Planetarity (Friedman)

Planetarity: Musing Modernist Studies

Susan Stanford Friedman

Modernism/modernity, Volume 17, Number 3, September 2010,pp. 471-499 (Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press

For additional information about this article

Access Provided by University of Glasgow Library at 08/23/11 3:40PM GMT

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/mod/summary/v017/17.3.friedman.html

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/mod/summary/v017/17.3.friedman.html

modernism / modernity

volume seventeen, number

three, pp 471–499. ©

2010 the johns hopkins

university press

Planetarity: Musing Modernist Studies

Susan Stanford Friedman

La modernité, c’est quoi? Modernity, what is it? Imagine a polylogue of reflections on this question. [fig. 1]1

Susan Stanford

Friedman teaches

at the University of

Wisconsin-Madison.

She has published

extensively on global

modernisms, and she

received the Wayne

C. Booth Award for

Lifetime Achievement

in Narrative Studies in

2010. She is the Second

Vice-President of the

Modernist Studies As-

sociation.

Fig. 1. Anupam Basu. Scripts of Modernity, 2009.

• ModernityisEurope’sEnlightenment,thebreakfromre-ligious hegemonies and the spread of science, technology, and cosmopolitan ideals of freedom and democracy.

• Ilajutiawonoy-ibomuwasiileawoneniadudu,imunisinandimuleruloda,atiawonorileedetikotoorara;orileedetorijakujakurederederanran,opolopoijobal’onkunalotun losi.

[Modernity isEurope’s brutal colonialismbuilt on thesystematicenslavementofAfricans,arbitraryandimposednation-state boundaries, and the formation ofmodern

M O D E R N I S M / m o d e r n i t y

472 African identities amidst the legacies of corruption and failed states.] Translated fromYoruba.

•

[Modernity isBengal’sRenaissance, its self-critique and self-realization thatemerges in the nineteenth century out of its struggle against British colonialism, notonlyasBengalis,butasIndians.]TranslatedfromBengali.

• LamodernidadenLatinoamericaeselmestizaje,productodeunamezclaex-cepcionaldeculturascolonizadorasycolonizadas;unmestizajeatrapadoentrela hegemonía europea y la norteamericana.

[ModernityisLatinAmerica’smétissage,itsparticularmixtureofcolonizingandcolonizedcultures,caughtbetweenEuropeanandNorthAmericanhegemonies.]Translated from Spanish.

•

[ModernityisChina’sprojectforthefuture,movingbeyondthebackwardnessof the past and the humiliations of foreign domination, reasserting the centrality ofitsfive-thousandyearcivilizationasamoral,globalforce.]TranslatedfromChinese.

•

[ModernityistheArabworld’srebirthoftheoldinformedbyreligiousdiscourse,Arabhumanism,scientificprogress,therationalismofijtihad, and creative trans-formation rather than conformity to a stagnant turath (heritage).] Translated from Arabic.

•

[ModernityisIndianIndependence,bornofBritishrule,bathedinthebloodofPartition,andgrowingastheworld’slargestdemocracyandatechnologicalpowerhouse.] Translated from Hindi.

FRIEDMAN / musing modernist studies

473Modernity, of course, has no single meaning, not even in one location. This poly-logue—constructed collaborativelywith colleagues at theUniversity ofWisconsin-Madison—voicesparticularviewsshapedbydifferentplanetarypositionalities.2Glob-allyandlocally,modernityappearsinfinitelyexpandable.Listeningtothesediversevoices,readingtheirscripts,Idespair—especiallyforthenewscholarjustenteringthefieldofdreams,aTowerofBabelwithtoomanylevelstoclimb;butalsofortheolderscholar,trainedintheoldmoderniststudies:vertigooutonalimb,whirledupintoavortexofthenew.YetIalsorejoice.Changeiswhatdrewmetomodernisminthebeginning.Whyshoulditossify?Whyshouldthefluidfreezeover,theundecid-ablebecomedecided?

All that is solid melts into air.3Weknowthat.Whyshouldwewantastabilityforthefieldthatthemoderniststhemselvesrebelledagainst?Caughtinthepolylogue,weareinthethickofthings.Atthelevelofscholarshipandteachingweinhabitwhatitiswestudy.AsW.B.Yeatsasks,“Howcanweknowthedancerfromthedance?”4 Weareparticipatinginwhatwestudy,andweshouldnotbeapologeticaboutit.Thisis a planetary epistemology of modernity, of modernism.5

The New Modernist Studies: Expansion and Containment

Intheir2008overviewofthe“new”moderniststudiesinPMLA Douglas Mao and RebeccaL.Walkowitzcharacterizethefield’sexpansionsalongthreemajoraxes—thetemporal,horizontal,andvertical,bywhichtheymeanthegrowinghistoricalandgeographicalreachofmoderniststudiesaswellasthedissolutionofdivisionsbetweenhigh and low art and culture.6JenniferWickehasdubbedthefield’smakingitselfnewaformofrebranding,acommodificationofthefieldthatensuresourowncomplicityinthelogicofglobalization.7 In Disciplining Modernism, PamelaL.Caughieaskswhethermodernismcanorshouldbecontainedandifso,whatwouldbetheethics/politicsofsuch“disciplining”?8Wewonder,havethefield’sboundariesbecomesoboundlessas to incorporate everything and thus lose all definitional cogency or analytic utility? Doesthisrebrandingexhibitimperialambitionstocolonizeotherfields?Oristhisnewplanetaryreachanunravelingoffoundationalhierarchies?Modernism,likemodernity,exceedsdefinitionalanddisciplinarylimitations.Andyet,thesetermsrequiresomesetofmeaningstoprovideanyfunctionaluse.Theconjunctionoftheneedforlimitsandtheirfailuretocontaincharacterizesmoderniststudiestoday,recapitulatingthelogicofmodernism/modernityitself.AsGarryLeonardsuggests,modernism/modernityisliketheinternalcombustionengine:bothexhibitanendlesslyrecurringdynamicofexplosionandcontainment.Thelogicofmodernityfollowsthehydraulicsofpressureandexplosiverelease;containmentandthenmovement.9

Beyond Anxiety and the Comfort Zone

Thereisapalpableanxietypervadingmoderniststudies,accordingtoStephenRoss,ameta-criticalangstaboutthenatureofthefieldthatmanifestsinuncannyattempts


474 todefinemodernismand“makeitnew,”therebycreatinganethicallyunjustifiableneed for ourselves as a professorial elite.10Butaretreatintothecomfortzoneofamoderniststudiesbasedonlatenineteenth-earlytwentiethcentury“highmodernist”experimentationinEuropeandtheU.S.,isneitherdesirablenorpossible.Thecatisalreadyoutofthebag.Andyet,thedangerofanexpansionistmodernismlapsingintomeaninglessnessorcolonizinggesturesisreal.Tonavigatebetweentheseextremes,Iadvocateatransformational planetary epis-

temologyratherthanamerelyexpansionistoradditiveone,onethatbuildsonthefar-reachingimplicationsofthelinkageofmodernismwithmodernity.Thislink,reflectedin the title of theModernist StudiesAssociation’s journal,Modernism/Modernity, mightseemsoobviousbynowastobeunworthyofnote.Butitwasn’talwaysso.Inthe early days of the field, modernism was understood primarily in formalist terms as alooseaffiliationofmovementscoalescingaroundcertainaestheticrebellions,styles,and philosophical principles and resisting the aesthetics of immediate precursors in the artsandliteratureofso-called“high”culture.11Curiously,thesubstantivelinkbetweenmodernismandmodernityappeared inMalcolmBradburyandJamesMcFarlane’sintroduction to their 1976 volume, Modernism. They wrote:

Modernism is the one art that responds to the scenario of our chaos. It is the art con-sequentonHeisenberg’s ‘Uncertaintyprinciple’,of thedestructionofcivilizationandreasonintheFirstWorldWar,oftheworldchangedandreinterruptedbyMarx,Freud,andDarwin,ofcapitalismandconstantindustrialacceleration,ofexistentialexposuretomeaninglessnessorabsurdity.12

Inspiteoftheirbook’slimitedcanon,theseedwassownforaradicaldeparturefromaestheticism as the definitional foundation for modernism. Modernism,formany,becameareflectionofandengagementwithawidespectrum

ofhistoricalchanges,includingintensifiedandalienatingurbanization;thecataclysmsofworldwarandtechnologicalprogressrunamok;theriseandfallofEuropeanempires;changinggender,class,andracerelations;andtechnologicalinventionsthatradicallychangedthenatureofeverydaylife,work,mobility,andcommunication.Oncemo-dernitybecamethedefiningcauseofaestheticengagementswithit,thedooropenedto thinkingabout thespecificconditionsofmodernity fordifferentgenders, races,sexualities,nations,andsoforth.Modernitybecamemodernities,apluralizationthatspawned a plurality of modernisms and the circulations among them. Toresistthedefinitionalexpansionsinmoderniststudiesistofightmodernism’s

constitutivelinkwithmodernity.Coulditbethattheanxietiesaboutthegeohistoricalandgenericexpansionofmoderniststudiesrepresentsanuncannydesiretore-establishaparticularearly twentieth-centuryWesternaesthetic styleas thesina qua non of modernism?Whatistheethicsofthatinterminablyrepeatedcomfortzone?Howarewetobreaktheholdoftheoldmodernistmold?Thatisthequestion,ifwewanttofoster a planetary modernist studies.


475Thirteenwaysoflookingatablackbird.13Thirteenwaysoflookingattheintercon-nectionsofmodernismslashmodernity.ThepointofWallaceStevens’siconicpoem—likethepointofCubism—isepistemological:thatseeingismulti-faceted;thatwhatisseenmustbeseenfrommultiplepointsofview.Holditup.Walkaroundit.Mullonitsmultiplicities.Listentootherswhoholditup,walkaroundit,mullonitsmultiplicities.Resistfixity,finality,singleperspectives.

