Specters of World Literature - by Karim Mattar (Paperback)

About the Book

At the heart of this book is a spectral theory of world literature that draws on Edward Said, Aamir Mufti, Jacques Derrida and world-systems theory to assess how the field produces local literature as an "other" that haunts its universalising, assimilative imperative with the force of the uncanny.

Book Synopsis

At the heart of this book is a spectral theory of world literature that draws on Edward Said, Aamir Mufti, Jacques Derrida and world-systems theory to assess how the field produces local literature as an "other" that haunts its universalising, assimilative imperative with the force of the uncanny. It takes the Middle Eastern novel as both metonym and metaphor of a spectral world literature. It explores the worlding of novels from the Middle East in recent years, and, focusing on the pivotal sites of Middle Eastern modernity (Egypt, Turkey, Iran), argues that lost to their global production, circulation and reception is their constitution in the logic of spectrality. With the intention of redressing this imbalance, it critically restores their engagements with the others of Middle Eastern modernity and shows, through a new reading of the Middle Eastern novel, that world literature is always-already haunted by its others, the ghosts of modernity.

From the Back Cover

'This is a strong book in all the important ways. It is learned, conceptually sophisticated, critically sensitive, judicious and thoughtful throughout, lucidly presented, and well written. One only occasionally finds this combination. It definitely makes a contribution to the contemporary discussion of world literature. This is an outstanding piece of work.' Walter Cohen, University of Michigan 'A work of scholarship should promise new knowledge as well as new interpretations, and this is a work that does just that, and in more than one way. It will enrich and inspire the discourse on world literature. There is nothing out there that is quite like it.' Bruce Robbins, Columbia University Develops a new, "spectral" theory of world literature, and a comparative understanding of the history and current practice of the novel in the Middle East This book draws on Edward Said, Aamir Mufti, Jacques Derrida, and world-systems theory to address the institutionalized construct of "world literature" from its origins in Goethe and Marx to the present day. It argues that through its history, this construct has served to incorporate if not annul local literatures and the concept of "local literature" itself, and to universalize the novel, the lyric poem, and the stage play as the only literary forms appropriate to modernity. It demonstrates this thesis through a comparative reading of the reinscription of the classical Arabic-Islamic concept of "adab" as "literature" in the modern, European sense in Egypt, Turkey, and Iran in the 19th to mid-20th centuries. It then turns to the Middle Eastern novel in the global contexts of its production, translation, circulation, and reception today. Through new readings of novels and other literary works by Abdelrahman Munif, Naguib Mahfouz, Orhan Pamuk, Azar Nafisi, Yasmin Crowther, and Marjane Satrapi, and with reference to landmarks of Middle Eastern and world literary history ranging from the Mu'allaqāt and Alf Layla wa Layla to Don Quixote, it argues that these texts - like "world literature" itself - are constitutively haunted by specters of the literary forms and traditions, of the life-worlds that they expressed, cast aside by modernity. In the case of the Middle Eastern novel, it is adab and all that it encompassed in the classical Arab-Islamic world that is suppressed or othered, but that spectral, yet returns in new, genuinely worldly constellations of form. Karim Mattar is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is a transdisciplinary humanist, and his research and teaching interests are focused around world literature, the history of the novel, the Middle East, the Israel / Palestine conflict, and critical theory. With Anna Ball, he is the co-editor of The Edinburgh Companion to the Postcolonial Middle East (Edinburgh University Press, 2019). Cover image: The Ambassadors, Hans Holbein the Younger, 1533, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. EUP logo ISBN: 978-1-4744-6703-2

Review Quotes

[...] contains some brilliant insights and syntheses. It is thus essential reading for both world literature and Middle Eastern literature students.--Haifa Saud Alfaisal, King Saud University, Riyadh "Journal of Arabic Literature 53"

A welcome intervention in definitions, theories and practices of world literature that engages seriously with the 'local' in the Middle Eastern novel in translation.--Wen-chin Ouyang, SOAS, University of London

A work of scholarship should promise new knowledge as well as new interpretations, and this is a work that does just that, and in more than one way. It will enrich and inspire the discourse on world literature. There is nothing out there that is quite like it.--Bruce Robbins, Columbia University

This is a strong book in all the important ways. It is learned, conceptually sophisticated, critically sensitive, judicious and thoughtful throughout, lucidly presented, and well written. One only occasionally finds this combination. It definitely makes a contribution to the contemporary discussion of world literature. This is an outstanding piece of work.--Walter Cohen, University of Michigan

About the Author

Karim Mattar is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is a transdisciplinary humanist, and his research and teaching interests are focused around world literature, the history of the novel, the Middle East, the Israel / Palestine conflict, and critical theory. With Anna Ball, he is the co-editor of The Edinburgh Companion to the Postcolonial Middle East (Edinburgh University Press, 2019).