1. The concept of "emerging literatures" has enjoyed widespread coverage within comparatist and English studies circles in university programs, monographic issues of periodicals, conference proceedings, and including online publications and work. Such coverage contrasts starkly with the scarce theoretical attention that it has been given in comparative literature proper, for to date it has been the object of analysis of just three monographs. Add to this the fact that these works are characterized by their mutual unawareness, their disdain towards other disciplinary perspectives of emergence, and were all written in the second half of the 1980s (reflecting interest sparked at that time in ideas connected to the financial world). The objective of this essay is to propose a new theory to explain this phenomenon, in which simply substituting the expression "emerging literature" for "literary emergence" already means taking a clear stance within the framework of critical dialogue in relation to the aforementioned studies. This is carried out by an interdisciplinary and pluralist model and by an introduction revising the state of the question. Overall, I present a program of comparative research which seeks to test the hypotheses proposed in the theoretical framework on literary emergence.
2. In the arena of comparative literature, literary emergence
is not an emerging literature. Contrary to what might seem a trivial play on
words, this statement makes reference to a specific meaning of this concept,
namely a "body of works, associated with a specific disciplinary dilemma,
which has received notable academic attention." I insist on the multiple
meanings of the term, thus arriving at a fuller and more complete understanding
of the phenomena which I continue to reformulate as "literary emergence."
In fact, to date there have only been three theoretical comparative studies
dedicated to "emerging literatures," all of which were written during
the same time period: a) in 1988 Wlad Godzich contributed to Clayton Koelb and
Susan Noakes's book entitled The Comparative Perspective on Literature:
Approaches to Theory and Practice, with an essay entitled "Emergent
Literature and the Field of Comparative Literature"; b) two years later,
in 1990, Claudio Guillén began a study coordinated by Reingard Nethersole
(Emerging Literatures) with a panorama titled "Emerging Literatures:
Critical Questionings of a Historical Concept"; and c) in 1996 the prologue
of Jean-Marie Grassin's tenth volume, dedicated to Littératures Émergentes
/ Emerging Literatures, from the proceedings of the XI Congress of the
ICLA: International Comparative Literature Association, entitled The Problematics
of Emergence in Comparative Literary History. To these one can also add
the proceedings of conferences which took place at the Università di
Macerata in 1994, published by Paola Galli Mastrodonato in 1996 and entitled
Ai confini dell'impero: le letterature emergenti, although, in reality,
the volume lacks a programmatic study. Along with this low number of studies,
it is worth noting their mutual unawareness. This minimal and unconnected bibliographic
view is complemented, on the one hand, by critical analyses which approach specific
emerging literatures, the majority of which are included in the volumes edited
by Nethersole, Grassin and Gali Mastrodonato, and, on the other hand, with the
only two specialized dictionaries that I am aware of which include a specific
entry to this subject: the Diccionario de termos literarios by Equipo
Glifo and the Dictionnaire International des Termes Littéraires /
International Dictionary of Literary Terms (Grassin, "Émergence"
<http://www.ditl.info/>). Other theoretical
uses of the notion of "emerging literature" occur in Commonwealth
studies and/or applied to such literatures as Canadian or Australian. This is
a large topic beyond the scope of this essay; instead, what I focus on is how
emerging literature has been conceptualized in comparative literature.
3. In this paper, I aim at demonstrating the centrality of literary emergence
as a comparative problem. Let us consider an initial and very tentative characterization
of "emerging" literature starting with the Oxford Dictionary
definition given for emergent as "new and still developing" (376).
If, in the provisional state in which we find ourselves at the moment, emerging
literature is that which is nascent, which breaks the surface, it seems obvious
that this definition supposes a historiographic and supranational problem inasmuch
as literary historiography should take these nascent literatures into account.
At the same time, the very act of emergence implies a rereading of the canon
through a special thematic and genological work which establishes intertextual,
interliterary and interartistic networks, networks in which the translation
processes are integral. Finally, an emerging literature, which offers itself
in order to be received, provides an immeasurable amount of material towards
the realization of comparative poetics -- vraiment générale,
to use the famous term coined by René Étiemble. The study of emergence
requires an interdisciplinary focus as we are dealing with a phenomenon which
goes beyond the boundaries of literary, artistic, and even cultural circles.
This need has been ignored by the studies we have seen to date. Comparative
research responds to this, underscoring, as Karl Popper has demonstrated, that
science is born out of a quest to solve problems and that these do not fit within
rigid academic frameworks. The multi-dimensionality of literary work, emergent
included, requires the application of theoretical and methodological frameworks
employed in other disciplines in order to gain a balanced perspective, that
is to say, that which Darío Villanueva ("Pluralismo crítico
y recepción literaria") has defended as "critical pluralism."
4. Let us reexamine the provisional characterization according to which an emerging
literature is something that is "nascent," something that breaks the
surface. One of the immediate questions that arises from this characterization
is the question what constitutes an emerging literature? In the absence of a
clear definition, it is necessary to resort to the use of certain mechanisms
in order to find an adequate explanation. I limit myself to exploring two such
mechanisms in the following. The first mechanism, an indirect approach, can
be found in comparing diverse editions of a reference work, such as the Princeton
Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, coordinated by Alex Preminger and T.V.F.
Brogan. To date there exist three editions: 1965, 1974 (which reproduces the
first but with a supplement), and the 1993 edition, renamed The New Princeton
Encylopedia of Poetry and Poetics. In the "Preface" of the third
edition it is affirmed that "recent political changes in these areas [Africa,
Eastern Europe, Asia and Latin America] have been swift, extensive, and complex,
resulting in burgeoning national literatures ... we have increased dramatically
our coverage of emergent and non-emergent Western poetries" (Preminger
and Brogan vii-viii). In relation to the literary cartography of 1965, the supplement
to the second edition of 1974 incorporates four literatures: African, Hausa,
Porto Rican, and Swahili. The third and final edition adds nine "new"
literatures: Afro American, Chicano, Esperanto, Inuit, Occitan, Somali, Sri
Lankan, Basque, and West Indian. If we compare this specific list with the passage
cited in the "Preface," which alludes to a dramatic increase in non-Western
emerging literatures, it is not easy to reach solid conclusions. Of the thirteen
"new" literatures, only 38 percent are non-Western, which either obliges
us to think that the remaining 62 percent pertain to emerging literatures, or
to ask ourselves whether the condition of being both non-Western and emergent
is or is not mutually exclusive. If we compare the newly registered literatures
to each other, our task is no less difficult since, for example, it is difficult
to decide which common process of emergence in the 1990s would allow for literatures
in Esperanto, Inuit, and Basque to be considered in the same category. Just
one non-explicit framework allows us to ponder an explanation for the particular
successive cartographies of the Princeton enclyclopedia: a Weltliteratur
set forth, among its diverse possibilities, according to the additive concept,
that is to say, as a mere sum of world literatures, in such a way that when
one recognizes the absence of a region on the literary map, it is thus mapped.
Regarding this implicit framework, it is necessary to point out that a decade
before the year of inflection (1965) set by the editors of the Princeton encyclopedia,
Erich Auerbach published a significant essay entitled "Philologie der Weltliteratur."