Blackbird One: The Slash—Modernism/Modernity

Interrogate the slash! A planetary epistemology in modernist studies beginsbylookingatthemeaningsembeddedinthatslashbetweenmodernism/modernity.Theslashbothconnectsandseparates,itistheparadoxofallborders.Manyregularlyassumethatmodernismmirrors, reflects, reacts, or responds to modernity—as if the historical condition of modernity precedes the aesthetic response to it, as if modernismcomesbelatedlyastheavant-gardeofdissolvingepis-temological and political hegemonies. I want to suggest however, a simultaneityofeffectsandpractices.Ithinkweshouldstoppositing

modernismasmodernity’sself-reflexiveother,itssymptomaticreactionformation,itsoppositional consciousness.

Instead, I suggest we regard modernism in its different geohistorical locations and periods as a powerful domain within a particular modernity, not something outside ofit,causedbyit,orrespondingbelatedlytoit.Fromthisperspective,modernismis a force effecting change as much as it intersects other domains of change. Thus, I amsuggestingthatwetreatmodernismasthedomainofcreativeexpressivitywithin modernity’sdynamicofrapidchange,adomainthatinteractswiththeotherarenasof rupture such as technology, trade, migration, state formation, societal institutions, and so forth. Theslashbetweenmodernity/modernismimpliesasimultaneity,butalsoadistinc-

tion;aconnection,butalsoaseparation.Modernismisapartofmodernity,apartthatiscenteredinmodernity’saestheticdimension,whichisdistinctfromotherdimen-sionsbutnotseparatefromthem.Thoughinterlockedwithinstitutionaloreconomicforces,forexample,modernism’sexpressivedomainisaproductofparticularlyhumanagenciesinthemediaofthecreative,theaesthetic,andtherepresentational.Focusedon the contradictions of the slash, this approach opens doorways to seeing how the aesthetic interacts with other arenas of change. It also empowers a planetary approach tomodernismthatbreakstheAnglo-Europeanholdonthefield.Everymodernityhasits distinctive modernism.

Selena Beckman-

Harned. Thirteen

Blackbirds.


476 Blackbird Two: A Confession

Imustconfess,however,tosomeanxietiesthatIhavenotyetre-solved. The power of those early concepts of modernism as the crisis of aesthetic representation, with a repudiation of nineteenth-century realism, remains very strong within me. It is one thing to claim, as I have,thattextslikeTayebSalih’sSeason of Migration to the North (1966)andArundhatiRoy’sThe God of Small Things (1997) are “modernist,”definingapostcolonialmodernismbothinterlockedwithandyetdistinctfromEuro-Americanmodernism.14 The for-malistexperimentalismofthesetextsmakesthemphilosophically,psychologically, and aesthetically attuned towriters likeConrad,Joyce,Woolf,andFaulkner,howeverdifferenttheirmodernities.

It’sanotherthingentirelyformetomakesuchaclaimaboutanovellikeBrick Lane (2003), MonicaAli’spredominantlyrealistnovelofBangladeshimigrationtoLondon.Brick LanedeliberatelyechoesUlysses and Mrs. Dalloway,embedsepistolarynarra-tivesfromLondonandBangladesh,anddealscentrallywithwhatmigrationscholarNikosPapastergiadis calls “the restless trajectoriesofmodernity,” thedialogic andcontrapuntalpsychologiescharacterizingthe“turbulenceofmigration.”15 But is Brick Lanea“modernistnovel”?I’mcaughtinaconundrumofmyownmaking—myinsistenceonaplanetaryap-

proachtomodernism,alongsidemyanxietyattheimplicationsofitsscope.Thisisaconfession.IfindithardtocallanovellikeBrick Lane“modernist.”ButIthinkthisismyproblem,nottheproblemofthemorecapaciousunderstandingofmodernismastheexpressivedomainofmodernityIproposedearlier.Ithinkthestruggleswithinthefieldareembeddedinmypsyche.Theanxietyisthere,butI’mnotproudofit.Itneedstobeworkedthrough,asaholdoverfromthepast.That’swhatitmeanstoleavethecomfortzone.

Blackbird Three: Eurocentrism’s Hold

Aplanetaryepistemologyofmodernism/modernitymustbreakthemoldofEurocentrism.“Eurocentrism,”writesAamirMufti,is “an epistemological problem” (“GlobalCorporatism,” 493).Epistemologysignifieswaysofknowingandembedsthepoliticalquestionsofwhoisdoingtheknowing,forwhomknowledgeisproduced,howknowledgeisdeployed,andwhobenefitsfromthatdeployment.Eurocentrism,ofcourse,isnottheonlycentrismonearth—all societies construct narratives of their own centrality, exceptionalism,andworldviewthroughwhichothersareviewedand against which they are measured. But in modernist studies, EurocentrismisthedominantcentrismtoconfrontbecausetheWest’snarrativeofitselfisthestoryofitsowninventionofmo-

Pistoxenos Painter.

Apollo and his raven

on a white-ground

bowl, c. 480 BCE.

Delphi Archaeological

Museum.

Dean Tersigni. In

Honor of Edgar Allen

Poe’s “The Raven.”

© 2002.


477dernityandbecausethefieldofmoderniststudiesitselfbeganintheWestasastudyofWesternmodernitiesandmodernisms.Aplanetarymoderniststudiesbeginswith“provincializingEurope,”toinvokeDipeshChakrabarty’sresonantphrase.16 Add to thisanawarenessthattheconceptof“theWest”isitselfdeeplycentric,repressingtheheterogeneities and peripheries within EuropeandNorthAmericaandthedegreetowhichtheWesthasneverbeenandisnot“one.”Eurocentric“structuresofhistoricalknowledge,”asMuftiwrites,

normalizeandmakenormativetheideaofEuropeas“thesceneofthebirthofthemodern”.. . . It is the social and cultural forceofthisideaofEuropeinintellectuallife...thatIamreferringtohereasEurocentrism....Humanisticcultureissaturatedwiththisinformaldevelopmentalism—a“firstintheWest,andthenelsewhere”structureofglobaltime...inwhichculturalobjectsfromnon-WesternsocietiescanbegraspedonlywithreferencetothecategoriesofEuropeanculturalhistory,aspaleorpartialreflectionsofthelatter,tobeseenultimatelyascominglate,laggingbehind,andlackingoriginality.17

Theoldmoldofmoderniststudiesnarratesjustsuchataleofinformaldevelop-mentalism—“we”diditfirstintheWest(althoughtheorigindatesandlocationsdifferradically,fromBaudelairetoImagism,fromtheImpressioniststotheCubists);andthen“they”diditelsewhere:derivativeandbelated.Thepowerofthefield’soriginarynarrativesofmodernismisawondertobehold.

Blackbird Four: The End of the Nominal and the Rise of the Relational

HowcanwechallengethoseEurocentricoriginarynarratives,explodingradicallyoutoftheirforcesofcontainment,toinvokeLeonard’scombustionmetaphor?Thefirststepistosetasidethenominaldefinitionofmodernityasithassocommonlybeenconstructed:

Modernityis:[fillintheblanks] a. b. c. d.

AnthonyGiddens,forexample,aprogressivedoyenofsociologicalmodernitystud-ies,definesmodernityasaspecifichistoricaldevelopmentcharacterizedbytheriseofthenation-state,panopticbureaucracies,andcapitalismasdevelopedintheWestfromtheeighteenthcenturyandspreadtomanypartsoftheworldbythetwentiethcentury.Inhisview,globalizationisthediffusionofWesternmodernitytotherestofthe world. He is not alone.18

Aplanetaryepistemologyofmodernity,incontrast,needstoberelational,delineat-ingnotanominalsetofcharacteristics(e.g.,“big”=x,y,andz),butratherdefining

Lynette Shelley. Three

Ravens, 2009. www.lyn-

netteshelley.com. Mixed

media on Canson pastel

paper.


478 onethinginrelationtoanother(e.g.,“big”isnot“small”).Itfocusesonthedynamicsofchange,theself-consciousnessofchange,oreventheillusionofchange—a“before”and“after,”an“old”anda“new.”19AsBrunoLatourwrites,“Modernitycomesinasmanyversionsastherearethinkersorjournalists,yetallitsdefinitionspoint,inonewayoranother,tothepassageoftime.Theadjective‘modern’designatesanewregime,anacceleration,arupture,arevolutionintime.”20Thisrelational,adjectivalapproachtomodernityismoresuitedthananominaldefinitiontoplanetaritybecauseitenablesrecognitionofaspatialdimensiontomodernity’stemporality,aninteractionalsetofrelationsthroughouttheglobethatmayalsomanifestdifferentlyinparticularplacesandtimes.Itprovidesacomparativeframeworkthatbalancesthecommensurable—whatdifferentmodernitiesshare—withtheincommensurable—howtheyaredifferent.Ofcourse,therelationaldynamicofoldandnewisfraughtwithcontradictions.

