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Kullberg, C. & Watson, D. (2022). Introduction: Theorizing the vernacular. In: Vernaculars in an Age of World Literatures 2022: (pp. 1-24). London: Bloomsbury Academic
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Introduction: Theorizing the vernacular
2022 (English)In: Vernaculars in an Age of World Literatures 2022, London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022, p. 1-24Chapter in book (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

Our argument here is that it is not too late for the vernacular, which is to say we should neither view it solely as a residual formation that is fading away quickly, nor solely associate it with often-reactionary, populist political cultures. On the contrary, given the precarious historical moment that we now experience to various degrees of acuteness, critical engagements with literature in the world—what is generally referred to as world literature—prompts a theorization of the vernacular. Our time, shaped by a long century of decolonization, new imperial formations, and emergent new technologies, is indeed an age that requires a different take on the vernacular. We cannot, as was arguably the case when Goethe famously coined the notion of world literature, take the West, or the “canon” or even print culture and the world market as points of departure for thinking literature in the world. Climate crises, rising economic inequalities, platform capitalism, growing populisms and activisms spur new attention to the active role of the local, the indigenous, the minor, and the peripheral in international literary flows and exchanges. This is where our volume wants to make a contribution by rethinking the vernacular through its various practices, functions, and meanings. The case studies brought together here explore the vernacular in different places, cultures, and historical moments. By means of different methodologies from literary studies, anthropology, linguistics, and history of ideas, they testify that the vernacular is not just one thing. It is always plural and shifting. And as a protean category, the vernacular should not be dismissed too quickly as if we always already know what it signifies, but should instead be rethought and explored time and time again for what it tells us about the variegated, uneven globe we inhabit and its cultures.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022
Keywords
Vernaculars, world literature, literature and nation state, minor literatures, literature and language
National Category
General Literature Studies
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-463274 (URN)10.5040/9781501374081.ch-00I (DOI)978-1-5013-7405-0 (ISBN)978-1-5013-7408-1 (ISBN)978-1-5013-7407-4 (ISBN)
Funder
Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, M15-0343:1
Available from: 2022-01-07 Created: 2022-01-07 Last updated: 2022-03-02Bibliographically approved
Watson, D. (2022). Specters of the vernacular: Neoliberalism, world literature, and Marlon James's A Brief History of Seven Killings . In: Christina Kullberg & David Watson (Ed.), Vernaculars in an Age of World Literatures: (pp. 203-222). New York; London; Dublin: Bloomsbury Academic
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Specters of the vernacular: Neoliberalism, world literature, and Marlon James's A Brief History of Seven Killings 
2022 (English)In: Vernaculars in an Age of World Literatures / [ed] Christina Kullberg & David Watson, New York; London; Dublin: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022, p. 203-222Chapter in book (Other academic)
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
New York; London; Dublin: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022
Series
Cosmopolitan–Vernacular Dynamics in World Literatures
National Category
Specific Literatures
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-463275 (URN)10.5040/9781501374081.ch-008 (DOI)978-1-5013-7405-0 (ISBN)978-1-5013-7407-4 (ISBN)978-1-5013-7406-7 (ISBN)
Funder
Riksbankens Jubileumsfond
Available from: 2022-01-07 Created: 2022-01-07 Last updated: 2022-11-03Bibliographically approved
Kullberg, C. & Watson, D. (Eds.). (2022). Vernaculars in an Age of World Literatures. London: Bloomsbury Academic
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Vernaculars in an Age of World Literatures
2022 (English)Collection (editor) (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

This open access book complicates and develops the notion of the vernacular. Understood in the linguistic sense as well as an element of the local, the vernacular facilitates the exploration of local and global dynamics. Through exploring the unexamined active role of the local, the indigenous, and the periphery in international literary exchanges, this volume argues that a coherent theorization of the vernacular will enable us to do so.