In the essay Auerbach, similar to the editors of the Princeton encyclopedia,
recognized the ever-increasing number of new literatures (4) and, like the aforementioned
editors, seemed to emphasize from the start the "national" character
of the aforesaid literatures, which, according to the date of the publication
of his work (1952) could give us an exact idea of the geographic location of
these nascent literatures whose origins are not discussed, since these are implicit
in the emphasis put on the exact nationalist nature compared to the European.
"National wills are stronger and louder than ever, yet in every case they
promote the same standards and forms for modern life ... European cultures ...
still retain their individualities" (Auerbach 2). In my study here, I address
this conception of Weltliteratur, the supposed geographic specification
of nascent literatures, and the vision which the West projects of them later.
5. The second mechanism to determine which literatures are emergent is more
direct than the first. It consists of taking inventory of those literatures
that form part of studies dedicated to emergent literature itself. From such
an inventory we reach the following conclusions: literary emergence seems to
be associated with a) European languages used in non-Western territories, e.g.,
in Western territories that have been subject to "dislocation" as
a result of exile or immigration, b) Nation states, c) new states that have
emerged through decolonization after 1945, and d) ex-colonies of France and
Britain. These four vectors of emergence flaunt flagrant contradictions: i)
literatures in European languages are conceived as authentic autonomous systems,
without possible interaction with non-European literatures, ii) national literature
is privileged over any other literary formation, iii) the concentration of these
literatures in new post-colonial States seems to ignore the fact that "in
Europe, between 1990 and 1997, 14,200 kilometers of new borders were created,
the Soviet Union disappeared, and 31 states were born or reborn" (Nogué
Font and Rufí 105; unless indicated otherwise, all translations are by
Dechant and Wiersma), and iv) the polarization in the ex-colonies of Britain
and France overshadow the existence of other European and non-European empires.
These implicit coordinates on the map of emerging literatures, those derived
from the Princeton encyclopedia and those compiled from critiques dedicated
to emerging literature have their expression in the three programmatic studies
mentioned above, divided between the association of emergence with the evolutionary
phase of national literature (a position defended by Guillén) or with
all non-national and non-canonical literature, whether it be ethnic, regional,
or minority (a position defended by Godzich and Grassin). Both factors seem
responsible for the simplistic and trivializing stances towards emergence processes.
In this sense, the fact that research on emerging literatures initiated in the
1980s is highly significant, coming precisely at a time when emerging economies
and emerging markets (see Maté de Castro) became popular terms to refer
to the rise in stock markets in certain countries, mainly in the Third World,
as opposed to the more traditional stock markets of New York, London, Frankfurt,
and Tokyo. Worth noting is the fact that the map of emerging markets, recognized
by the International Financial Corporation, a unit of the World Bank, resembles
closely the map of literary emergence derived from theoretical comparative studies
cited thus far.
6. I now elaborate on my approach to emerging literatures through a critical
dialogue with the proposals put forward by Godzich, Guillén, and Grassin,
analyzing new cases of emergence, as yet unexamined, originating in such diverse
fields as epistemology, philosophy, biology, and sociology. This interdisciplinary
prism draws from many sources: the Cultural Semiotics of the Tartu-Moscow School,
the polysystem theory of Itamar Even-Zohar and the Tel Aviv School, the interliterary
theory of the school of Bratislava, the cultural materialism approach of Birmingham
School, interwoven with, and integrated by those tenets for comparative literature
put forward by Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek regarding the methodology
and interdisciplinarity of (comparative) cultural studies, a framework in which
he proposes to move away from the nation approach established in comparative
literature and based in a contextual and evidence-based methodology as I demonstrate
below. My proposed theory is developed through the following general and preliminary
hypotheses that all natural language generates a category of discourse which
is conventionally identifiable with the label "literature," setting
aside the comparative points which this term requires and the proposition that
no literature is self-sufficient. These two general and preliminary hypotheses
create a holistic framework for the study of the process of literary emergence,
a process conceived at the same time in heuristic terms. Such a framework is
co-formed by diverse literatures in the closely-woven network of their interrelations,
such that, in accordance with the second general hypothesis, each system imports
and exports material from or to other systems, forms subsystems, and encourages
new unions. One of the most urgent questions put forth by the study of this
world literary mega-system is that of the concept of "literary change,"
a phenomenon which lends itself precisely to literary emergence since, with
regards to the provisional characterization of literary emergence I am using
momentarily, it is obvious that the birth of a "new" literature implies
a change, a reconfiguration of the interliterary network in the same way that
a new text reconfigures the intertextual network. Traditionally, literary change
is described by literary history in the context of a literature within the framework
of a nation state. However, the option offered by a holistic framework implies
not understanding literary change (and with it, literary emergence) literature
by literature, but rather in the wider context of a world literary mega-system
as each of these literatures is no more than a small portion of a larger picture.
7. Importantly, to date the only explanation in the context of a holistic conception
of world literature as a mega-system made up of systems, subsystems, and the
network of its interrelations is that provided by the theory of the interliterary
process, elaborated fundamentally by Dionýz Durišin and other collaborators
at the School of Bratislava. According to this theory, world literature constitutes
the superior state of the interliterary process, to which two previous, less
integrative levels are added: interliterary communities and national literatures.
And this is the critical point: national literature understood as a minimal
unit of world literature. This is evidenced repeatedly: in the "Preface"
of the Princeton encyclopedia; in Guillén's proposal on the subject of
emergence as an evolutionary phase of all national literature; and in Godzich's
and Grassin's proposals in which ethnic, regional, or minority emergence is
calculated according to their distance from the national referent. I propose
that it would be necessary to reflect on this critical point to find an explanation
for the emergence processes and the subsequent reconfigurations of interliterary
networks they cause. The notion of national literature as a tiny unit of the
interliterary process, and therefore, the only constituent subsystem of world
literature (seen in the structural model of Weltliteratur as well as
in the atomistic positivist paradigm), is empirically unacceptable. Together
with the historicity of national literature as a construction, its unfeasibility
is also seen in other circles, including but by no means limited to literatures
which are not just international, but supranational; literatures themselves
which project national unification; independent principalities and enclave states
which do not claim to have a national literature; literature from partial nation
states, whether it be because ethnic groups are dispersed in various states
or because the nation is divided; or literatures from bi-national and multinational
states. Now, even if it is impossible for national literatures to be considered
as the minimum units comprising the network of the general system of world literature,
it in no way means that they lack importance, and above all, function. One aspect
of their importance derives from the fact that the new world system (see, e.g.,
Wallerstein, The Modern World-System) has converted the State into
a general political form through the global extension of the interstate system
ushered in with the Peace of Westfalia in 1648, thereby making it a primary
cultural "container" extending worldwide. As regards the function
of national literature, this should be gauged in relation to its systemic interrelations
within the framework of world literature, which, in turn, leads us to determine
once again what the systemic units of the world literary mega-system really
are and what their relationship to national literatures represents. If, indeed,
national literature is an invalid unit of measure, this is owing largely to
its very restrictive character. This implies the existence of a more ample unit
which I propose calling -- for lack of a better term, inasmuch as it would collide
with Boris Eichenbaum's s idea of literaturnyi byt, "literary
life." The literary life of a community is more extensive, rich, and varied
than the national literature of that very same community, which does not mean
that they are completely independent categories. In fact, there is always an
overlapping area and intersection between literary life and national literature
-- the primary objectives of national literature being that the two merge. The
differences between the domain of literary life and national literature arise
in: a) the latter's exclusion of translated works, literary oral traditions,
literary traditions classed as para-literary works, and the literary traditions
of national margins; of "extraterritorial" authors (see Steiner),
and of texts by certain authors owing to their specific linguistic choices and
b) phenomena analyzed by Durišin, such as bi- or polylittérarité,
the binationalité asymétrique, and/or the complémentarité
of certain traditions.