Elsewhere,Ihavepositedmodernity’srelationalstructureasatemporalnarrativethatinventsthe“before”as“tradition.”Traditionisitselfaconstructofmodernity,comingintobeingatthemomentofitsloss,aprocessbothcelebratedandlamented.Inrela-tionalterms,Modernitycontainswithinitastruggle—oftenaviolentone—betweenmodernizersandtraditionalists—evident,forexample,inboth theU.S.andtheMiddleEast today.Italsocontainsapalimpsestic layeringofnewoverold,one thatofteninvolves a misrecognition of powerful continuities that is constitutive of modernity. Forsome,suchmisrecognitioninvolvesahauntingoftheoldinthenew,areturnoftherepressedoccasionedbytheruthlessforgettingofthepastthatNietzscheandDeMantheorizedasconstitutiveofmodernity.21Forothers,itrepresentsillusorythink-ingbasedinwhatBrunoLatourdescribesastheneedsofthemoderns“toinventtheGreatDivide”betweenthemselvesandthepremoderns.”22

Infacingthequestionofhownewis“thenew,”andhowmuchmustweforgettothinkofitas“thenew,”wealsobumpsquarelyintoamajordifficultywiththerela-tionalapproach.Wherethenominaldefinitionprovidesthecomfortofrelativestability(modernity=a,b,andc),therelationalapproachopensusuptothedifficultquestionofwhetheranythingis“notmodern,”andthuswhetheranyexpressiveformis“notmodernist.”Isthereahistoricalperiodwhichisnotundergoingrapidchangeacrossaspectrumofsocialindicators?Aretheretextswhicharenotengagedwiththatchange?ForanytextthatImightname,wouldsomeoneriseuptodefenditsparticularformofengagementwithaparticularmodernity?Milton’sParadise Lost forexample?WillaCather’sO Pioneers!?NormanMailer’sThe Naked and the Dead?Formodernity/modernism to have utility as analytic categories, even relationally defined, must we identify the not modern, not modernist?


479Blackbird Five: An Experiment, Bound to Create Resistance

AlthoughIstillstrugglewiththesequestions,letmebrieflyshareanexperiment;anattempttodrawaverbalmapofmodernityrelation-ally defined as a set of conditions—dare I say structures?—open to a vast array of distinctive articulations across the longue durée of history.23

Modernity as Matrix of Converging Changes

Vortex of Change:technological, commercial, political

cultural, religious, aestheticfamilial, sexual

unevenunequal

Radical Ruptures:shattering breaks

movement, mobilityacceleration, speed

collisionsfluidity

dynamismfreedom/unfreedom

Hybridity Heightened:encounters

contact zonesmixing, mimesis

convergence, conjuncturetransaction, translation

juxtapositioninnovation

Phenomenology of the New and the Now: utopic/dystopic

exhilaration, alienationdisorientation, defamiliarization, despair

nostalgiathe Other elsewhere and within

epistemological flexibilityruthless forgetting

hauntinginvention of tradition

Mark Graver. Black-

bird V, 2008. Acrylic

resist etching,

300x300mm.


480 Striking,youmightsay,howmuchthatmapexhibitsamodernistpoeticsdrawnfromtheearlytwentiethcenturyintheWest.Infact,SatyaP.Mohantychallengedmychartonjustthosegrounds,sayingthatitrepresentsanimpositionofanaestheticperspec-tive onto modernity, instead of the philosophical one featuring individualism that he prefers,orthesocioeconomiconeGiddensdelineates.Hemayberight.24 Perhaps all relational definitions slide into the nominal, incorporating willy-nilly some presupposed characteristics.AsIstrugglewiththisproblem,IacknowledgethatIamwhatIstudy,formedbymybackgroundinliterarystudies—thisisepistemologicallytrue.Icutmycritical teeth on manifesto modernism—perhaps my efforts to move outside of my epistemologicalframeenduprepeatingit.Ontheotherhand,forthewordmodernity tomeananythingatall,weneedtothinkaboutwhatisputintorelationwithwhat,andhowthatrelationshiptakesondifferentformsatdifferentgeohistoricallocations.PerhapsthemodernistpoeticsoftheearlytwentiethcenturyintheWestprescientlyarticulatedalogicatworkinothertimesandplaces.

Blackbird Six: The Multiple, Polycentric, and Recurrent

Arelationalepistemologyallowsustoseetheglobeafresh,toseethat modernity which is not one, to see modernity in its multiple and diverse forms in the geohistory of the world. In step with the rapidlyproliferatingrhetoricsofpluralmodernities,Iask,here,for

anapproachdiametricallyopposedtothatofFredricJamesoninA Singular Modernity, inwhichhearguesthat“Everyoneknowstheformulabynow....youtalkabout‘alter-native’or‘alternative’modernities....Butthisistooverlooktheotherfundamentalmeaningofmodernitywhichisthatofaworldwidecapitalism....Ibelievethattheonlysatisfactorysemanticmeaningofmodernityliesinitsassociationwithcapitalism.”25 Such a reductionist view limits the nominalist definition, even more radically than Giddensdoes,toasetofone:capitalism.Jameson’snotionofsingularityimpoverisheswhatneedstobeacomplexapproachtotheoverdeterminationsofhistoryandtheenmeshments of different systems of power in understanding modernity. Theprofusionof terms formodernity’s plural formationsbelies the singularity

Jamesonseeks.Thefieldaboundsinsuchadjectivesformodernityormodernitiesasmultiple, polycentric, early, at large, alternative, other, peripheral, divergent, discrepant, uneven, conjunctural, and recurrent.26Eachtermisitsownkeyword,withdifferentnuances,particularlyinwhatitsuggestsabouttherelationtoWesternmodernities.Ilikehowtheysuggestaspatialapproachtomodernity,anecessityforglobalizingaconceptthathasbeenpredominantly temporal.I likehowtheyassumeanuneventemporality for the emergence of different modernities. Some arise at the same time, suchasthemodernitiesofcolonizerandcolonizedinthefin de siècle ofBritain,Egypt,and India. Some arise at different times, such as the early modernities of India in the fourteenth-fifteenthcenturiesorthepostcolonialmodernitiesofAfricaafter1960.Ilikehow the term polycentric posits each modernity as its own center, with others as their peripheries.Ialsolikehowthetermsuneven and discrepant invite analysis of unequal


481powerandprivilege,bothbetweendifferentlylocatedmodernitiesandwithinasinglelocation.Idoobjecttothewaysuchtermsasalternative, other, peripheral, and even divergent reinstateWesternmodernityasthecenter,withallthe“other”modernitiesasmarginalorderivative.Insum,Iliketermsthatsuggestthefluidityandmultiplicityof modernities, terms that refuse to use one modernity as the measure of all others. I havebeenprobing thepotential of yet another term, recurrent modernities,

because it suggests thathumanhistorycyclesunevenly throughperiodsof relativestasisandthenexplosivekinesis;betweenretrenchmentandexpansion,continuityandchange,consolidationandrisk;betweeninwardandoutwardmobilities.27 The concept of recurrent modernities requires a capacious historical archive, the longue durée of world historians or whatWaiChiDimockcalls“deeptime.”28 Different points of the globeflareupatdifferenttimesasnodalpointsoftransformationalchangeacrossawidespectrumofsocietaldomains,eachtakingaparticularforminitsgeohistoricallocation—fromlongagoworldsystemstotoday’sglobalization.AsDilipParameshwarGaonkarwrites,“everywhere, at every national/cultural site, modernity is not one but many, modernity is not new but old and familiar; modernity is incomplete and neces-sarily so.”29

Blackbird Seven: Conquest, Coloniality, and World-Systems

“Thereisnomodernitywithoutcoloniality,”WalterD.Mignolowrites.30He is speaking specifically ofEuropean andLatinAmerican modernities formed constitutively through conquest since1500.He regards themasdistinctivemodernities, butthoroughly enmeshed, formed through interaction with each other through conquest, or through colonial and postcolonial

relations.“Wehavecometounderstandcolonialismandconquestastheveryconditionofpossibilityformodernityandforaestheticmodernism,”writesAndreasHuyssenofEuro-Americanmodernism.31 Have we all come to this understanding, I wonder, or do (post)colonial modernities and modernisms remain at the periphery of the field? Morefundamentally,doother,evenearlierempirescombineperiodsofviolentcon-

questwithrapidtechnologicalchange,world-systemsoftradeandculturalexchange,thebang/clashofdifferentpeoplesandtheirworldviews,andnewrepresentationalpracticesintheartsandotherexpressivedomains?Yes,Ithinktheydo.Forstarters,theRomanEmpire;TangDynastyChina;theMuslimEmpirecenteredespeciallyinthecommercialandculturalcapitalsofBaghdad,Al-Andalus,andTimbuktu;theMughalEmpireinIndia;andthelargestlandempireinhumanhistory,theMongolEmpire—allencompassed these phenomena I am calling modernity before the modernities of the post-1500world-system.Allproducedexplosivelycreativemixturesofpeoplesandcul-tural practices.32PuttingtheformationofWesternmodernitywithinthatlongue durée doesnotdiminishitsglobalpower,butitdoeschangetheexceptionalist,diffusionist,and hierarchical originary myths of modernity that have dominated the field.

U.S. Air Force Blackbird.


482 Recognizingtheviolenceandconquestthataresooftenaconstitutivepartofrecur-rentmodernitieshelpspreventdiscoursesofmodernity’sfluidity,multidirectionality,andreciprocalexchangefromslidingintoautopianrhetoricofhappyhybridity.Tocounterthistendency,Ikeepremindingmyselfthatthemassiverupturesofmoder-nityacrossaspectrumofsocialformationsaremostlikelytooccurduringperiodsofrapid,oftenbrutalconquestthatcausewide-scalematerial,psychological,spiritual,representational, and epistemological dislocation.

And yet, with the dislocations of imperial or hegemonic dominance come creative re-locations.Withsufferingalsocomethetransformativeagenciesofthehumanimagi-nation.Recurrentmodernities,Ibelieve,areneitherpuredefeatnorpureprogress.Theyaregeohistoricalmomentsofdynamickinesisthatputindialecticthedystopicwith the utopic, slaveries with freedoms, destructions with creations. At the center of thesecontradictionslietheself-reflexiveandrepresentationaldomainsofmodernity,the arena of all modernisms. Justthinkofjazz:RememberthatPaulGilroyargues thatthefirstmodernsub-

jectsoftheEnlightenmentperiodweretheAfricanstornfromtheirhomes,enslavedintheNewWorld—alienated,exiled,transplanted,andinfinitelycreative.33 And in thatnewworld,theirdescendantsblendedEuropeanandAfricanmusicstocreatecreolizedmusicalformsthathavethemselvestransformed,traveled,andtransplantedthroughout the planet.

