What Is World Literature? (Translation/Transnation) Review

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What Is World Literature (Translation/Transnation) ReviewThe author of this essay, a series of chapters trying to define a literary category, is smart and writes engagingly in witty and clear prose for an academic. I recommend this book because it holds several strong chapters on translation and politics of publishing. But, despite best efforts, the titular question remains addressed in unsatisfying fashion. It seems there is so much to say about the politics of reception and lack of reception, about the politics of literary influence and trade, that the book contains less about literature than one might desire from such a well-read guide. Good sense needs no method, but here, in spite of some good sense the author has chosen curiously, eccentrically, the texts with which to make his discussion. The common qualities that bind the chapters pertain more to the context of readers, editors, and occasionally writers. Greaer balance must be achieved. There is too little discussion of the literature itself. Surely, it is too blandly limiting to consider world literature merely a mark of consumer culture and national expectations for others, the literature remaining nearly at all times secondary to the category. Only some scattered anecdotes will lead readers to understand the cause of the author's dedication to literature and comparatism.
The range of the author is admirably broad. It is possible readers of this book will come away with a burning desire to read a book or author mentioned by Damrosch. The bibliography given is remarkably trim for such an undertaking. It seems to me that this book adopts more of the literary discourse concerning the relation of power and knowledge in the formation of literature than the philological attention characteristic of an academic tradition that has been comparing languages and national literatures for centuries (granted, rarely having addressed the question Damrosch approaches). Though the author floats Auerbach's in and out of his discussion as an exemplar of an earlier attempt to give definition to the idea of world literature (even if drastically limited that author's own expertise in the languages of Europe), a , this book is not, and to be fair, did not intend to be.
The best discussions, I felt, concerned Gilgamesh, early Egyptian poems, and Rigoberta Mench/u. In the end, the definition made for world literature seems a general and useful point of departure for authors of better books to come on the topic.What Is World Literature (Translation/Transnation) Overview

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The Writing of History Review

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The Writing of History ReviewAlong with French intellectual giants such as Lacan, Foucault, Derrida and Levinas, stands Michel de Certeau. Despite being far less kown than these other figures of post-structuralist thought, it has been said that his thought and range of interests exceeded all of them (He studied and taught history, anthropology, sociology, psychoanalysis, theology, literature and French). He deserves to be better well-known in the English speaking world, and will undoubtedly become so, now that his major works have been translated and are available.
This book, The Writing of History, is where de Certeau deals most comprehensively with post-structuralist theory and history, or, more specifically, historiography. Although American academia is still very hesitant about anything smacking of "postmodernism", it is inevitable that they too will have to acknowledge the sea change taking place, and find a place or at least a thought-out response to, theory. Despite definitely locating itself within the post-structuralist camp, de Certeau's work offers a way forward that is neither repulsive nor irrational, but can in fact be seen as liberating and promising. He argues that historians have worked on a principle of exclusion, whereby they draw an artificial line between the past and present, and separate what is "dead" from what is not. Through this navigation, they neglect the fact that they themselves are historical beings - they fail to historicize themselves and to recognize fully the ways in which historical processes shape their own actions, their own writing. They also believe - wrongly - that they are somehow above "politics", and that they may be able to describe politics without being themselves implicated in political processes. Even Foucault, de Certeau argues, fell victim to this trap (see Birth of the Clinic) since he attempts to point out the fundamental basis for knowledge systems without addressing his own basis.
De Certeau's thought cannot be summarized here. I would encourage this book to all historians who are not theory-phobic, especially those who are interested in the possibilities of thinking about ethics and history together (de Certeau is influenced by Levinas, here). Not many are doing this today, and it is a topic worth exploring more fully, especially as we wrestle with problems in the historiography of the holocaust, genocide, oppression, and other important issues.The Writing of History Overview

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