Peripheral Literatures and the History of Capitalism: An Introduction

Abstract

The introduction argues for rethinking the problem of historical transition under capitalism from the vantage point of peripheral literatures. The understanding of the relationships between such transition and literary form, and the periodizing schemas employed to make sense of them, has largely been limited to heartlands of accumulation in Western Europe and North America. Much less has been written about how literatures from the rest of the world have expressed transitions to and within this global, if internally variegated and uneven, system. This introduction asks how literature from the world's peripheries and semiperipheries have written the history of capitalism.