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Planetary Figurations: Intensive Genre in World Literature

Mussgnug, F; (2018) Planetary Figurations: Intensive Genre in World Literature. Modern Languages Open , 1 (22) pp. 1-12. 10.3828/mlo.v0i0.204. Green open access

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Abstract

This article surveys the growing attention to genre in the works of Wai Chee Dimock, Rosi Braidotti, Lauren Berlant and Rita Felski, among others. I argue that attention to transnational genres, far from valorising global sameness, offers a way to mark cultural difference, relationality and the specific knowledge of nationally and locally embedded traditions. The influx of new voices and visions, I contend, has changed our view of what literature is and does, moving away from the notion of genre as a classificatory system and towards a new idiom centred on affect, flux and creative invention. The constitutive openness of global figurations lies at the root of our current fascination with genre theory, especially in debates about world literature. Relationality and futurity, I suggest, are what makes genre theory especially relevant to the cultural-discursive matrix of planetarity, which is similarly concerned with processes of becoming.

Type: Article
Title: Planetary Figurations: Intensive Genre in World Literature
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.3828/mlo.v0i0.204
Publisher version: http://doi.org/10.3828/mlo.v0i0.204
Language: English
Additional information: © 2018 The Author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities > SELCS
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10070375
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