8. If the above examples attest to the restrictions in which national literatures
operate relative to their respective literary lives, it is necessary to reconsider
the question regarding the systemic function of national literatures, obviously
implying that literary lives comprise authentic systemic units of world literature
-- recognition of such systemic character being independent from the relative
level of accumulated capital symbolique as Pierre Bourdieu puts it.
Upon contemplating the same examples from a linguistic point of view, one will
notice that the exclusions practiced by national literatures are functionally
equivalent to those practiced by grammar textbooks with regard to natural languages.
Like grammar textbooks, national literatures thus work as systemic self-referential
descriptions, self-organizations which differentiate the systemic from the non-systemic,
and are thus essentialist. Thus, the most idiosyncratic function of the national
literature as a segregated subsystem of literary life is an additional reorganization,
both synchronically and diachronically of its repertoire and products in a simplified
way -- sometimes this reorganization being so rigid that it practically refrains
from intersecting with the literary life it attempts to describe. However, if
the notion of national literature as an exclusive and systemic unit of world
literature is unacceptable empirically, the same affirmation should be made
regarding national literature as the only self-descriptive subsystem of literary
life. This appears to be case in two ways: first, it should be recognized that
in certain phases in the history of a literary system, especially that phase
which, for example Xoán González-Millán refers to as "literary
nationalism," various national meta-descriptions can operate on a single
literary life, i.e., different models projecting an ideal literary national
state and second, national literatures are not the only systemic models capable
of fulfilling the function of self-referential description, but rather another
possibility among other self-organizations concerning institutional expressions
of a social group which occupies a hegemonic position in the community in question.
All in all, the pre-eminence of national literature as a self-descriptive subsystem
of literary life is undeniable in accordance with the state model from the Peace
of Westfalia (1648) and nineteenth-century nationalism as epitomized by the
congress of Vienna (1814-1815) until its universalization during the decolonization
processes after 1945 (the year the United Nations was established). When the
complexity of literary life goes beyond a certain structural level, the self-description
of the codifying secondary subsystem promotes a homogenization and simplification
of the system, giving this a new homeostatic identity. It is precisely this
state, updated by meta-descriptive subsystems -- national literatures being
among them -- that constitutes one of the dynamic mechanisms of the system by
creating, in Iuri Lotman's terms, "a basis for a new period of complications"
("Un modelo dinámico del sistema semiótico" 78). I should
emphasize in this the exemplification of Ludwig von Bertalanffy in his 1968
General Systems Theory in which, through dialectics between the static
and the dynamic changes to the system over time can reflect an initially unstable
state with tendencies towards stability or it can reflect an outside stimulus
requiring adaptation and response (Bertalanffy 166). It is here where I find
a meeting point between the semiotic and systemic theories on the one hand,
and cultural materialism on the other -- this convergence serving as an explanation
for literary emergence. The restrictions and exclusions of the subsystems of
secondary codification provide a catalyst for emerging responses.
9. In 1973, Raymond Williams published in the New Left Review an essay
titled "Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory" in which
he developed a critical revision of the model of the forces and relations of
work (the base) as being determined by social conscience (the superstructure)
and the class system. Williams concluded that this model of base and superstructure
is more appropriate in explaining the succession of the great historic periods
than in analyzing its internal dynamics. Recognizing a unique hegemonic method
for each of these periods, along the lines of the Hegelian Zeitgeist,
Williams affirms that "hegemony is not singular; indeed ... its own internal
structures are highly complex, and have continually to be renewed, recreated
and defended; and by the same token ... they can be continually challenged and
in certain respects modified" (38). In this respect, he qualifies as "dominant"
the central system of practices, meanings, and values of a society at a specific
period of time. Different social institutions such as family, methods of labor
organization, or educational models are responsible for the transmission of
the dominant culture, a process in which the construction of a selective tradition
is of the utmost importance. Of the myriad meanings and practices, past and
present, only a portion of them is selected -- among these the processes of
de-limitation and re-interpretation. These processes attempt to avoid contradicting
other elements of the dominant culture, while other meanings and practices are
excluded and abandoned (Williams, "Base and Superstructure" 39). The
similarities between this model of social dynamism and the semiotic and systemic
model I referred to earlier, as well as their similarity to the literary dynamic,
are of course evident (consider, for example, national literatures in terms
of selective traditions). Williams's revision of the base-superstructure model
of the Marxist vulgata reaches its most profound analysis in his emphasis on
the cultural dynamic in which the dominant culture is involved, as it incorporates
the practices, experiences, meanings and values which are not yet integrated,
insofar as they can be sustained by its internal structures -- a strategy geared
towards its self-reproduction. First and foremost, Williams differentiates between
two categories according to their alternative or oppositional function. Alternative
forms, typically associated with individuals or small groups, do not attempt
to modify dominant forms while oppositional forms linked to political and revolutionary
practices do have this objective ("Base and Superstructure" 41-42).
Secondly, each form not integrated into the dominant culture can be residual
or emerging. Residual forms, whether they be alternative or oppositional, have
been "effectively formed in the past, but ... [are] still active in the
cultural process" (Williams, Marxism and Literature 122). Emerging
forms, also alternative or oppositional, encompass "new meanings and values,
new practices, new relationships and kinds of relationship [which] are constantly
being created" (Marxism and Literature 123). Thirdly, with reference
to the distinction made previously in relation to the integrationalist dynamic
of dominant and hegemonic cultural methods, Williams distinguishes between incorporated
and non-incorporated residual and emerging formations.
10. I now proceed to refine the initial characterization of emerging literatures
as nascent and breaking the surface. Apart from the simplifications, limitations,
reinterpretations, and exclusions that the secondary subsystem of codification
exerts over the wide range of products and repertoires of their respective literary
lives, there are emerging literary trends, which either offer a new selective
tradition parallel to the hegemonic (alternative literary emergence) or look
for a total reconfiguration of the selective hegemonic tradition (oppositional
literary emergence). I thus reformulate the traditional label "emerging
literatures" to "literary emergence," as the former possesses
clear essentialist and monologic connotations which clash with the reality of
the literary dynamic. The fact is that not only the great literary periods,
but also each moment in time describes a process of dynamic and contradictory
relations in the dialectics of dominant, residual and emerging forms. If, as
Williams affirms, sectors of emerging literature are uncommon, the emergence
of an entire literary system is even more uncommon. However, before embarking
upon an examination of certain theoretical problems that literary emergence
implies, or perhaps stems from, one must question the results of the interplay
of social change in its cultural context. Williams offers interesting insights
into this question as he examines the central body of Marxist theory, according
to which the formulation of a new social class and its acquiring of class conscience
constitutes a source for the process of emergence. These considerations are
of utmost interest, considering formalist theories about the evolution of literature
and the role these assign to literature for the masses (including the proletariat)
in the renovation of nuclear literary formations, and the resonances of the
Goethean Weltliteratur in the Communist Manifesto.
