Rewording the World or Reworlding the Word? Some Postcolonial Perspectives on the “World” of World Literature

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There appears to be no consensus as yet on the meaning of the term “world” in “world literature”. Over the last few years, “world” has indeed been the object of a multitude of responses and readings, which markedly vary according to researchers’ academic backgrounds and theoretical vantage points. How then is the “world” of “world literature” to be apprehended? Combining linguistics-informed and close-reading methods, the present essay seeks to shed light on a notional issue that has especially divided world and postcolonial literary scholars in recent times. More precisely, it will be argued that “world” in the phrase “world literature” has begun to undergo a linguistic process of re-semanticization, whereby this lexical item has come to encode, and be imbued with, values central to the postcolonial agenda – thus providing the postcolonial cause with fresh impetus in the twenty-first century.