Notes on ‘Principles of a World History of Literature’ in The World Republic of Letters by Pascale Casanova.
“The world of letters is in fact something quite different from the received view of literature as a peaceful domain. Its history is one of incessant struggle and competition over the very nature of literature itself- an endless succession of literary manifestos, movements, assaults, and revolutions. These rivalries are what have created world literature.” (pg 13 of reader)
In the ‘Principles of a World History of Literature,’ Casanova intends to dismantle what he sees as the contemporary perception of the world of letters, which is specifically that of a ‘universal literature,’ which functions peacefully and harmoniously in a ‘nonnational, nonpartisan’ context. Specifically, one which is ‘unmarked by political or linguistic divisions.’ For Casanova, this commonly accepted perception is deeply defective and conceals a reality in which the world of letters is a contested, fractured, chaotic and hierarchical site of repression, and concurrently a site of revolution and resistance. He discusses Valery’s assertion that ‘civilization is a form of capital’ and applies it to the world of letters, which he defines as a fluctuating market of commodity, transaction and conflicting valuations. For Casanova this site of ‘revolution and resistance’ is strongly structured through the geographic and political boundaries of nation states, which effectively determine the conditions for cultural ‘production’ and ‘transaction.’
Despite aspirations of depoliticisation and the blurring and even collapsing of national boundaries, Casanova writes that ‘literary capital’ is still inherently national and that the nation state and (its) literature are deeply interconnected. Through a common language they serve to ‘establish and reinforce’ each other, as political authority effectively enables literary spaces, which then reciprocally consolidate national identity. However amidst this structure of dependence, Casanova reflects on an alternative method of understanding this conflicted world of letters that is less reductive, and acknowledges the capacity for resistance, subversion or reflective consensus, as well as attempting to explicitly exhibit hierarchical structures of suppression and domination.
In understanding this capacity for resistance, Casanova contends that there are two crucial factors situating a writers positioning in the world of letters. Firstly ‘the place occupied by his native literary space within world literature and his own position within this space.’ He writes that “Understanding the way in which writers invent their own freedom- which is to say perpetuate, or alter, or reject, or add to, or deny, or forget, or betray their national literary (and linguistic) heritage- make it possible to chart the course of their work and discover its very purpose.” (pg 27 of reader) His reading of this process of ‘repression, revolution and resistance’ is fundamentally grounded in his interpretation of the geographic, historical, political and economic conditions of nation states, which determines the complex conditions under which culture is ‘produced.’ However, in his firmly Modernist and progressive rendering of history, he disallows any acknowledgment of self-reflexivity and relativity in interpreting the exacting conditions of these nation states.
Casanova neglects the poetic and the metaphorical as they are experienced through the aesthetic event and largely reduces the literary world of letters to the transaction of commodities in a highly politicised, economically structured market. Though he explicitly considers the possibilities for resistance, they are theorised within this transactional, economic framework, and remain firmly entrenched in a Modernist paradigm. He does not consider the ontological implications of literature and is perhaps far too concrete and literal in his understanding of culture as something that is ‘produced’ and ‘transacted’ rather than something that is experienced subjectively as it is unfolded, unravelled and disseminated. Though infinitely impacted and conditioned by its context, surely the imagination has some capacity for transcending national boundaries?
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