11. Williams, although accepting the axial nature of a new class for cultural
emergence, recognizes the need to identify other possibilities; dominant cultural
forms do not succeed in controlling all the cultural forms of the community.
But to where exactly do they correspond? In answering this, we must consider
the distinction between state and civil society with their respective classes
of hegemony, which merge with what Jürgen Habermas has designated public
culture, defined as a type of mirage which floats over society in an attempt
to be its national life, forcing certain interests to be silenced. Thus, we
find ourselves faced with what Williams calls the selective tradition or with
a secondary subsystem of codification in semiotic terms. Obvously, this public
culture fails to represent the majority of society. Thus, public space is characterized
by its fragmentation. Dominated by a hegemonic discourse which attempts to wear
down its existence, counter spaces lurk in these public spaces, each representing
its own flourishing essence. Only by way of an in-depth study of these unique
and independent "counter spaces," will we be able to understand more
precisely their emerging cultural forms. To conclude, it seems fitting to analyze
certain fundamental problems associated with the proposed theoretical model
of literary emergence such as systemic configuration, literary evolution and
change, and reception as a catalyst for emergence. This list is in no way exhaustive,
it merely attempts to represent adequately the comparative implications of the
phenomena examined. To start with the Polysystem Theory, this framework offers
important hypotheses towards understanding the systemic configuration of emergent
literature. According to this theory, systemic weakness, associated with phases
of imbalance, turns out to be a defining characteristic of emergence. In this
sense, emerging literatures would form part of the widest-ranging group of the
so-called "dependent literatures" (see Even-Zohar, "Laws of Literary
Interference" 55). Thus, the systemic weakness of an emerging literature
resembles the systemic weakness of a dominant literature in a state of crisis.
This similarity is not, however, the result of identical causes. Polysystem
theory has identified systemic statism and its subsequent autarchy as the primary
cause of an emerging literature's state of crisis. But we should pay attention
to other causes in both cases. In this way, the crisis of a hegemonic literature
can also be a consequence of the strong constrictions placed on literary life
by the subsystem of secondary codification to the point of making this life
an extreme idealization, whereas the state of crisis of an emerging literature
responds to its habitual lack of institutional support, an aspect neglected
by the Tel Aviv School, as Theo Hermans has suggested. Broadening the range
of causes of systemic crises should not obscure, nevertheless, the interesting
verification that this critical phase is shared by both dominant and emerging
literatures. Their respective solutions are similar too, although in opposing
directions: the central notion for both of them is interference. Thus, a dominant
literary system in crisis can resolve its shortcomings by resorting either to
residual or emerging peripheral intrasystemic strata (this is the formalistic
principle of lateral evolution), or to other systems, whether they be dominant
or emergent, in the same way that an emerging literary system can solve its
shortcomings by pulling from either the dominant system's nuclear or residual
strata, or by looking to other dominant or emerging systems. A good example
of the former is the phenomenon known as asymmetric binationality, and of the
latter, the fact that for most cases emerging novelty is a counterproduction
of both the dominant discourse and the fact that emerging interliterary communities
constitute themselves as an attempt to increase their literary capital compared
to the dominant literature.
12. As Hermans has pointed out, the polysystemic model of binary opposites leads
to structured relationships, such that literary systems are expressed in identical
terms, a critique that Lotman ("Sobre el papel de los factores casuales
en la historia de la cultura") had already made concerning Iuri Tinianov
and Viktor Shklovski's model of literary evolution because of its dependence
on a single process: the conversion of the extrasystemic into the systemic.
It is here where Williams's distinction between alternative and oppositional
emergence becomes especially useful. Alternative emergence should be understood
in polysystemic terms as a subsystem that, rather than attempt to free itself
from the system in which it is integrated, identifies, through the proposition
of a parallel canon, those practices and meanings which to date have been excluded
from it -- some of which eventually end up being incorporated into the hegemonic
system. Oppositional emergence, in contrast, tries to break away from the hegemonic
system and convert itself into a dominant system with its own independent canon,
as exemplified by the counterperformance of its subsystems of secondary codification.
All in all, the process of emergence should be contemplated from both an intra-
and intersystemic standpoint. Finally, it is worth noting that the analysis
of the systemic configuration of literary emergence should not neglect the fact
that this is only one of the possible manifestations of the general emergence
of social counterspace, as interartistic and interdiscursive factors also participate
in this same systemic configuration. Thus, for example, studies on national
appropriation of literary discourse show that literary discourse is precisely
the first to be consolidated as social discourse in the collective imagination,
while when the remaining ones, including other artistic discourses (visual arts,
music), initiate their participation in the national matrix, literary discourse
becomes less prominent (see González-Millán 68). In addition,
the processes of alternative literary emergence, whose results are often incorporated
into the dominant cultural formation, demonstrate that the driving force of
emergence is sometimes situated in the non-verbal artistic spheres, gradually
extending out towards literary counterdiscourses (see Lotman, "Sobre la
reducción" 237). Both cases can be explained by identical causes:
the cultural dynamic is not monostructural but rather, as Lotman affirms, "the
different branches of art take turns to drive the semiotic process" ("Sobre
la dinámica de la cultura" 209) and the arts unfurl into a spectrum
of nuclearization and peripherization with respect to the national matrix, in
which literature is conceived as a the quintessence of particularism.
13. As I indicated previously, literary emergence clearly falls within the context
of literary change, insomuch as the surfacing of a "new" literature
implies a reconfiguration of the interliterary network. Whereas the theoretical
model proposed herein recognizes the complex participation of the various types
of change -- transformation, discontinuities, and continuities (see Taylor 8-9)
-- theoretical comparative studies conceive the process of emergence exclusively
within the framework of a linear continuity according to the model of developmentalism.
This takes for granted the existence of a linear sequence of phases through
which all societies -- and their literatures I would add -- must pass. This
is exemplified most clearly in Rostow's stages of economic growth (Taylor 6),
which divides British economic history into five stages from traditional society
to mass consumption. In keeping with Rostow's ladder, Third World countries,
situated on the lower rungs of the scale, can travel the path of development
until they reach the economic level of the most developed countries. This model
of economic development is not at all unwarranted when comparing it to literary
emergence, especially if we remember that its predominant geocultural genesis
is, precisely, the Third World, according to traditional criticism. At this
point we must examine two factors implied by the general model of developmentalism.
