Description
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.
Author: Karim Mattar
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Published: 05/30/2022
Pages: 360
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.12lbs
Size: 9.21h x 6.14w x 0.75d
ISBN13: 9781474467049
ISBN10: 1474467040
BISAC Categories:
- Literary Criticism | Middle Eastern
- Literary Criticism | Poetry
- Literary Criticism | Modern | 20th Century
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).