most important for the present study, it may refer to the products of increased interaction across literary traditions in a globalized political economy. The resulting ‘global literature’ involves extensive convergence in narrative practices. The result is a diminishing of cultural diversity in storytelling. Globalization may also lead to certain sorts of divergence. This may seem to partially counterbalance the convergence. However, in an unequal, global economy, divergence is most often guided by hegemonic cultural practices, even if this occurs negatively. Specifically, such divergence commonly operates through identity-based repudiation of global standardization with a consequent simplification and distortion of putatively indigenous traditions. Thus, in unequal global conditions, both convergence and divergence have the effect of reducing the diversity of narrative cultures. In consequence, the globalization of literature may have deleterious effects on the aesthetics - and indeed the ethics and politics - of narrative. The essay ends with some possibilities for reversing this trend.

Journal

Cognitive Semiotics – de Gruyter

Published: Dec 1, 2012

Keywords: world literature; globalization; universals; diversity; cultural extinction; hegemony

There are no references for this article.