Blackbird Eight: Circulations, Networks, and Translations

Polycentric, recurrent modernities and their modernisms develop notinisolationbutalwaysrelationallythroughencounterswithothersocietiesandcivilizations,encounterswhicharetranscultural,notunidirectional.“Lescontactsentrelescultures—,”ÉdouardGlissantwrites,—c’estlàunededonnéesdelamodernité”/“Contactamongculturesisoneofthegivensofmodernity”(PR,39/26).Historiansof

theglobalecumenelikeAndréGunderFranktracelarge-scalepatternsofencounterthrough commerce, war, technology, migrations of people, and cultural practices.34 Anthropologists like JamesClifford andArjunAppardurai trace traveling cultures,interculturalnetworks,andtheprocessesofcultural translationandtranscultration,assertingthatdistinctiveculturesformthroughhybridicinteractionwithothers.35 In The Hybrid Muse and A Transnational Poetics JahanRamazaniadaptstheseconceptsofcirculatingculturestoproposeaplanetarypoeticsofmodernismthatis“bothdiscretelylocatedandthoroughlyenmeshed,networked,cross-racialized.”36AsLauraDoyleandLauraWinkielargueinGeomodernisms,thinking“intermsofinterconnectedmodern-isms”“breaksopen”thetermmodernismintosomethingtheycall“geomoderisms,”alandscapeofinterlockingengagementswith“culturalandpoliticaldiscoursesofglobalmodernity.”37In“Modernism,Geopolitics,Globalization,”MelbaCuddy-Keanebringsthe“interactivityandinterdependency”of“culturalglobalization”tomoderniststud-ies,insistingonthemultidirectional,kinetic,andimpurefluidityof“disjunctiveglobal

Erin McKean. Pho-

tograph, 2010.


483flows.”38ReginiaGagnier’sGlobalCirculationProjectisavastonlinedialogueamongscholars around the world on the circulations of different Anglophone modernisms.39

Theborderlandsofcontactzonescreatecreolizationsonallsidesthroughpatternsofimitation,adaptation,transculturation,andculturaltranslation.“Icallcreolizationthemeeting,”Glissantwrites,“theinterference,shock,harmonies,anddisharmoniesbetweentheculturesoftheworld,intherealizedtotalityoftheworld”(“UnforeseeableDiversity,”290).Beyondcreolization,dozensofkeywordsinEnglisharebeingused—andpresumablyinotherlanguages—fortheseprocesses,eachwithdifferentresonances,oftensuggestingbothutopicanddystopicformsofinterculturalencounter.Think,forexample,oftheopposingweightoftermslikecontamination versus adaptation or theft versus translation.Ihavebeencollectingthesekeywordsandsortingthemintodistinctiverhetoricsbasedonthebiological(e.g.,adaptation,bastardization,contamination,grafting,rhizome,transplantation,etc.);thecorporeal(e.g.,incorporation,absorption,cannibal-ization,ingestion,etc.);thecommercial(e.g.,borrowing,commerce,exchange,lending,traffic,etc.);thepolitical(e.g.,accommodation,alliance,appropriation,collaboration,co-optation,etc.);thetechnological(e.g.,interlocking,network,web,transmission,etc.);thecultural(e.g.,assimilation,blending,encounter,hybridization,vernacularization,etc.);andtherepresentational(e.g.,mimesis,cuttingandpasting,distortion,translation,versioning,etc.).Inshort,thevastarrayofkeywordsforinterculturalismonaglobalscalepointtothemajordomainsthatconstellatedifferentmodernities.

Models of planetary cultural traffic, mimesis, and translation need to supplant older conceptsofmodernistinternationalism,whicharetypicallybasedonbinariesofSelf-Other,modern-traditional,civilized-savage,highart-primitiveart.Theappropriationmodel inparticularregards themodernistsof theWestascosmopolitanproducersofculturewhociteorstealthetraditionsoftheResttobreakoutoftherepressive,clichéd,ornarrowrepresentationalconventionsoftheWest.WhetherusedinpraiseorcritiqueoftheWest’smodernism,theappropriationmodelrecapitulatesthelogicofimperialism,withtheRestprovidingtherawmaterialtransmutedintomodernistartintheWest.AsJahanRamazaniargues,“Criticismthatreduceshighmodernist ...‘appropriations’toorientalisttheftorprimitivistexoticismmayriskcircumscribinginsteadofopeninguppossibilitiesforglobalandtransnationalanalysis.”40Picasso’sLes Demoiselles D’Avignon(1907),withitsincorporationofAfricanmasksintothreeofthefivefacesoftheprostitutesinthepainting,isofteninvokedastheiconicexampleof this appropriation model.41 [fig. 2] AsSimonGikandihasargued,suchdiscussionsoften refuse to grant African art the position of aesthetic or formal innovation, instead reducing it to the fetishistic and psychological.42 In contrast to the appropriation model, a planetary approach to cultural circulation would stress how the agencies of African artistsproducingandbeingcollectedinAfrica inthelatenineteenthcenturywerepart of a colonial modernity, constituting a colonial modernism that Picasso and the cubistsindigenized,thatis,madenativetoParisianmodernism.ThecreativeagenciesofmodernitiesoutsidetheWestcirculatedintotheWestastransformativeinfluences.Who,wemustask,isderivativeofwhom?[figs.3–6]TakeforanotherexampletheUkiyo-e,orFloatingWorldwoodblocksfromJapan,

absorbedintoParisinthe1880sasJaponismeswepttheWestwhileJapanitselfmodern-


484

izedintheMeijiperiod.[figs.7and8] Asaformof“low”orpopularart,theUkiyo-ehadbeenproducedsincetheseventeenthcenturyinEdo,alittleseaofcommercialandaestheticmodernitywithinJapan’sfeudalstate.VanGoghcalledtheUkiyo-e“savage,”andfreelytranslatedtheirboldaestheticsofcroppededges,radicaldesigns,andcolorpatterns,tomakehispaletteandframe“modern.”43 [fig.9] MaryCassattindigenizedtheUkiyo-easwell,adaptingformalistqualities,asinThe Boating Party (1894), along withtheirfascinationwithinteriors,fabrics,materialculture,andmomentsofintimacy[fig.10].ShedidnotregardtheUkiyo-eartistsas“savage,”butratherpromotedtheirartistrythroughcollectingUkiyo-eanddisplayingherfavorite,Utamaro,sidebysidewith her Suite of Ten (1890–1891)inherownhouse.[figs.11and12] Again,Iask,whois derivative of whom? And how does seeing Japanese popular art as the source of aes-theticinnovationindigenizedinFrancechangeourunderstandingofmodernism?44

Fig. 2. Pablo Picasso. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907. The

Museum of Modern Art, New York, acquired through

the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest. © The Estate of Pablo Picasso /

Artists Rights Society (ARS).


485

Fig. 3. Pablo Picasso. Detail, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon,

1907. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, ac-

quired through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest. © The Estate

of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS).

Fig. 4. Mbuya mask, Pende, Congo. 19th century.

Painted wood, fiber, and cloth. Musée Royal de

l’Afrique Centrale, Tervuren, Belgium.

Fig. 5. Pablo Picasso. Detail, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon,

1907. The Museum of Modern Art, New York, acquired

through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest. © The Estate of Pablo

Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS).

Fig. 6. Mask, Etoumbi region, Congo. 19th

century. Musée Barbier-Müller, Geneva.


486

Fig. 7. Utagawa Hiroshige. Plum Estate,

Kameido from the series One Hundred

Famous Views of Edo. 1857. Woodblock

print. Brooklyn Museum. Gift of Anna

Ferris.

Fig. 8. Vincent Van Gogh. Flowering Plum Tree

(After Hiroshige), 1887. Van Gogh Museum

Amsterdam (Vincent Van Gogh Foundation).

Fig. 10. Mary Cassatt. The Boating Party, 1893/94. Oil

on Canvas. Chester Dale Collection, National Gal-

lery of Art, Washington D.C.

Fig. 9. Vincent Van Gogh. The Sower, 1888. Van

Gogh Museum Amsterdam (Vincent Van Gogh

Foundation).


487

Fig. 11. Kitagawa Utamaro. (1753–1806). Midnight:

Mother and Sleepy Child. 1790. Polychrome wood-

block print; ink and color on paper. H. 143/8in.

(36.5 cm); W. 9 5/8 in. (24.4cm). Rogers Fund, 1922

(JP1278). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New

York, NY, U.S.A. Image copyright © The Metropoli-

tan Museum of Art,/ Art Resource, NY.

Fig. 12. Mary Cassatt. The Bath, 1890/91. Drypoint,

aquatint, and softground etching, 436 x 300 mm

(sheet), Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection,

1932.1287, The Art Institute of Chicago. Photogra-

phy © The Art Institute of Chicago.

Blackbird Nine: Plural Poetics

Aplanetary aesthetics ofmodernismneeds tobe transformativeratherthanmerelyadditive.Itisworthwhiletoidentifytexts—visual,verbal, auditory—outside theWest that exhibit the aesthetics ofso-called“highmodernism,”butafullyplanetaryapproachshouldaimtodetectthedifferentformsthatrepresentationalrupturetakeinconnectionwithdifferentmodernities.WeneedtoletgoofthefamiliarlaundrylistofaestheticpropertiesdrawnfromtheWesternculture capitals of the early twentieth century as the definitional core ofmodernism.I’mattachedtothatlist,asIhaveconfessed.Butweneedtoprovincializeit,thatistosee“high”or“avant-garde”mod-ernismasONEarticulationofaparticularlysituatedmodernism—animportantmodernismbutnotthemeasurebywhichallothersarejudgedandtowhichallothersmustbecompared.Instead,wemustlookacrosstheplanet,throughdeeptime,andverticallywithineach

locationtoidentifysitesoftheslash—modernity/modernism—andthenfocusourat-tentiononthenatureoftheparticularmodernityinquestion,exploretheshapesand

Lynn Simmons.