Firstly, this model supposes another form of homogenizing essentialization which,
with its opposition of hegemonic literatures to emerging literatures, leads
to what Johannes Fabian has called the "denial of coevalness," i.e.,
the reinscription of the spatial difference in temporal distance. Hegel's Vorlesungen
über die Philosophie der Geschichte are the most systematic formulation
of this denial of coevalness and its principles are based on the traditional
model of Weltliteratur, understood as synecdoche of the major European
literatures, the erasure of African and American literatures and the presence
of Oriental literatures as absolute past. Secondly, and as a consequence of
this denial of coevalness, situating literary emergence within a linear development
policy implies presupposing a teleological orientation that leads to a single
goal: the eschatology of emerged, canonical, and European literatures. Linear
developmentalism, obviously feeding on Darwin's model of evolution, constituted
one of the basic pillars of imperialist ideology, with its identification of
European space as intrinsically progressive and non-European space as intrinsically
primitive and, therefore, in need of modernization. We should wonder, however,
if the explanation of literary emergence as literary change could not benefit
from other evolutionary models whose strengths lie in accepting precisely that
which Darwin's model rejects: the leap. By leap I mean a break within the process
as result of the incorporation of an element outside the sequence in such a
way that, between the time leading up to and after the break, one can see a
qualitative difference. This could be an appropriate formula in explaining both
the incorporation of an emerging or residual element to a hegemonic formation
or of a hegemonic or residual element to an emerging formation as well as the
substitution of a dominant formation with an emerging one. Such an alternative
evolutionary model is found in the Theory of Emergent Evolution, first
developed by Conwy Lloyd Morgan in Emergent Evolution (1923), to be
reformulated later by various authors from the likes of Samuel Alexander and
William M. Wheeler to Karl Popper and Mario Bunge (La investigación
científica; Emergence and Convergence).
14. Morgan conceived three basic theses of the model of emergent evolution to
explain the novelty of evolution: a) evolution is a process of change which
produces qualitative novelties in all aspects of reality, b) qualitative novelty
is the possession of a system of, at least, one emergent property not present
in any of its parts, in which one can also find resultant features, that is,
properties already present in the parts themselves or by summation or subtraction,
and c) reality can be analyzed as a structure of unyielding levels, each one
consisting of a system characterized by a new emergent property (see Blitz 175-183).
Here we must emphasize the "unpredictability" component of emergent
evolution (the nucleus of Chaos Theory) as linked to novelty as a property not
possessed by the assembled parts of the new system. In ontological terms, the
relationship between the system's properties and those of its parts should not
be confused with the epistemological principle of the knowledge possessed by
human beings (Blitz 179-80). Emergence is a novel property, unpredictable, which
causes a change along evolutionary lines. This change or leap, resulting in
a qualitative difference, could be conceived of as the tampering by the logic
of chance in the logic of causality, one of the most articulate explanations
for which is found in Lotman's theory of "explosion." Gradual and
explosive processes only exist because of their reciprocal relation, so that
any synchronic slice in the cultural process would demonstrate that the explosions
of some strata join the gradual development of others. Lotman describes explosion
in the following terms: "The development curve jumps to a completely new,
unpredictable, and more complex path. Any element of the system, or even an
element of another system ... can become the dominant element, a fortuitous
attraction to the explosion of the interweavings of the possibilities of future
movement. In the next phase, however, this chance element creates a predictable
chain of events" (Cultura y explosión 28-29). In this sense,
the moment of emergence is explosive and yields unforeseeable consequences in
terms of the novelty which will emanate from it, be it through an intrasystemic
reorganization or intersystemic attraction, or through the mutual influence
of both processes. The beginning and the end of the explosion, a problem which
is apparently difficult to resolve, can be determined according to the systemic
variables themselves. What the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies
calls "hegemony in crisis" is an apt moment for emergent irruption,
while the appearance of a new subsystem of secondary codification, with its
attempt to explain what has happened, indicates the inflection of emergence
and the re-establishment of causality. To conclude, let us look at two other
important questions to understand literary emergence. First, chance impacting
causality has as one of its consequences the phenomenon called by G.D. Gacev
"accelerated cultural development" ("Sobre la reducción"
235), especially when the emergence has an intersystemic dimension. The emergent
literary sector, in keeping with Even-Zohar's law of proliferation ("Polysystem
Theory" 26), increases its repertoire through the importation of extrasystemic
materials, which causes literary rhythm to speed up, a phenomenon deserving
analysis in relation to what Durišin (58) has called polyfonctionnalité
to refer to that author who in his own literary system performs all of the evolutionary
tasks performed by an entire group of authors in another system. Second, the
novel component of emergence should not be accepted blindly. Thus, it is not
wise to ignore the importance of "novelty" for the capitalist system
which, as Wallerstein has analyzed, in its "endless accumulation of capital
requires as one of its mechanisms a collective orientation towards consumption"
(Geopolitics and Geoculture 165), pivoting around the new item, even
when it works in a purely formal dimension. In other words, emergence can also
be a commercial phenomenon (think of the so-called world fiction), which, from
another perspective, leads us back to something Williams cautions: the difficulty
in distinguishing between truly emerging novelty and novelty as a strategy of
self-reproduction of hegemonic cultures.
15. Up to now, the explanation I present for literary emergence is focused on
two aspects: emergence as a process (the poetics of emergence) and emergence
as a phenomenon (the textuality of emergence). This does not mean, however,
that I disregard a third and highly important aspect: the reception of emergence.
In fact, the constant references to Williams's warnings, the insistence on the
notion of "novelty," the effectiveness of counterdiscourse, and the
possibility of confusion between the ontological and epistemological dimensions
of emergence all point to the axial nature of the observer to the point that,
one could say, emergence begins to cultivate the participation of the implicit
reader excluded from hegemonic discourse. And I stress another aspect of reception,
directly involved in the previously mentioned factors, namely reception as a
driving force of emergence. To do so, I base my ideas on a theory of emergence
developed in the field of cognitive psychology: gestalt theory, whose basic
premise states that human beings perceive structured totalities and not aggregates
of isolated sensations. This leads to the identical conclusion as that set forth
by emergent evolution: the whole is more than the sum of its parts. In this
respect, context, or periphery proves to be fundamental when producing a specific
configuration, such that the same object seems different in different contexts
and, even within the same field of vision, is interpreted differently according
to whether it forms part of the figure or the background. Consequently, the
emergence of meaning (the whole) is the process by which heterogeneous elements
are configured in a coherent structure, an indeterminate process which can yield
conflicting values. The gestalt theory of emergence compels us to question once
again the traditional essentialist and homogenizing approaches to emerging literatures
and to develop a pragmatic phenomenology of literary emergence. In this respect,
the notion of a phenomenology of intentionality, which has been applied to the
field of realism and fiction by Villanueva in his Teorías del realismo
literario, lends itself to our purposes, while maintaining his arguments,
if we replace the term "fiction" with "emergence." The two
possibilities that Villanueva proposes are understood in this context as a)
cointentionality: author and reader share the designation of the emergent quality
of a particular text and b) reader intentionality: the reader alone perceives
this quality. In short, reception as the driving force of emergence assumes
recognizing that its function consists in not only accepting the dominant ideology,
but also in promoting acts of resistance. One need only consider Jonathan Culler's
"hypothesis of reading" or examples of non-cooperative reading found
in feminist criticism.
