World literature and the international order

World literature and the international order

Joseph Slaughter, Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, discusses literature and decolonization.

Key Points

  • • Throughout the 1950s to the 1970s, more than a third of nations claimed independence. While this represents a massive political shift, this struggle for independence was also reflected in world literature.
  • • During this time, newly independent nations were forced to express their nation-statism within the confines of a pre-established international order.
  • • This international order also existed within the publishing system. Although seeking an independent voice, authors of world literature must often conform to international readership expectations and prior successes.

 

Claiming independence

Photo by moshiur anwer

Throughout the 1950s to the 1970s, more than a third of the world’s nations received or claimed their independence from the European colonial powers. This era of decolonisation occurred across South Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and other locations. During this time, literature became an essential front in the struggle for independence, both in terms of decolonisation and national identity in a post-colonial order.

This is a vibrant and essential period in terms of literary production. I’ve always been fascinated by how this period’s literature shaped the struggle for independence and how this struggle took place in the Cold War context.

An international struggle

In the Cold War context, there was an international arena in the struggle over control of systems of governance, finance and distribution of resources. This environment gave space for the group of newly independent post-colonial nations to work together as a Third World bloc at the United Nations; in this sense, Third World is an affirmative term.

During this era of decolonisation, the struggle for independence took place, of course, at the political level. This primarily involved formal decolonisation in a legal sense. For instance, Nigeria achieved political independence from England in 1960.

Not only a political struggle

However, this struggle didn’t just occur in the realm of law or politics. It also took place in the realm of literature, and it continues to do so to this day. We see this in the fight for political identity. It is also apparent in the political independence advocated by writers at the forefront of these political movements. This is especially true in Africa, where writers are embedded with the politicians fighting for political independence. This is consequential in terms of literary production.

The logic of nation-states

At this intersection, I find it interesting how the international order is established through the logic of nation-states. In other words, this system understands the nation as the unit of identity through which one can become international. Frantz Fanon was acutely aware of this in writing The Wretched of the Earth. There, he argued that the only thing that could provide an international dimension was being national.

Interestingly, this logic leads to a certain kind of acceptance of the international order. As radical as decolonisation was in the middle of the 20th century, it largely accepted the nation-statism terms and admitted that the unit of political self-expression would be the nation. There needs to be a Nigeria, a Kenya, a Martinique and so on.

Decolonisation shaping literature

Photo by Alessandro Cristiano

Literature operated under a similar logic. Many writers in the Third World throughout this period are focused on establishing a national literature or national culture. Many writers try to produce an independent national literary identity, whether it’s a Nigerian identity, a Kenyan identity, a Sri Lankan identity and so on.

In this context, we see a similar problem in the world of literary production, as occurred in the world of law and politics. More specifically, there is the issue of how one establishes a new literary identity in a world that already has a system in place for recognising, on the one hand, political self-determination and, on the other hand, cultural self-determination.

Pursuing a cultural identity

When one is trying to establish, say, a Nigerian literature, it has to occur within the context of an international publishing and literary system. This is The World Republic of Letters, as Pascale Casanova famously called it. It has established procedures and rules.

At the international level, creating a national culture entails meeting certain expectations. The international community’s expectations involve what a national literature looks like and what comprises novels and poetry.

There’s no coincidence, it seems to me, that many of the early novels produced in colonial contexts, especially in the middle of anti-colonial agitation, are coming of age novels. As I’ve discussed, Bildungsromane are instrumental in making claims for autonomy, independence and inclusion in an established order.

Editor’s pick

There are a couple of reasons for this. The Bildungsroman is a genre for making claims against a dominant society, in this case an international society. The other factor is that new novels must be recognisable to metropolitan audiences.

Indeed, the international publishing system itself is a vital determining factor in what is published at the international level. It is impactful in determining what is considered literature and, thereby, what defines a national literature.

Of course, there are local publishing efforts. However, the demarcation of what will be considered the national literature occurs in a kind of dialectic relationship between local authors and the international publishing system. After all, this system will only recognise particular writing as suitable for publication and inclusion in Casanova’s The World Republic of Letters.

While, in general, the effort towards cultural decolonisation is liberating, there is also a cession to the demands of international order. During this period, the way to be international is to be national in a predetermined manner and create a particular kind of national culture.

Shaping literature in the Third World

The demands of the international publishing industry are significant. In certain ways, they act as constraining factors on what is possible to write and say.

For example, Latin American literature’s success in the late 1960s led to a boom in what’s known as magical realism. Novels by the likes of Gabriel García Márquez or Vargas Llosa achieved noteworthy international success.

Pigeonholed by success

Photo by Edith38

However, they attained such success that they transformed how publishing houses viewed Latin American literature. This meant that international publishing houses became especially interested in books that looked like magical realism.

A similar trend in African literature occurred in the early 2000s with the wars in Africa. Many successful novels centred on child soldiers suddenly appeared. They were so impactful that new authors from the African context were required to write stories about child soldiers, to be published.

Overall, we see how the publishing industry can initially decolonise the canon of a literature system. However, it ultimately adapts to new literary styles by seeking conventional structures and genres that match previous successes.

Discover more about

Literature and decolonisation

Slaughter, J. R. (2004). Master Plans: Designing (National) Allegories of Urban Space and Metropolitan Subjects for Postcolonial Kenya. Research in African Literatures, 35(1), 30–51. Indiana University Press.

Slaughter, J. (2020). Who Owns the Means of Expression?. The b2o Review.

Slaughter, J. (2014). World literature as property. Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, 34, 39–73.

About Joseph Slaughter

I’m Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.
About Joseph Slaughter →

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