Blackbirds Fly, 2000.

Steel rod, wood

beam, charred

wood pieces. c.

8’x1’x7’.


488 formsofcreativeexpressivitiesengagingthatmodernity,andaskwhatculturalandpoliticalworkthoseaestheticpracticesperformasanimportantdomainwithinit.Letmebeclear:Iamnotsuggestingweabandonconsiderationoftheaesthetic,the

formal,particularlythecreativeagenciesofexpressiveculturethatputintoquestionthe representational conventions of their time and place. I want to avoid the familiar polarizationof aesthetics andpolitics thatprivileges oneover theother.Rather, Ihopethatwecanbeopentodifferentkindsofaestheticinnovationlinkedtodifferentmodernities around the world and through time. In this regard, the aesthetic is always imbricatedinthepolitical,thehistorical.Andvice versa.Notasinglesetofformalistcharacteristics,butrathertheformalper se, however it might articulate the modern.Take, for example, theexperimentalblendofhigh and lowculture as aesthetic

markers of anAfricandiasporicmodernity in theHarlemRenaissance.LangstonHughes’sMontage of a Dream Deferred wedsajazzandbluesaesthetictothelyricsequence form of the twentieth-century long poem and the dialectical principles of cinematic montage:

Dream Boogie

Good morning, daddy! Ain’tyouheardTheboogie-woogierumbleOfadreamdeferred?

Listenclosely:

. . . . . . . . . . . .You thinkIt’s a happy beat?

. . . . . . . . . . . . Sure,I’mhappy!Takeitaway

Hey, pop! Re-bop! Mop!

Y-e-a-h!45

Taketheparticularintertextualityofpostcolonialmodernisms.TheglobalcitationalstrategiesofPoundandEliotarereinventedinthedialogicengagementofthecolonizedwiththecolonizer,throughdenaturalizingmimicriesorindigenizingtransplantions,asinTayebSalih’sorArundhatiRoy’srewritingofHeart of Darkness.Roy’splaywithConrad’stitle—“DarkofHeartnesstiptoedintotheHeartofDarkness”—doesmorethanmimicinacolonialregister.Itrelocatesthe“darkness”ofallstates(colonizing,


489colonized,andpostcolonial)fromthepurelygeopoliticaltotheinterpenetrationsofpublicandprivate,institutionalandpersonal,therebyfosteringarereadingofMarlow’slie to the Intended.46Postcolonialintertextualitiesarenotderivative;theyinnovate,inadifferentregister,breakingwithotherandoftenmultipleconventions.Aplanetarymodernistpoeticsmustbeplural,openinguptheconceptofformal

ruptures toawidearrayof representationalengagementswithmodernity. “RatherthanprivilegetheradicallynewinWesternavant-gardist fashion,”writesHuyssen,“wemaywanttofocusonthecomplexityofrepetitionandrewriting,bricolage and translation,”orthelayeringofhighandlow,realismandexperiment,“thusexpandingournotionofinnovation.”47InLatinAmerica,MaryLouisePrattargues,Europeanavant-gardismdevelopedalongsideotherexperimentalismswithrural,frontier,andethnographicaestheticsblendingorality,popularforms,realism,thevernacular,andthesupernatural—asinthemodernistmagicrealismofGabrielGarcíaMárquez.48

Blackbird Ten: Plural Languages

Howcanmoderniststudiesbeplanetaryifitismonolingual,ifitoperates within the lingua franca of any given era, if it reproduces thelinguistichegemoniesofmodernity’s imperial legacies, if, forexample,itremainswithintheconfinesofglobalEnglishtoday?“LeditdelaRelation,”Glissantwrites,“estmultilingue.Par-delà

lesimpositionsdespuissanceséconomiquesetdespressionscultu-relles,ilss’opposeendroitautotalitanismedesvisées,monolingues”/“Relationisspokenmultilingually.Goingbeyondtheimpositionsofeconomicforcesandculturalpressures,Relationrightfullyop-posestotalitarianismofanymonolingualintent”(PR,31/19). Even

morethanmultilingualism,however,Glissantadvocatesa“worldness”inwhich“wewrite...inthepresenceofalltheworld’slanguages,allofthem,leavingnoneoutofconsideration”:

Ifwesaythatwewrite,henceforth,inthepresenceofalltheworld’slanguages,...Ifwerediscoverthefactthatwecanchangethroughexchangewithothers,withoutlosingourselves...thenweareabletoglimpsewhatIwouldliketocallworldness,whichisourcommonconditiontoday.(“UnforeseeableDiversity,”287)

Modernity’spolylogueisavastarchiveofhundredsoflanguagesbeyondthekenofanyindividual.ButGlissant’s“worldness”—hisconceptof“planetaryconsciousness”—asksnotfortheimpossiblelinguistically,butratherforatransformativeepistemology:thatwe write with the consciousness of the diversity of languages and cultures and the richnessthatthesedifferencesbring.Inthissense,themultilingualarchipelagooftheCaribbeanishismodelfor“worldness.”Creolization,forGlissant,isnotthesynthesisorfusionofdifferenceintoamonolingualsameness,notaglobalhomogenization.Instead,creolitérepresentstheprincipleoflinguisticdifferencesinmixture:thecontactzones

Blackbirds of 1928.

Music score cover.


490 ofencounter,linkages,interconnections—apoeticsofmultilingualrelationbasedinthe continual play of multiple vernaculars.49

Translationhasacentralroletoplayinthemultilingualglobalizationofmoderniststudies.Translationinvolvesaparadoxofthecommensurableandincommensurable,asEmilyApterarguesinThe Translation Zone.Equivalencefromonelanguagetoanother,oneculturetoanotherisnotpossible,buttheexistenceofworldsystemsforthousands of years has necessitated the continual presence of translation, evident in theancientRosettaStoneinEgyptianhieroglyphics,EgyptianDemotic,andGreekfrom196B.C.E.andthemorerecentChengdeImperialSteleinManchu,Tibetan,Chinese, and Mongol from the Qing Dynasty in the eighteenth century. [figs. 13 and 14] Planetaryculturalcirculations,networks,andenmeshmentsof theglobaland localalldependupontranslation,broadlyunderstoodfromthelinguistictothecultural.Indeed, linguistic translation is essentially a practice of intercultural encounter and borderthinking,thebasisuponwhichotherculturaltrafficdepends.Translationisaformofadaptation,transplantation, indigenization—fromoneculturetoanother.The multidirectional traveling of modernities and their modernisms is fundamentally a translational practice.Onaplanetary scale, themultitudeof vernaculars coexistswith the singularity

of a lingua franca,acommonlanguagethatenablestheculturalflowsoftheglobalecumene—fromAramaic,Latin,Sanskrit,andChinesetoArabic,French,andEnglish.Thecoexistenceisadynamicandtenseone,withthevernacularsperpetuallyunderthreat,withthenativespeakersofthecommonlanguageprivilegedaboveallothers.50 Translationinplanetarymoderniststudiestodayoughttobereciprocalandmultidi-rectional. But it is too much of a one-way street, with the rest of the world translat-ingEnglishtextsintootherlanguages,withmanyfewerworksbeingtranslatedintoEnglish,andwithEnglishtranslationtoooftenservingasthemediationbetweentwoother languages.51Challengingmodernity’scomplicitywithcolonialismintheforma-tion of a planetary modernist studies requires studying, reading, and empowering the vernaculars.Everymodernityplaysout linguistically inadialecticof thevernacularand the

cosmopolitan. The linguistic cosmopolitanism of Ulysses, The Cantos, or The Waste Landisfamouslycitational,absorbinglanguagesfromelsewhereintoEnglish.Makenomistake,however.Theoppositionbetweenvernacularandlingua franca or cosmopoli-tanismdoesnotreproducethebinaryoftraditional/modern.Thevernacularhasoftensignaledamodernityofadifferentkind,aresistancetothehegemonyofthelanguageofelitesofallkindsaspartofwidespreadsocietalchange.52Chaucer’sMiddle-EnglishandDante’sItalianwereharbingersoftheRenaissance,breakingwiththedominanceofLatin.Women,attimesdeniedaccesstothelanguagesof“highliterature,”wroteandreadinthevernacular,helpinglocalspokenlanguagesdevelopliterarycultures:forexample,LadyMurasakiintheearlyeleventhcentury,brokewiththedominanceofChineseinhighculture,bywritingThe Tale of Genji in Japanese.53 In medieval Al-Andalus, a new poetic form arose called the Muwashshahat counterpointing the parallellovelamentsofamanspeakinginclassicalArabicandawomanspeakingin


491

thevernacular,asMariaRosaMenocalshows.54Infifteenth-centuryOrissa,agroupoflow-caste(sudra)poet-saintschallengedtheSanskrit-educatedeliteinproducingrevolutionarypoemsinOriya,thelocalvernacular,accordingtoSatyaP.Mohanty.Oneofthese,BalaramDas,writesanexplicitlyfeministnarrativeinthevernacularthatadvocatesgenderandcasteequality(“AlternativeModernities,”3–5).Inhisnovella,The Broken Nest,RabindranathTagoreconflatestheassociationofthevernacularwithmodernityandwomenwritersbyhavingawoman’sanonymouslypublished, fresh,modernwritinginthevernaculartakeliteraryCalcuttabystormforitsbreakwiththeartifice of convention-ridden Bengali poetics.55 The vernacular, as Amit Chaudhuri writes,is“theidiomofmodernity.”56

Blackbird Eleven: Anxiety’s Return

Iseedoubtinyourfaces;Ifeeldoubtinmyown.Tenwaysofsee-ingthatblackbirdhaveproducedanarchiveofmodernismsthatisstaggeringinitsglobalandtemporalreach.Thatwayparalysislies.What’sapoorscholartodo?Thisistoomuch.That’sjustgoingtoofar.Don’tweneedtodisciplinetheproliferationofmodernismsandtheirinterconnections?Can’twejustglobalizemodernismwithinasingleandidentifiablehistoricalperiod—let’ssay,1890through1950, as theModernist StudiesAssociation’swebsiteproclaims,or1840through1950,ifwewanttoincludetheFrench?Genug, enough already!