16. Given the thread of argumentation developed thus far from the holistic model
of Weltliteratur and the heuristic conception of literary emergence,
this paper cannot justifiably conclude with a mere synopsis of achieved objectives.
The general hypotheses, based on analogy as proposed above allows us to sketch
an initial, partial and gradual comparative image of the phenomenon of literary
emergence. I complete, thus, the first phase of comparative non-deductive inference,
which must then be followed by a second inductive phase, that is, experimental
verification, in which one will find facts that either confirm or refute the
theory. In both cases, new problems emerge -- to use the term in the most Popperian
epistemological sense of the word -- provided that a comparative hypothesis
is always found in a state of verification. In consequence, my next step is
dedicated to presenting a comparative research program on literary emergence.
The series proposed below is not in any way exhaustive; its function is to describe
and to orient.
16.1 Emergence and counterlanguage. Clearly, a comparative study
of literary emergence would be limited if it failed to contemplate the knowledge
that sociolinguistics could offer it -- for instance, the function carried out
by M.A.K. Halliday's so-called anti-languages in social counterspaces. The role
that diastratic, diatopic, and diaphasic variations play in literary emergence
should therefore be considered. It is worthwhile noting that theoretical comparative
studies seem to conceive emergence under the notion of immediacy, and in keeping
with the recent appearance of novelty. However, the analysis of anti-languages
allows us to scrutinize their appearance in "latent traditions," their
survival within the restrictive and constrictive forces of hegemony demanding
a more covert unfolding. The study of counterlanguage must also consider critically
phenomena which mainly concern postcolonial criticism, such as abrogation, appropriation
and interlanguage, analyzed by Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin
regarding literary linguas francas and Creole literary languages (see
also Lang) or what Jean-Marc Moura calls hétérolinguisme,
but we must question whether or not they are exclusive to postcolonial situations.
We must therefore enlarge the range of phenomena, which appear to distribute
along a spectrum between the end points of assimilation (hypercorrection, national
recentering) and desassimilation (self-translation, diagraphic works, linguistic
utopias). The interstitial notion of hybridity is implied, encompassing more
than just linguistics in the strict sense and exhibiting movement directly towards
genology. Finally, perhaps one of the most pressing aspects concerning the study
of the link between counterlanguage and literary emergence is to provide an
explanation for the apparent predominance of choosing the exophonic over the
endophonic option, at least if we consider the cartographies of literary emergence
currently available to us. Obviously, the explanation for this option lies in
the counteroffensive and explosive nature of work within the dominant language
itself, to the point that a work is often developed parasitically until it completely
distorts the hegemonic hierarchical structure, something which should be kept
in mind when dealing with what James C. Scott calls hidden registers, which
in turn coalesce with Mikhail Bakhtin's central ideas concerning carnavalesque
heteroglossia. In this regard, Kafka's Diaries, for example, deserve
special attention, as they reflect on the kleine Literaturen and address
the institutional and commercial dimension of literary reality, which goes a
long way towards explaining the exophonic option.
16.2 Emergence and présentativité. Durišin
defines présentativité as the documentation of reality
in all of its aspects by those literatures that have developed under the conditions
of colonial domination (61). We are dealing with a genologic and thematologic
aspect emphasized over and over by postcolonial criticism to the point of converting
it into a prominent interpretative and, thus, essentialist key. One of its most
commented-upon debates is between Fredric Jameson and Aijaz Ahmad concerning
the national allegories of Third World literatures. The theoretical framework
outlined above should favour a relocation of the analysis of présentativité
within emergent counterresponses in contrast to the silencing and exclusion
of practices, meanings, and values in the hegemonic cultural formation. Présentativité
is one way among others (nativism, idylism, and exoticism serve a similar function;
on this, see, e.g., Moura) of overcoming that silence, and in such a way that
certain social groups find their representation in literature. Through this
prism of reappropriation one should consider the pre-eminence of poetry in emerging
processes (in which other factors would also intervene such as editorial institutionalization
or the role of anthologies, scholarly journals, and literary magazines), autobiographical
forms, paying special attention to testimony, nostalgia for lost paradises,
appraisal of one's own semantic world, or resources such as compensation myths.
However, one should avoid limiting the interpretative keys to just one. Like
linguistic utopias, présentativité also can be mere fiction.
In this respect, for example Israeli autumn poetry, studied by Ziva Ben-Porat,
or monsoon poetry in Malaysia and Singapore, analyzed by Woon-Ping Chin Holaday,
comprise an effective antidote. In both cases, their analysis should not focus
entirely on intersystemic interference as the consequence of a repertoire's
weakness. Instead, it would be useful to consider the formalistic law of defamiliarization
or reflect on the so-called inability of an exophonic language in exploring
another reality.
16.3 Emergence and historiology. I verified the intimate link between
literary emergence, change, and evolution in the theoretical framework proposed
above. Now the need presents itself to consider the historiological problem
implicated by an emerging literature. This contrasts with the disregard with
which Western literary historiography has treated the phenomenon of emergence,
even for that phase which would be clearly emergent according to its narratological
constructions, such as medieval literature, an authentic semiotic zero, as Lotman
terms it ("Sobre la dinámica de la cultura" 194). Literary
historiography's lack of attention towards emergence phenomena stems from its
adherence to Darwin's model of linear development, centered in very monist literary
eras. Under this approach only the rupture between one era and another is perceptible
-- the latter simply replacing the former like in the great Marxist eras --
but not the rich internal dynamic where, as Guillén suggests, "the
continuity of certain components, the disappearance of others, the awakening
of forgotten possibilities, the swift irruption of some innovations or the retarded
impact of others" take place ("Cambio literario y múltiples
duraciones" 264-65). Thus, I propose to examine the processes of emergence
in light of George Kubler's "intermittent durations," which embrace
phenomena belonging to historico-cultural temporality, such as resurrections
(Durišin's notion of incorporation would be fitting here) and strong accelerations
(Durišin and Lotman's développement accéléré).
At the same time, we must wonder how literary historiography could represent
the various rhythms of a synchronic cross-section of the cultural dynamic, the
alternation of the arts in the management of the semiotic process, or the Eurocentristic
challenge in measuring literary time, which stresses spatial and temporal difference
in the Hegelian framework which lauds the realization of the absolute truth
as unlimited self-determination. A significant historiological problem also
arises from the selection not only of temporal models of emergence, but of plot
models as well, among which one might foresee parallels. Quite striking here
is Linda Hutcheon's discovery of a phenomenon by which plot tendencies of national
literary histories, with their tension between political progress and aesthetic
degeneration, have been adopted by minority groups to write the history of their
emergent expressions.
16.4 Emergence and (counter) spaces. The spatial dimension of emerging
literatures has been a constant reference throughout this paper, which makes
it thus a more than fitting subject to discuss here. At the beginning of my
paper I examine diverse cartographies of literary emergence, which pinpoint
this process in the Third World, or, to be more exact, within some areas --
those delimited by the economic terms emerging markets and emerging economies.
