Explaining variations in scale shifting: The role of spatiality, topography and infrastructure in global literary fields

Abstract

What makes it possible for authors from what Pascale Casanova called “literarily impoverished” nations to scale shift and gain recognition in the global literary world? While prior scholarship offers many answers, it does not pay sufficient attention to the characteristics of the spaces within which literary circulation takes place. This article focuses on the spatial parameters and properties of literary circulation. Using the case of Lebanon, I argue for the need to (1) empirically determine the spaces and scales of circulation, (2) investigate the role of trans-regional fields in analyses of literary circulation, and (3) examine the ways in which the topographical properties of fields and the infrastructures which constitute them influence scale shifting.