A thesis is emerging. Or an area of study at least.
In 1827 Goethe coined the phrase "world literature" to describe the increased availability of writing from other countries and in other languages. Marx and Engels picked it up and used it in describing characteristics of the bourgeois economy. Recently, David Damrosch has asked What Is World Literature? According to Wikipedia, Damrosch "define[s] world literature as a category of literary production, publication and circulation, rather than using the term evaluatively".
I'm wondering whether these ideas can be pulled into an essay about the relevance or usefulness of Bourriaud's altermodern theories (and other, non-literary theories of contemporary twenty-first globalization) to literature.
If I ask myself the question - are there any altermodern books? the first name that pops into my head is David Mitchell. Especially Cloud Atlas.
I await a reply from Bourriaud to the four questions I emailed him last week. Let's hope he illuminates this question for me a bit.
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Me
- Mark
- I am writing a PhD at the University of Glasgow entitled "The Poetics of Time in Contemporary Literature". My writing has been published in Type Review, Dancehall, Puffin Review and TheState. I review books for Gutter and The List. I am also an editor and reviewer at the Glasgow Review of Books.
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