A Rostowian literary scale and an essentially intersystemic model of emergence
was derived from these positions: the emergence of a dependent excolonial system
in a metropolitan hegemonic backdrop. Beyond this intersystemic bias, it should
be noted at this time that these economic parallels are not those belonging
to the periphery but rather those of the semiperiphery of Wallerstein's world-economy,
that is to say, zones that dynamically meld processes of center and the periphery.
The semiperiphery exploits the periphery and is simultaneously exploited by
the center, to the point that the great reorganizations of world space happen
when the center is in a phase of recession, although these are limited reorganizations
since not all of the semiperiphery can abandon its condition. In light of this
affirmation, we could state that this is precisely the model of world literary
space. For example, is the Latin American boom not the result of the recession
of European literature or présentativité as a manifestation
of the exploitation of the periphery (the precolonial world, vernacular languages,
autochthonous literary traditions) at the hands of the semiperiphery (the postcolonial
world, exophonic languages, assimilated literary traditions)? To this I must
add an issue which is implied in the theoretical model presented above along
such Foucaultian lines as where there is power there is resitence, which leads
us to extend considerably the coordinates of emergence and, especially, to question
the essentialization of the submerged periphery, of the emerging semiperiphery,
and of the emerged center, something already foreseen by political geography
when it verifies that hegemony operates on a world as well as on a national
or local level. It is therefore fitting to assess a world distribution of dominant
and emerging cultural forms beginning with Durišin's interliterary communities
and interliterary centricisms. In addition, area-specific current proliferation
must be examined in greater depth. Consider John Friedmann's so-called world
cities, which, with their accumulation of wealth and internal pluralism, are
a privileged space for literary emergence.
17. In 1967 in Tunisia Michel Foucault wrote a brief essay titled "Des
espaces autres," the publication of which he did not authorize until 1984.
These other spaces are precisely the counterspaces generated by emerging discourses
which have been addressed herein, thus making an analysis of their typology
highly pertinent. For Foucault, those spaces that contradict other spaces can
be classified into heterotopias and utopias. Heterotopias are counterspaces,
real and effective places in which human behavior deviates from hegemonic spaces
and in which, consequently, heterochronia is projected. These heterotopias include,
for example, jails, psychiatric hospitals, and imperialistic colonies. In this
sense, one could affirm that throughout my paper I contemplate the diverse manifestations
of heterotopic literary emergence. Now, we should inquire as to the possibility
of utopic literary emergence, as long as the utopias are counterspaces, analogical
inversions, but without a real place in society. They are no less important
for emergence, since utopias embody the possibility of a new social order, which
replaces the previous hegemonic one (see Williams, "Social Darwinism")
and supposes a driving force behind emerging forms. In this respect, an analysis
of the utopic literary tradition reveals that of its two poles, the one which
has prevailed is that represented, for example, by H.G. Wells's The Time
Machine rather than Plato's Republic -- a good indicator of the
unpredictability of literary emergence (what other literature could possess
Wells's morlocks or Fritz Lang's workers?). One finds it difficult to imagine
utopic literatures when one takes into account the innocence of literary utopias.
If a concept demands the attention of such unrelated disciplines such as epistemology,
philosophy, biology, psychology, economy, sociology, and comparative literature,
to the point that it gives rise to a debate in which even those who doubt its
heuristic usefulness take part, I believe it is safe to say that we are dealing
with a phenomenon which goes beyond the limited spectrum of academic interests
and constitutes an authentic scholarly as well as scientific problem. This is
the case of emergence, which I hope to have demonstrated. Milan Kundera, in
an essay aptly titled "The Unloved Child of the Family," affirms that
"the concept [of the small nation] is not quantitative; it describes a
situation, a destiny: Small nations haven't the comfortable sense of being there
always, past and future ... faced with the arrogant ignorance of the large nations,
they see their existence perpetually threatened or called into question; for
their very existence is a question" (190). The same affirmation could be
made with respect to emerging literatures through a Kafkian reading, seeing
the kleine Literaturen in their connective role(s). Thus, it makes
sense to ask the following question: Is not this ontological insecurity of emerging
literature a sign of Comparative Literature's epistemological insecurity, whose
elusive object of study always waits to be discovered? Since this began with
Auerbach, it is not surprising that it should end now with Ernst Robert Curtius,
who affirmed that "interrogation is not the worst way of taking leave of
a subject" (445).
Note: The above paper represents partial results from the research project Historia
comparada de las literaturas: aplicaciones al dominio ibérico, funded
by the Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología: HUM2004-00314 and Xunta de
Galicia: PGIDIT05PXIC20405, Spain, and FEDER Funds, European Union.
*Translator's profile: Carla Dechant teaches English at the
Escuela Oficial de Idiomas in Santiago de Compostela and she is also a free-lance
translator and proofreader of academic and scientific texts. E-mail: <iacarla@usc.es>
*Translator's profile: Mark D. Wiersma is pursuing a doctorate
in literary theory and comparative literature at the University of Santiago
de Compostela. In his studies, Wiersma focuses on narrative issues stemming
from "metaconsciousness" prevalent in selected literary texts. E-mail:
<illyrian.dream@gmail.com>
Works Cited
Ahmad, Aijaz. "A retórica da alteridade de Jameson e a 'alegoría
nacional'." Trans. Clara Peñaranda Martínez and Manuel Outeiriño.
1986. A Trabe de Ouro 13 (1993): 31-51.
Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. The Empire Writes Back:
Theory and Practice in Post-colonial Literatures. London: Routledge, 1991.
Auerbach, Erich. "Philology and Weltliteratur." 1952. Trans. Maire
Said and Edward Said. Centennial Review 13 (1969): 1-17.
Ben-Porat, Ziva. "Represented Reality and Literary Models: European Autumn
on Israeli Soil." Acculturation. Ed. Eva Kushner and Milan V.
Dimic. Bern: Peter Lang, 1994. 117-23.
Bertalanffy, Ludwig von. Teoría general de los sistemas. Fundamentos,
desarrollo, aplicaciones. 1968. Trans. Juan Almela. México: Fondo
de Cultura Económica, 1993.
Blitz, David. Emergent Evolution: Qualitative Novelty and the Levels of
Reality. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1992.
Bourdieu, Pierre. Les Règles de l'art. Genèse et structure
du champ littéraire. Paris: Seuil, 1992.
Bunge, Mario. La investigación científica. Su estrategia y
filosofía. Trans. Manuel Sacristán. Ariel: Barcelona, 1976.
5th ed.
Bunge, Mario. Emergence and Convergence: Qualitative Novelty and the Unity
of Knowledge. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2003.
Curtius, Ernst Robert. "Remarks on the French Novel." 1950. Essays
on European Literature. Trans. Michael Kowal. Princeton: Princeton UP,
1972. 437-45.
Durišin, Dionýz. Communautés interlittéraires
spécifiques. Trans. Alena Anettová. Bratislava: Institut
de Littérature Mondiale, Academie Slovaque des Sciences, 1993.
Equipo Glifo. Diccionario de termos literarios. Santiago de Compostela:
Xunta de Galicia, Centro Ramón Piñeiro para a Investigación
en Humanidades, 2003. e-h.
Even-Zohar, Itamar. Polysystem Studies. Special Issue of Poetics
Today 11.1 (1990): 9-26.