Fig. 13. Rosetta Stone, Egypt. 196 BCE. © Trustees

of the British Museum.

Fig. 14. Chengde Imperial Palace Stele, Qing Dynasty,

China. 18th century. Inscriptions in Manchu, Tibetan,

Chinese, and Mongol.

The Blackbirds,

Anatomy of Melan-

choly. 2006. Album

cover, Blackdog

Records.


492 Ah,thatoldcomfortzoneagain,thereturnofwhatissohardtorepressinmoderniststudies. I suggest, however, that we return instead to the full significance of the slash: Modernism/Modernity.Ifmodernismisconstitutivelylinkedtomodernityasthecre-ativeandexpressivedomainwithinit,thenweareboundtorecognizethatparticularmodernismstakeshapewithindifferentmodernitiesandcanpotentiallyenduplookingvery different from each other. That slash has consequences.

Blackbird Twelve: The Archives of Planetary Modernisms and How to Read Them

Toworkwithin a planetary framework, no single scholarneeddo it all. Instead,we can recognize the foundationalmeaningofcollaborationintheprojectofscholarship—weshareacommonproject,howeverourviews,methods,andlanguagesdiffer.Wecaneachlocateourselvesinamanageableway among the multiplicity of critical practices in modernist studies.Wecanfindourownplaceonthecriticalmapofthefield,one thatsuitsourparticular interestsandknowledge

base.Asnavigationalguide,Isuggestoneormoreoffourmaincriticalpractices,eachdistinctivebutalsoblendable:Re-vision;Recovery;Circulation;Collage.59

Re-visionistheactoflookingagain,ofdefamiliarizingthefamiliararchivebylook-inganewthroughdifferentlenses,askingnewquestionsof“highmodernism”:Picasso,Pound,Joyce,Woolf,Eliot,andsoforth.WhatarethetracesofothermodernitieswithinthetextsofEuropeanandAnglo-America“highmodernism”?WherearethefootprintsoftheplanetaryinthelocalformationsoftheWest?Whatistheghostinthemachine?ScoresofscholarssinceSimonGikandi’spathbreakingMaps of Eng-lishnesshavelearnedtoreadcolonialityinthemodernismsofEuropeandtheU.S. 60 ButtheplanetarynotonlyincorporatesWesternempiresbutalsoexceedsthem.TheplanetaryofwhatDimockcalls“deeptime”—atranscontinentalspatialityaswellaslongue durée—needstoberereadinthemodernismsoftheWest.61

Recovery is the act of digging, an archaeology of new archives—other modernities outsidethefamiliarWesternonesandthusotherformsofcreativeexpressivities.Newbooksonothermodernismsareproliferating,workingwithmodernismscontempora-neouswithorindifferenttime-framesfromWesternmodernisms.Inhistranslationof Kalapurnodaymau/ The Sound of the KissfromtheTeleguofthesixteenthcentury,V.NarayanaRao,forexample,claimsanearlymodernismforPingaliSuranna,citinghis invention of the novel-in-verse genre for Telegu literature, his radical disruption ofliteraryconventions,andhispsychologizingofthehumanmind.Raoalsotranslatesa more recent Indian modernism: Kanyasulkam/ Girls for Sale, an 1892 Telegu play usingparody,masquerade,andsatiretoattackboththecolonialgovernmentandthegender system within Indian culture.62 Multilingual scholars are the avant-garde of such recoveries,locatingburiedandforgottentextsintheglobalarchiveoflanguages,butscholarsworkingintranslationarealsoessentialtobringknowledgeofthesemodern-isms into the lingua franca of the field.63

Whitney Sherman. Black-

birds. © 2010.


493Circulationisthearchiveofmobility,callingfortheactofseeinglinkages,networks,conjunctures,creolizations,intertextualities,travels,andtransplantationsconnectingmodernisms fromdifferentpartsof theplanet.Often thepathways are the routesbornofcolonialism,passagestoIndia,Africa,ortheCaribbeanbywesternwriterslikeForsterorConrad;passagestothecolonizers’metropolebywriterslikeJeanRhys,MulkRajAnand,orTayebSalih.Howisthatrelationalityexperienced,reflectedupon,represented?Whatistheinterplayofrootsandroutesinthosecirculationsacrosstheglobe?Unlikeacenter/peripherymodel,circulationstressestheinteractiveanddy-namic,assumingmultipleagencies,centers,andconjuncturesaroundtheworld.

Collageisthearchiveofradicaljuxtaposition,thescholar’sactofparatacticcuttingandpasting.Itestablishesamontageofdifferenceswheretheputtingsidebysideil-luminates those differences at the same time that it spotlights commonalities. Ideally, collageisanon-hierarchicalactofcomparison,ajoiningthatilluminatesbothcom-mensurabilitiesandincommensurabilities.Take,forexample,fromdifferentpartsoftheworldanddifferentdecades,AiméCésaire’sNotebook for a Return to the Native Land andTheresaHakKyungCha’sDictée.Voila!Whatcomesintofocusisadiasporicmodernismbasedintheinstabilitiesofcolonialexileandtheimaginativerecreationoflosthomes:forCésaire,NegritudereunitingthediasporasofslaverywithblackAf-rica;forCha,thematernalbodyasroutetoasyncreticphenomenologyofhomeandhomeland.Bothinvokingtherhythmofaller/retour.64

Re-vision,Recovery,Circulation,andCollage:Fourstrategiesforreadingparticularmodernismswithinaplanetaryepistemology.Thisismanageable.Wecaneachfindourplaceonthemapwithoutvertigo,paralysis.Wedon’tneedtotrytodoitall.Wecanchangeourepistemologicalframeworkandlocateourspecificmethodwithinit,asonepartofalarge,fluid,mobileprojecttowhichallofusarecontributing,differently.Planetarity:ModernistStudiesasaliving,breathingorganism.

Blackbird Thirteen: The Planet in Planetarity

PlanetarityinitsverynameinvokestheEarthindeeptime.Doesthe planet have its own modernities, crises distinct from those of the human species? The critical practices of re-vision, recovery, circulation,andcollagecanexaminethemeaningsofthenon-humanworld for the human and the interactions of human modernities with theEarthasaplanetinthecosmos.Canwe,forexample,re-visionEliot’swastelandinthecontextofecologicaldisastersandreadthehumanmindasobjectivecorrelativeofthelandscapescarredbywar? How do the rivers of Heart of Darkness, Season of Migration to the North, and The God of Small Thingsbothshapeandexceedthehumanstoriesuponthem?“Timepasses,”Woolffamouslywritesin To the Lighthouse, with human modernities a mere parenthesis withinnature’sgeohistory.57

Perhapsmore answerable is to examine the intersectionofhumanmodernitieswiththeearth’snon-humanspecies,diversities,andcosmicrhythms.UrsulaK.Heise

Michael Spafford,

The Planet. No.

9 from woodcut

series, Thirteen

Ways of Looking at

a Blackbird. 1975.

Courtesy of Mi-

chael Spafford.


494 callsforan“‘eco-cosmopolitanism’,orenvironmentalworldcitizenship”thatfreestheterm cosmopolitanism from early twentieth-century modernist “connotations of social privilegeandleisuretravel.”58Glissant’spoeticsofrelationincludesacalltorecognizethe“relationalinterdependenceofalllands,ofthewholeEarth,”andtheparticularlyharshconsequencesofthe“politicsofecology”forthepoor(PR,146).Heasksforan“aestheticsoftheearth”whichisnot“anachronisticornaïve:reactionaryorsterile,”butratheran“aestheticsofruptureandconnection,”of“disruptionandintrusion”thatcanencompass“thehalf-starveddustofAfricas,”“themudoffloodedAsias,”“inepidem-ics,maskedformsofexploitation,fliesbuzz-bombingtheskeletonskinsofchildren,”“incitysewers”andsoforth(PR, 150, 151). In what way do our human modernities OthertheEarth,hewonders.

Planetarity

Planetarity as I use the term is an epistemology, not an ontology. On a human scale, the “worldness” the term invokes—to echoGlissant—means a polylogue of languages, cultures, viewpoints, andstandpointsonmodernism/modernity.Itrequiresattentiontomodesoflocalandtranslocalmeaning-makingandtranslation,toprocessesandpracticesofperceptionandexpressiononaglobalscale.Itisnotnominalist,fundamentalist:itdoesn’tnameasingu-

larmodernism/modernity,therebyprivilegingoneoverallothers.Itmust,byitsvery“worldness,”encompassmultitudesonaglobalgridofrelationalnetworks.Andthatmeansencompassingcontradictions,tensions,oppositions,andasymmetries.Likerootedandsituatedcos-mopolitanisms, planetarity suggests a capacity to engage simultaneously withlocalandglobalmodernities.Itembracesthegenerativeenergiesandsynergiesofmodernism’sTowerofBabel.Inthat, it isutopian.

Notveryquotidian,Iknow;notdownanddirtyinthetrenchesofreading,teaching,conferencing,publishing.Butnonethelessplanetarity isavisionthatcanpercolatethrough the practices of everyday professional life. Planetarityisnotathreat,itisanopportunity.Itmeansleavingthecomfortzone

forthecontactzone.

