Molly Martin
Innovations in literary studies over the past decades, potentially but not necessarily brought about as a response to the rise of Global Studies, allow one to access a more global orientation through a number of commonly practiced methods: one can focus on the translation of texts into multiple languages, or consider the circulation and dissemination of literature around the world; a syllabus can include the study of minor authors, and it can accommodate the pairing of literatures from diverse global traditions, to name only a few.
To expand this list, I would like to discuss an approach that is less geographic in orientation, but centers instead on the temporal system within which literature exists. This temporal approach to the study of literature draws predominantly from the theory of Claudio Guillén, who aligns the temporal dimensions of the literary world with historical time, which is not linear but intermittent and variable in essence. According to Guillén, “Literary systems evolve in a very special manner which is characterized by the continuity of certain components, the disappearance of others, the revival of forgotten possibilities, the quick irruption of new ones, or the delayed impact of still other innovations.”1 Thus we must conceive of a distinctive temporality when we think of the “life span” of a work of literature—one that is neither linear nor constant, but replete with interruptions and delays in historical time.
Guillén borrows from George Kubler when he denotes the peculiar discontinuities of cultural time through the concept of the “intermittent duration” of a work of art. One can never say an art object is finished, complete, or even dead. On the contrary, “in the literary field, a closed series in the past can always become an open-ended sequence at a later point in time.”2 Each time a work of literature from the past comes into the present—as it is destined to do—it is given a new duration. And since we can never know when this will happen again—because the temporal pattern is inherently varied—works of literature exist on an intermittent continuum defined by infinite periods of “life” and “death”. Removing the temporal center of literary history necessarily implicates notions of geographical stability; to conceive of literature within all of time requires a coterminous expansion of space. In this manner, the study of literature can be globalized by taking into consideration the variable and discordant patterns of literary temporality. To follow the historical reach of a work of literature is to perforce trace that literature’s global extension.
An approach to literature that considers a work’s renascences as an inexorable feature of the text’s intermittent existence, rather than it’s discardable “afterlife”, exposes not only the dynamism of the world’s literary histories but also underscores the global extension of literature. It also situates literature in a discursive context and widens the parameters for interpretation. Why has a work reemerged? What transformations have taken place, and for what purposes? Because the pattern of literary history is variable, literary reemergence must be understood as a culturally determined process, raising lines of inquiry that rely on a cross-section of disciplines, theories, and methods to resolve.
This orientation to literature, with its historical and geographic reach and interdisciplinary scope, is ill-suited for existing curricular structures that rely on chronological limits and geographical boundaries in course design. In contrast, the study of literature from the perspective of its history that is shaped by variances, discontinuities
and interruptions could offer an intriguing addendum to the field of Global Studies, with its emphasis on the concept of “flow”. Perhaps instead of thinking of how Global Studies can inflect a humanities pedagogy, we might want to consider how literary studies may contribute to, and even enhance, the field of Global Studies.
1 Claudio Guillén, “Literary Change and Multiple Duration,” Comparative Literature Studies 14.2 (1977): 107-108.
2 Ibid, 108.