World Literature and the Geographies of Resistance

This book proposes a new definition of world literature: an archive of democratic mechanisms external to state power. Accordingly, World Literature and the Geographies of Resistance takes shape as an exploration of nonstate space - territories of self-government that contest the vertical command structures of the state. Joel Nickels argues that literature devoted to these processes of spatial occuption can help us imagine democratic alternatives to state space and to the regime of legalized dispossession that goes under the name of globalization. Conceptualized in these terms, world literature can be viewed not as the corollary of 90s-era cosmopolitanism, but as a document of strategies for the militant reorganization of social space. This ambitious book addresses the work of Patrick Chamoiseau, Ousmane Sembene, Miguel Ángel Asturias, Claude McKay, Arundhati Roy, T. S. Eliot and Melvin Tolson. It engages with theories of transnationality, diaspora and postcoloniality, as well as world literature. Cover 1 Half-title 3 Title page 5 Copyright information 6 Dedication 7 Table of contents 9 Acknowledgments 11 Introduction: The Literature of Spatial Occupation – A Nonstate Research Agenda 13 Nonstate Space 32 Autogestion 38 Eidetic Rupture 42 Self-Government outside the State 52 Notes 64 Chapter 1 The General Strike in the Literature of Decolonization: Ousmane Sembene / Miguel Ángel Asturias... 72 La profusion inattendue des émergences 81 Auto-mimesis 85 L’État français comme un corps étranger 94 Un fenómeno atmosférico 108 Notes 120 Chapter 2 Nonstate Internationalism: From Claude McKay to Arundhati Roy 127 The Cosmopolitan Impasse 134 Black Self-Organization 144 Anarchism and the Negro Bund 147 Diaspora and Self-Government 153 Rituals of Association 159 Figures of Self-Development 163 Notes 166 Chapter 3 World Literature as Futurology: Melvin Tolson, T. S. Eliot, and the Poetics of Postcapitalist Governance 174 Non-Alignment and the Cosmopolitan Problematic 181 Unimaginable Internationalism 185 Racialized Space 191 “Unlaid Ghosts” 194 Financialization and the Post-state Horizon 197 Nonstate Self-Government 204 Crisis and Self-Regulation 209 Notes 215 Epilogue: Transnational Studies and the “Nonstate Turn” of the World Bank 224 Notes 228 Index 231 This book proposes a new definition of world literature: an archive of democratic mechanisms external to state power. Accordingly, 'World Literature and the Geographies of Resistance' takes shape as an exploration of nonstate space - territories of self-government that contest the vertical command structures of the state. Joel Nickels argues that literature devoted to these processes of spatial occuption can help us imagine democratic alternatives to state space and to the regime of legalized dispossession that goes under the name of globalization. Conceptualized in these terms, world literature can be viewed not as the corollary of 90s-era cosmopolitanism, but as a document of strategies for the militant reorganization of social space. This ambitious book addresses the work of Patrick Chamoiseau, Ousmane Sembene, Miguel Angel Asturias, Claude McKay, Arundhati Roy, T. S. Eliot and Melvin Tolson. It engages with theories of transnationality, diaspora and postcoloniality, as well as world literature This book approaches world literature as an archive of strategies for resistance, and focuses on the nonstate organization of democratic processes. It is for readers, graduates, and scholars in the humanities interested in thinking about literature as a way of conceptualizing global forms of resistance.