Pondering Along with Ranjan Ghosh and J. Hillis Miller's Thinking Literature across Continents

Abstract

Abstract This context review/response article builds on and extends the insights afforded by Ranjan Ghosh and J. Hillis Miller's rich field of terrain they till in their coauthored Thinking Literature across Continents (2016). This article finds creative inspiration in their insights that merit a careful look and assessment in order to consider our conditions of possibility for a rejuvenated culture of learning and of the book in a hyper-mediatized and digitized twenty first century. I argue that Ghosh and Miller's dynamic calls for interdisciplinarity, and for a larger sense of the genuinely critical and creative, would work well in tandem with a broader sense of what constitutes literature, and of how we can deploy these cultural forms for forms of readerly and cultural literacy that would enable cultural and economic democracy to thrive. I argue that as a form of universality, literature merits this sort of caretaking and cultivation for our shared and collective possible futures and forms of critical citizenship.