Hauntologies of form : race, genre, and the literary world system
Part of : Γράμμα : περιοδικό θεωρίας και κριτικής ; Vol.13, No.1, 2005, pages 71-86
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71-86
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Literary history in transnational perspective
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With its roots in world systems theory on the one hand, and the contemporary realities of globalization on the other, the project of "world literature" has taken capital as a crucial unit of analysis. This essay argues that genre and race be given a similar centrality in the theory of world literature. Like capital, genre and race are shown to be "spectral," in Jacques Derrida s sense of entities that resist straightforward narratives of progression and presence. Building on genre theorists such as Claudio Guillen, Michael McKeon, and Fredric Jameson, the essay discusses genre’ s oscillating, forward-and-backward time. It then compares that model of generic time to the idea of race, as discussed by world systems theorists and discourse theorists. In the latter, the essay finds the basis for race's spectrality. Reading the spectral logics of capital, genre, and race together, and with specific reference to the novel, the essay argues for a hauntology of world literary history.
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