The essays in Vernaculars in an Age of World Literatures present new critical approaches in the debate on world literature, which has given priority to cosmopolitan movements, global circulation of literatures, and metropolitan centers. In nine case studies, approaching narratives from the long 20th century from more or less marginal contexts-such as the Francophone Chinese diaspora, multilingual regions in Spain, West Africa, and the Caribbean-the volume offers theoretical and methodological ways of putting the concept of the vernacular in practice and demonstrates how vernaculars operate within different literary, critical, cultural, and political circumstances.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022. p. 280
Series
Cosmopolitan-Vernacular Dynamics in World Literature ; 4
Keywords
world literature, cosmopolitanism, vernaculars, literary history, literature and languages
National Category
General Literature Studies
Research subject
Literature
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-463273 (URN)10.5040/9781501374081 (DOI)9781501374050 (ISBN)9781501374067 (ISBN)9781501374074 (ISBN)
Funder
Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, M15-0343:1
Available from: 2022-01-07 Created: 2022-01-07 Last updated: 2023-01-20Bibliographically approved
Watson, D. (2020). USA: Litersary Worlds--Locations and Orientations. In: Stefan Helgesson, Birgit Neumann, and Gabriele Rippl (Ed.), Handbook of Anglophone World Literatures: (pp. 333-354). Walter de Gruyter
Open this publication in new window or tab >>USA: Litersary Worlds--Locations and Orientations
2020 (English)In: Handbook of Anglophone World Literatures / [ed] Stefan Helgesson, Birgit Neumann, and Gabriele Rippl, Walter de Gruyter, 2020, p. 333-354Chapter in book (Refereed)
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Walter de Gruyter, 2020
National Category
Specific Literatures
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-431431 (URN)978-3-11-058084-6 (ISBN)
Available from: 2021-01-14 Created: 2021-01-14 Last updated: 2021-09-17Bibliographically approved
Watson, D. (2019). Failing States, Human (In)Security, and the American World Novel. New Global Studies, 13(1), 80-101
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Failing States, Human (In)Security, and the American World Novel
2019 (English)In: New Global Studies, E-ISSN 1940-0004, Vol. 13, no 1, p. 80-101Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

As a growing number of contemporary American novelists take the world and its socio-cultural and geopolitical complexity as their subject matter, the contemporary novel's form and sense of worldliness are shifting. Twenty-first century US fiction challenges normative models of the world proposed by theories of cosmopolitan relationality by projecting fragile worlds of strife and trauma, in which violence accompanies geopolitical turbulence. In these novels, discourses around human security-the everyday security needs of vulnerable populations-are increasingly prominent. Accordingly, contemporary US fiction often incorporates within its geopolitical imaginary such issues as human rights, humanitarian interventions, development, and how life is disabled by prejudice, civil war, scarcity, and health or other crises. In this essay, I range across a number of works by contemporary American novelists such as Dave Eggers, Jennifer Egan, Denis Johnson, Dana Spiotta, and Bob Shacochis in which state failures as well as human and geopolitical security concerns impact on the form given to the world by these novelists. In their novels, narratives concerning human security as well as threats to geopolitical stability produce transnational geographies in which global interconnections and circulation intensify feelings of insecurity.