Even-Zohar, Itamar. "Laws of Literary Interference." Polysystem
Studies. Special Issue of Poetics Today 11.1 (1990): 53-72.
Fabian, Johannes. Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object.
New York: Columbia UP, 1983.
Foucault, Michel. "Espacios diferentes." Obras esenciales.
1967. Trans. Ángel Gabilondo. Barcelona: Paidós, 1999. 431-41.
Friedmann, John. "The World City Hypothesis." Development and
Change 17 (1986): 69-83.
Galli Mastrodonato, Paola, ed. Ai confini dell'impero. Le letterature emergenti.
Roma: Vecchiarelli, [1996].
Godzich, Wlad. "Emergent Literature and the Field of Comparative Literature."
The Comparative Perspective on Literature: Approaches to Theory and Practice.
Ed. Clayton Koelb and Susan Noakes. New York: Cornell UP, 1988. 18-36.
Godzich, Wlad. Literaturas emergentes y Literatura Comparada. 1988.
Trans. Josep-Vicent Gavaldà. Valencia: Episteme, 1997.
González-Millán, Xoán. "Do nacionalismo literario
a unha literatura nacional. Hipóteses de traballo para un estudio institucional
da literatura galega." Anuario de estudios literarios galegos
(1994): 67-81.
Grassin, Jean-Marie. "Émergence." Dictionnaire Internationale
des Termes Littéraires / International Dictionary of Literary Terms
(2006): <http://www.ditl.info/>.
Grassin, Jean-Marie. "Introduction: The Problematics of Emergence in Comparative
Literary History." Littératures émergentes / Emerging
Literatures. Ed. Jean-Marie Grassin. Bern: Peter Lang, 1996. 5-16.
Grassin, Jean-Marie, ed. Littératures émergentes / Emerging
Literatures. Bern: Peter Lang, 1996.
Guillén, Claudio. "Cambio literario y múltiples duraciones."
Teorías de la historia literaria (Ensayos de Teoría).
Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1977. 249-81.
Guillén, Claudio. "Emerging Literatures: Critical Questionings of
a Historical Concept." Emerging Literatures. Ed. Reingard Nethersole.
Bern: Peter Lang, 1990. 1-23.
Guillén, Claudio. "Mundos en formación: los comienzos de
las literaturas nacionales." Múltiples moradas. Ensayo de Literatura
Comparada. By Claudio Barcelona: Tusquets, 1998. 299-335.
Halliday, M.A.K. "Anti-Languages." American Anthropologist
78.3 (1976): 570-84.
Hermans, Theo. Translation in Systems: Descriptive and Systemic Approaches
Explained. Manchester: St. Jerome, 1999.
Holaday, Woon-Ping Chin. "Hybrid Blooms: The Emergent Poetry in English
of Malaysia and Singapore." The Comparative Perspective on Literature:
Approaches to Theory and Practice. Ed. Clayton Koelb and Susan Noakes.
New York: Cornell UP, 1988. 130-46.
Horne, D. The Public Culture: An Argument with the Future. London:
Pluto, 1986.
Hutcheon, Linda. "Rethinking the National Model." Rethinking Literary
History: A Dialogue on Theory. Ed. Linda Hutcheon and Mario J. Valdés.
Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002. 3-49.
Jameson, Fredric. "A literatura do Terceiro Mundo na era do capitalismo
multinacional." 1986. Trans. María Otero Rodríguez. A
Trabe de Ouro 13 (1993): 11-30.
Kubler, George. The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things.
New Haven: Yale UP, 1962.
Kundera, Milan. Testaments Betrayed: An Essay in Nine Parts. 1996.
Trans. Linda Asher. New York: Perennial, 2001.
Lang, George. Entwisted Tongues: Comparative Creole Literature. Amsterdam:
Rodopi, 2000.
Lotman, Iuri M. "Sobre el papel de los factores casuales en la historia
de la cultura." La semiosfera. 1992. Trans. Desiderio Navarro.
Madrid: Universidade de València, 1996. 237-48.
Lotman, Iuri M. "Un modelo dinámico del sistema semiótico."
La semiosfera. 1974. Trans. Desiderio Navarro. Madrid: Universidade
de València, 1998. 63-80.
Lotman, Iuri M. "Sobre la reducción y el desenvolvimiento de los
sistemas sígnicos (sobre el problema "freudismo y culturología
semiótica." La semiosfera. 1974. Trans. Desiderio Navarro.
Madrid: Universidade de València, 1998. 231-38.
Lotman, Iuri M. Cultura y explosión. Lo previsible y lo imprevisible
en los procesos de cambio social. 1992. Trans. Delfina Muschietti. Barcelona:
Gedisa, 1999.
Lotman, Iuri M. "Sobre la dinámica de la cultura." La semiosfera.
1992. Trans. Desiderio Navarro. Madrid: Universidade de València, 2000.
194-213.
Maté de Castro, Víctor. "Capitalismos emergentes." (2006):
<http://www.ucm.es/info/eurotheo/diccionarioC.htm>.
Moura, Jean-Marc. Littératures francophones et théorie postcoloniale.
Paris: PU de France, 1999.
Nethersole, Reingard, ed. Emerging Literatures. Bern: Peter Lang, 1990.
Nogué Font, Joan, and Joan Vicente Rufí. Geopolítica,
identidad y globalización. Barcelona: Ariel, 2001.
Popper, Karl. "Scientific Reduction and the Essential Incompleteness of
All Science." The Open Universe: An Argument for Indeterminism.
Ed. W.W. Bartley. Totowa: Rowman & Littlefield, 1982. Vol. 3, 131-62.
Preminger, Alexand, and T.V.F. Brogan, eds. The New Princeton Encyclopedia
of Poetry and Poetics. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1993.
Scott, James C. Domination and the Arts of Resistance. Hidden Transcripts.
New Haven: Yale UP, 1990.
Steiner, George. "Extraterritorial." Extraterritorial. Ensayos
sobre literatura y la revolución lingüística. 1969.
Trans. Edgardo Russo. Madrid: Siruela, 2002. 17-24.
Taylor, Peter J. Political Geography: World Economy, Nation-state and Locality.
London: Longman, 1985.
Tötösy de Zepetnek, Steven. Comparative Literature: Theory, Method,
Application. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998.
Villanueva, Darío. "Pluralismo crítico y recepción
literaria." Avances en Teoría de la Literatura.... Santiago
de Compostela: U de Santiago de Compostela, 1994. 11-34.
Villanueva, Darío. Teorías del realismo literario. Madrid:
Biblioteca Nueva, 2004. 2nd ed.
Wallerstein, Immanuel. The Modern World-System. New York: Academic
P, 1974-1989. 3 vols.
Wallerstein, Immanuel. Geopolitics and Geoculture: Essays on the Changing
World-System. 1991. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001.
Williams, Raymond. Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1977.
Williams, Raymond. "Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory."
Problems in Materialism and Culture. By Raymond Williams. 1973. London:
Verso, 1980. 31-49.
Williams, Raymond. "Social Darwinism." Problems in Materialism
and Culture. By Raymond Williams. 1973. London: Verso, 1980. 86-102.