![]() ![]() ![]() Susan Stanford Friedman convincingly notes that “he problem with ‘world literature’ is that it has not been sufficiently global, but has instead replicated the imperial power of the West for the past three hundred or so years by asserting Western culture as the measure of all cultures” (2013: 2). They have repeatedly criticised the term for its tendency to affirm rather than displace the Eurocentrism of both literary practice and theory, arguing that it posits Western literary values as universal ones and thus veils, once again, Western hegemony. Perhaps the most serious criticism has been voiced by various representatives of postcolonial studies. ![]() Accordingly, a number of scholars have emphasised the extent to which ‘world literature’ subordinates literary texts and authors to the logic of an international market that demands the production of easily digestible and evermore standardised literary products ( During 2009: 57–58 Casanova 2004: 169–171 Apter 2013: 2–3 Damrosch 2009: 107). While some scholars have emphatically embraced the term as a conceptual means of opening up the Eurocentric canon and investing literary studies with more, namely worldly, urgency, others have refuted the term for its conceptual vagueness and its consumerist thrust, which would turn literature into yet another global commodity. World literature has become a buzzword in contemporary literary theory and practice and like any buzzword it has spurred a myriad of controversies, discussions and critical debates. ![]()
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