Keywords
US fiction, world novel, human security, state failure, humanitarian interventions
National Category
Specific Literatures
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-383877 (URN)10.1515/ngs-2019-0005 (DOI)000466571400005 ()
Available from: 2019-06-12 Created: 2019-06-12 Last updated: 2020-12-03Bibliographically approved
Watson, D. (2019). Securing Neoliberalism: The Contingencies of Contemporary US fiction. In: David Rudrum, Ridvan Askin & Frida Beckman (Ed.), New Directions in Philosophy and Literature: (pp. 429-449). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Securing Neoliberalism: The Contingencies of Contemporary US fiction
2019 (English)In: New Directions in Philosophy and Literature / [ed] David Rudrum, Ridvan Askin & Frida Beckman, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019, p. 429-449Chapter in book (Refereed)
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019
National Category
Specific Literatures
Research subject
English
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-401287 (URN)9781474449144 (ISBN)9781474449175 (ISBN)9781474449168 (ISBN)
Available from: 2020-01-07 Created: 2020-01-07 Last updated: 2020-05-18Bibliographically approved
Watson, D. (2018). Europe. In: Kevin J. Hayes (Ed.), Herman Melville in Context: (pp. 55-63). Cambridge University Press
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Europe
2018 (English)In: Herman Melville in Context / [ed] Kevin J. Hayes, Cambridge University Press, 2018, p. 55-63Chapter in book (Refereed)
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Cambridge University Press, 2018
National Category
Specific Literatures
Research subject
English
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-358285 (URN)9781316755204 (ISBN)
Available from: 2018-08-27 Created: 2018-08-27 Last updated: 2018-12-19Bibliographically approved
Watson, D. (2018). "The Original Romance of America": Transnational Networks in Theodore Parker's American Literary History. In: Helgesson, Stefan;Mörte Alling, Annika; Lindqvist, Yvonne; Wulff, Helena (Ed.), World Literatures: Exploring the Cosmopolitan--Vernacular Exchange (pp. 59-69). Stockholm: Stockholm University Press
Open this publication in new window or tab >>"The Original Romance of America": Transnational Networks in Theodore Parker's American Literary History
2018 (English)In: World Literatures: Exploring the Cosmopolitan--Vernacular Exchange / [ed] Helgesson, Stefan;Mörte Alling, Annika; Lindqvist, Yvonne; Wulff, Helena, Stockholm: Stockholm University Press, 2018, p. 59-69Chapter in book (Refereed)
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Stockholm: Stockholm University Press, 2018
Series
Stockholm English studies, ISSN 2002-0163 ; 3
National Category
General Literature Studies
Research subject
English
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-372182 (URN)978-91-7635-079-9 (ISBN)
Available from: 2019-01-06 Created: 2019-01-06 Last updated: 2019-09-13Bibliographically approved
Watson, D. (2017). Beautiful Walls: A Response to Johannes Voelz. American Literary History, 29(3), 625-628
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Beautiful Walls: A Response to Johannes Voelz
2017 (English)In: American Literary History, ISSN 0896-7148, E-ISSN 1468-4365, Vol. 29, no 3, p. 625-628Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

This essay offers a brief response to Johannes Voelz’s call for an engagement with the aesthetics of security and, in particular, insecurity. It raises the question of whether there exists a co-constitutive relationship between the politics and practices of security and its aesthetics, and, more broadly, seeks to identify some of the questions and areas of investigation that might result from a literary study of security and securitization.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Oxford University Press, 2017
National Category
General Literature Studies
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-335632 (URN)10.1093/alh/ajx015 (DOI)000409092200011 ()
Available from: 2017-12-12 Created: 2017-12-12 Last updated: 2017-12-12Bibliographically approved
Watson, D. (2017). Derivative Creativity: The Financialization of the Contemporary American Novel. European Journal of English Studies, 21(1), 93-105
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Derivative Creativity: The Financialization of the Contemporary American Novel
2017 (English)In: European Journal of English Studies, ISSN 1382-5577, E-ISSN 1744-4233, Vol. 21, no 1, p. 93-105Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

This article offers a critical analysis of financialisation as a conceptual category for making sense of contemporary American fiction. Examining the rise of the figure of the creative entrepreneur as well as a range of contemporary fiction, the author argues that, to make sense of these developments and texts, we need to attend to how they reproduce the logic of finance, and in particular that of the financial instrument of the derivative. Like the financial derivative, the novels the author examines are future-oriented: they calculate and speculate on the ways they feed forward into new iterations and media. In addition, the texts and their authors are embedded within entrepreneurial networks within which different fields and competencies are brought into relation with one another. Through these conjunctures, the logic of finance becomes that of the contemporary novel.

Keywords
Financialisation, derivative, entrepreneurship, creativity, contemporary novel
National Category
Specific Literatures
Research subject
English
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-317115 (URN)10.1080/13825577.2016.1274545 (DOI)000396175700007 ()
Available from: 2017-03-10 Created: 2017-03-10 Last updated: 2017-11-29Bibliographically approved
Projects
Locating the Ends of United States Imperialism [2009-01644_VR]; Uppsala UniversityCultures of Security Symposium [F14-1301:1_RJ]; Uppsala University
Organisations
Identifiers
ORCID iD: ORCID iD iconorcid.org/0000-0001-8634-7870

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