NotesEarlierversionsofthisessayweredeliveredattheModernistStudiesAssociationConference,

Montréal,Canada,November,2009;WorldLiterature/sConference,Madison,Wisconsin,December,2009;InstituteforResearchintheHumanities,UniversityofWisconsin-Madison,December,2009;ColgateUniversity,January,2009;UniversityofMiami,February,2009.Forchallenges,encourage-ment,andsuggestionsforrevisionIowedeepthankstotheseaudiences,tothestudentsinmyfall2009seminaronmodernism,andtoSusanD.Bernstein,MarinaCamboni,PamelaCaughie,MichaelCoyle,WaiCheeDimock,EricHayot,PaulJay,CassandraLaity,VenkatMani,RobNixon,VictoriaRosner,andMarkWolleager.ThankstoElizabethScheweforassistancewithimagesandpermissions.

Akira Studios,

Guardian of the

Blackbirds. © 2004

all rights reserved.

Photo by Larry

Blount.


4951.MythankstoAnupamBasu,whodevelopedFigure1asamovingimageaccompaniedbythemusicofBartokforthepowerpointpresentationcounterpointingtheMSAversionofthisessay.2.Fortheircollaborations,scripts,andtranslations,TejumolaOlaniyan(Yoruba);AnupamBasu

(Bengali);GuillerminaDeFerrari(Spanish);NicoleHuang,EdwardFriedman,andDaisyYanDu(Chinese);DuaaSalemehandAmmarNaji(Arabic);andB.VenkatMani(Hindi).

3. See Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity 2nd ed. (NewYork:Penguin,1988).4.“AmongSchoolChildren,”The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats(NewYork:Macmillan,1956),

212–14.5. I use the term planetarity inadifferentsensethanGayatriChakravortySpivakinDeath of a

Discipline (NewYork:ColumbiaUniversityPress,2003),wheresheinvokes“planetarity”asauto-piangestureofresistanceagainstglobalizationasthegeohistoricalandeconomicdominationoftheGlobalSouth.Termssuchasplanet, planetary, globality, globalism, world, worldness, worlding, and worldlinessabound incultural theorywithoutstablemeanings; theyareoftenutopicordystopic,typically connoting a transnational consciousness orworld systembeyond thenationalparadigm,though seldom denying the continued significance of the nation-state. I use the term planetarity in an epistemological sense to imply a consciousness of the earth as planet, not restricted to geopolitical formationsandpotentiallyencompassingthenon-humanaswellasthehuman.Fortheshiftingrheto-ricsoftheplanetary,global,orworldness,seeforexample,MaryLouisePratt,Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation(London:Routledge,1992),1–37; Paul Gilroy, Postcolonial Melancholia (NewYork:ColumbiaUniversityPress,2005),29–57;WaiCheeDimock,Through Other Continents: American Literature Across Deep Time(Princeton,N.J.:PrincetonUniversityPress,2006);EdwardSaid,“CultureandtheVultures,”Times Higher Education Supplement 24(January1992):19;BruceRobbins,“ComparativeCosmopolitans,”inCosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling beyond the Nation, ed.PhengCheahandBruceRobbins(Minneapolis:UniversityofMinnesotaPress,1998),247;FrancoMoretti,“ConjecturesonWorldLiterature,”New Left Review,SecondSeries(January/February2000):54–68;EmilyApter,The Translation Zone: A New Comparative Literature(Princeton,N.J.:PrincetonUniversityPress,2006),3–11,85–93;RobinMorgan,“PlanetaryFeminism,”inSisterhood Is Global (NewYork:FeministPress,1996),1–37; R.Radhakrishnan,“Worlding,byAnyOtherName,”inHis-tory, the Human, and the World Between(Durham,N.C.:DukeUniversityPress,2008),183–248;AamirR.Mufti,“GlobalComparitism,”Critical Inquiry 31(Winter2005):487;hereafterabbreviated“GlobalComparatism”;ÉdouardGlissant,“TheUnforeseeableDiversityoftheWorld,”trans.HaunSaussy, in Beyond Dichotomies: Histories, Identities, Cultures, and the Challenge of Globalization, ed. ElisabethMudimbe-Boyi(Albany:StateUniversityofNewYorkPress,2002),287–88,295;hereafterabbreviated“UnforeseeableDiversity”;ÉdouardGlissant,Poétique de la Relation (Paris: Gallimard, 1990),155–81/Poetics of Relation,trans.BetsyWing(AnnArbor:UniversityofMichiganPress,1997),141–67;hereafterabbreviatedPR. 6.DouglasMaoandRebeccaL.Walkowitz,“TheNewModernistStudies,”PMLA 123, no. 3

(2008):737–48.7.JenniferWicke,“Appreciation,Depreciation:Modernism’sSpeculativeBubble,”Modernism/

Modernity8,no.3(September2001):389–404.8.PamelaL.Caughie,Introduction toDisciplining Modernism,ed.PamelaL.Caughie (New

York:PalgraveMacmillan,2010),1–10.9.GarryLeonard,“’TheFamishedRoarofAutomobiles’:Modernity,theInternalCombustion

Engine,andModernism,”inDisciplining Modernism,ed.PamelaL.Caughie(NewYork:PalgraveMacmillan,2010),221–41.10.StephenRoss,“UncannyModernism,OrAnalysisInterminable,”inDisciplining Modernism,

ed.PamelaL.Caughie(NewYork:PalgraveMacmillan,2010),33–52.11.SeeAstradurEysteinsson,The Concept of Modernism (Ithaca,N.Y.:CornellUniversityPress,

1990).12.MalcolmBradburyandJamesMcFarlane,“TheNameandNatureofModernism,”inModern-

ism: A Guide to European Literature 1890–1930(1976;reprint,NewYork:Penguin,1991),27.


496 13.“ThirteenWaysofLookingataBlackbird,”The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens(NewYork:Vintage,1990),92–95.14.SusanStanfordFriedman,“PeriodizingModernism:PostcolonialModernitiesandtheSpace/

TimeBordersofModernistStudies.”Modernism/Modernity12,no.3(September2006):425–44;SusanStanfordFriedman,“Paranoia,Pollution,andSexuality:AffiliationsbetweenE.M.Forster’sA Passage to IndiaandArundhatiRoy’sThe God of Small Things,”inGeomodernisms: Race, Modern-ism, Modernity,ed.LauraDoyleandLauraWinkiel(Bloomington:IndianaUniversityPress,2005),245–61.

15. Monica Ali, Brick Lane(NewYork:Scribner’s,2003);NikosPapastergiadis,The Turbulence of Migration: Globalization, Deterritorialization and Hybridity(Cambridge,U.K.:PolityPress,2000),12.16.DipeshChakrabarty,Provincializaing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference

(Princeton:PrincetonUniversityPress,2000).17.“GlobalComparatism,”474.ForthisargumentonEuropeanpriorityasanideologicalconstruct

rationalizingEuropeanimperialism,seealsoJ.M.Blaut,The Colonizer’s Model of the World: Geograph-ical Diffusionism and Eurocentric History(NewYork:GuilfordPress,1993);Friedman,“PeriodizingModernism,”429;SusanStanfordFriedman,“UnthinkingManifestDestiny:MuslimModernitiesonThreeContinents,”inShades of the Planet: American Literature as World Literature,ed.WaiCheeDimockandLawrenceBuell(Princeton,N.J.:PrincetonUniversityPress,2007),62–100.

18. Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity(Stanford,Cal.:StanfordUniversityPress,1994).SeealsoStuartHallandBramGieben’sFormations of Modernity,atextbooksummarizingtheprevailingview(Cambridge,U.K.:PolityPress,1992).19.Forextendeddiscussionofnominalversusrelationaldefinitionsofmodernity/modernism,see

SusanStanfordFriedman,“DefinitionalExcursions:TheMeaningsofModern/Modernity/ Modern-ism”Modernism/Modernity8,no.3(September2001):500–05.20.BrunoLatour,We Have Never Been Modern, trans.CatherinePorter (Cambridge,Mass:

HarvardUniversityPress,1993),10.21.Friedman,“DefinitionalExcursions,”504,510;Friedman,“PeriodizingModernity,”434–39.22.Latour,We Have Never Been Modern,39–40.23.Forextendeddiscussion,seeSusanStanfordFriedman,“OneHandClapping:Colonialism,

Postcolonialism, and theSpatio/TemporalBoundariesofModernism,” inTranslocal Modernisms: International Perspectives,ed.IreneRamalhoSantosandAntónioSousaRibeiro(NewYork:PeterLang,2008),11–40.24.CommentsduringdiscussionofSusanStanfordFriedman,“PlanetaryModernismsandthe

ModernitiesofEmpireandNewNations,”paperdeliveredattheconferenceonMeaningsofModern:SouthAsiabeforeandafterColonialism,Madison,Wisconsin,December4–6,2008.25.FredricJameson,A Singular Modernity: Essay on the Ontology of the Present(London:Verso,

2002),12.Inspiteofhisbelief“thattheonlysatisfactorysemanticmeaningofmodernityliesinitsassociationwithcapitalism,”hisbookanalyzesthemany“usesoftheword‘modernity’”inthehistoryofideasandclaimsthathe“rejectsanypresuppositionthatthereisacorrectuseoftheword,”thuscontradicting his own prescriptive and limited definition (13).26.SeeforexampleHomiK.Bhabha,The Location of Culture (London:Routledge,1993);S.N.

