11 ½ Teses Sobre O Conceito de Literatura-Mundial

Abstract

World-Literature is an idea whose time should have arrived already, as Goethe proclaimed, but that remains forever in becoming. This brief essay attempts an intervention on actual debates around the concept of World-Literature, based on the work developed by the Warwick Research Collective (WReC) in 2015. As such, it follows on from Imannuel Wallerstein’s World-Systems Theory, which it adapts to the literary field with reference to the work of Franco Moretti. The basic definition of World-Literature that is here proposed differs radically from other perspectives as it focuses on the literature of the modern capitalist system. In an even more focused view, this essay proposes that the study of World-Literature be seen as a form of resistance and a critical questioning of the imagination of the center