Eisenstadt,ed.SpecialIssueonMultipleModernitiesDaedalus 129,no.1(winter2000);ShumelN.EisenstadtandWolfgangSchluchter,eds.SpecialIssueonEarlyModernities,Daedalus 127, no. 3(summer1998); DilipParameshwarGaonkar,ed.Alternative Modernities (Durham,N.C.:DukeUniversityPress,2001);MaryLouisePratt,“ModernityandPeriphery:TowardaGlobalandRelationalAnalysis,” inBeyond Dichotomies: Histories, Identities, Cultures and the Challenge of Globaliza-tion,ed.ElisabethMudimbe-Boyi(Albany:StateUniversityPressofNewYork,2002),21–48;R.Radhakrishnan,“DerivativeDiscoursesandtheProblemofSignification,”European Legacy 7, no. 6(2002):783–95;JuliosRamos,Divergent Modernities: Culture and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Latin America,trans.JohnD.Blanco(Durham,N.C.:DukeUniversityPress,2001);SanjaySubrah-manyam,“HearingVoices:VignettesofEarlyModernityinSouthAsia,1400–1750,”Daedalus 127, no.3(1998):75–104;SatyaP.Mohanty,“AlternativeModernitiesandMedievalIndianLiterature:


497TheOriyaLakshmi PuranaasRadicalPedagogy,”Diacritics38,no.3(fall2008):3–21;hereafterabbreviated“AlternativeModernities.”27.MythankstoJayClaytonforsuggestingthetermrecurrenttodescribemyconceptofmoder-

nity in the longue durée. 28.Dimock,Through Other Continents,1–6.29.DilipParameshwarGaonkar,“OnAlternativeModernities,”inAlternative Modernities, ed.

DilipParameshwarGaonkar(Durham,N.C.:DukeUniversityPress,2001),23.30.WalterD.Mignolo,Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and

Border Thinking (Princeton,N.J.:PrincetonUniversityPress,2000),43.31.AndreasHuyssen,“GeographiesofModernisminaGlobalisizingWorld,”inGeographies of

Modernism: Literatures, Cultures, Spaces,ed.PeterBrookerandAndrewThacker(London:Rout-ledge, 2005), 7. 32.SeeFriedman,“UnthinkingManifestDestiny”;mybookinprogressengageswiththemoder-

nities of their pre-1500 empires. 33. Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge,Mass.:

HarvardUniversityPress,1993),221.34.AndréGunderFrank,ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age(Berkeley:Universityof

California Press, 1998). See J.M. Blaut, The Colonizer’s View of the WorldandStephenK.Sanderson,ed. Civilizations and World Systems: Studying World-Historical Change(London:Sage,1995).

35. James Clifford, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century(Cambridge,Mass.:HarvardUniversityPress,1997).SeealsoAnnaL.Tsing,Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection(Princeton,N.J.PrincetonUniversityPress,2004).36.JahanRamazani,A Transnational Poetics (Chicago,Ill.:UniversityofChicagoPress,2009),16;

The Hybrid Muse: Postcolonial Poetry in English(Chicago,Ill.:UniversityofChicagoPress,2001).37.LauraDoyleandLauraWinkiel,eds.Geomodernisms: Race, Modernism, Modernity (Bloom-

ington: IndianaUniversityPress, 2005), 430.SeealsoBrooker andThacker, eds.Geographies of Modernism;MarkWolleager,ed.The Oxford Handbook of Global Modernisms(Oxford,U.K.:OxfordUniversityPress,2011);MaryAnnGillies,HelenSword,andStevenYao,eds.Pacific Rim Modernisms (Toronto,CA:UniversityofTorontoPress,2009).38.MelbaCuddy-Keane, “Modernism,Geopolitics,Globalization,”Modernism/Modernity 10,

no.3(September2003):544.39.GlobalCirculationProject,foundedbyReginaGagnierandsupportedbyWiley-Blackwell’s

LiteratureCompass(http://www.blackwell-compass.com/subject/literature/).40.Ramazani,A Transnational Poetics, 11. See also Sally Price, Primitive Art in Civilized Places

(Chicago:UniversityofChicagoPress,1989).41.SeeforexampleWilliamRubin,“ModernistPrimitivism:AnIntroduction,”in“Primitivism”

in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern,ed.WilliamRubin.Vol.1(Boston,Mass.:Little,Brown,1984);ChristopherGreen,ed.Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon(Cambridge,U.K.:CambridgeUniversity,2001).42.SimonGikandi,“Picasso,Africa,andtheSchemataofDifference,”Modernism/Modernity 10,

no.3(September2003),455–80.43.VanGogh’scommentisquotedinRubin,“ModernistPrimitivism,”2.44.ForfullerdiscussionoftheimpactofAfricancolonialmodernitiesonPicassoandJapanese

modernityontheImpressionists,seeFriedman,“OneHandClapping,”29–34.45. Montage of a Dream Deferred, Collected Poems of Langston Hughes,ed.ArnoldRampersad

(NewYork:Vintage,1995),388.SeealsoArnoldRampersad,“LangstonHughesandApproachestoModernismintheHarlemRenaissance,”The Harlem Renaissance Revaluations,ed.AmrijitSingh,WilliamS.Shiver,andStanleyBrodwin(NewYork:Garland,1989),49–71.ForrecenttransnationalapproachestoHarlemRenaissancemodernism,seeEdwardM.Pavlic,Crossroads Modernism: Descent and Emergence in African-American Literary Culture(Minneapolis:UniversityofMinnesotaPress,2002)andBrentHayesEdwards,The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translations, and the Rise of Black Internationalism(Cambridge,Mass.:HarvardUniversityPress,2003).


498 46.TayebSalih,Season of Migration to the North, trans. Denys Johnson-Davies (Boulder, Colo: ThreeContinentsBooks, 1970);ArundhatiRoy,The God of Small Things (NewYork:RandomHouse,1997),290.SeeFriedman,“PeriodizingModernism,”435–39;and“Paranoia,Pollution,andSexuality.”47.Huyssen,“GeographiesofModernism,”15,13.48.MaryLouisePratt,“ModernityandPeriphery,”40–43.49.Forothertheorizationsofmultilingualismandpolyglotlanguages(includingEnglishes),see

EvelynNien-mingCh’en,Weird English(Cambridge,Mass.:HarvardUniversityPress,2004);Ma-rinaCamboni,“ImpureLines:MultilingualismmHybridity,andCosmopolitanisminContemporaryWomen’sPoetry,”Contemporary Women’s Writing1.1(December2007):34–44;JohnMarx,The Modernist Novel and the Decline of Empire(Cambridge,U.K.:CambridgeUniversityPress,2005);FrançoiseLionnet,“ContinentsandArchipelagoes:FromE Pluribus UnumtoCreolizedSolidarities,”PMLA 123,no.5(2008):1503–15;StuartHall,“TheLocalandtheGlobal:GlobalizationandEthnic-ity,”inCulture, Globalization and the World-System,ed.AnthonyKing(Minneapolis:UniversityofMinnesotaPress,1997),19–40.50.SeeWalterD.Mignolo,“Globalization,CivilizationProcesses,andtheRelocationofLanguages

andCultures,”inThe Cultures of Globalization,eds.FredricJamesonandMasaoMiyoshi(Durham,N.C.:DukeUniversityPress,1999),32–53;BrianStock,“TowardInterpretivePluralism:LiteraryHistoryandtheHistoryofReading,”New Literary History 39,no.3(summer2008):389–413;DavidBleich,“Globalization,Translation,andtheUniversityTradition,”New Literary History 39, no. 3 (summer2008):497–517.51.SeeEstherAllen’sdiscussionof“EnglishasanInvasiveSpecies”in“Translation,Globalization,

andEnglish,”andSimonaŠkrabec,“LiteraryTranslation:TheInternationalPanorama,”inPen/IRL Report on the International Situation of Literary Translation,ed.EstherAllen(2007),1–48.(http://www.centerforliterarytranslation.org/TranslationReport).52.SeeSheldonPollock,“CosmopolitanandVernacular inHistory,” inCosmopolitanism, eds.

CarolA.Breckenridge,SheldonPollock,HomiK.Bhabha,andDipeshChakrabarty(Durham,N.C.:DukeUniversityPress,2002), 15–53;SheldonPollock,The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India (Berkeley:UniversityofCaliforniaPress,2006); and Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (2nded.London:Verso,2006),47–82.53.Muraski Shikidu,The Tale of Genji, trans.EdwardG. Seidensticker (NewYork:Knopf,

1978).54.MariaRosaMenocal,The Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History: A Forgotten Heritage

(Philadelphia:UniversityofPennsylvaniaPress,1987),91–114.55.RabindranathTagore,The Broken Nest/ Nashtanir, trans.MaryM.LagoandSupriyaSen

(Columbia,MO:UniversityofMissouriPress,1971).56. Amit Chaudhuri, Introduction, The Picador Book of Modern Indian Literature, ed. Amit

Chaudhuri(London:Picador,2001),xx.57.VirginiaWoolf,“TimePasses,”inTo the Lighthouse(NewYork:HarcourtBraceJovanovich,

1981),125–43.SeealsoUrsulaK.Heise,Sense of Place and Sense of Planet: The Environmental Imagination of the Global(Oxford,U.K.:OxfordUniversityPress,2008);RobertNixon,Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor(Cambridge,Mass.:HarvardUniversityPress,2010);LawrenceBuell, The Future of Environmental Criticism: Environmental Crisis and Literary Imagination(Oxford,U.K.:Blackwell,2005);andTsing,Friction.

58. Heise, Sense of Place and Sense of Planet, 10, 6.59.AnothersetofreadingstrategiesisimplicitinMelbaCuddy-Keane’s“Modernism,Geopolitics,

Globalization”throughheridentificationof“fourstrandsofglobalizedthinkinginmodernisttexts,”that is strategiesaimedat locatingwhatshecalls the“critical, syncretic,cohabiting,andrunawaymodes”ofglobalizedthinking(545).60.SimonGikandi,Maps of Englishness: Writing Identity in the Culture of Colonialism(New

York:ColumbiaUniversityPress,1996).SeealsoMarx,The Modernist Novel and the Decline of Em-pire;RichardBegamandMichaelValdezMoses,eds.Modernism and Colonialism: British and Irish


499Literature, 1899–1939 (Durham,N.C.:DukeUniversityPress,2007).ConsiderationofEastAsia(especiallyChina)inWesternmodernismisespeciallywell-developed;seeStephenG.Yao,Translation and the Languages of Modernism: Gender, Politics, Language(NewYork:PalgraveMacmillan,2002);Zhaoming Qian, Orientalism and Modernism: The Legacy of China in Pound and Williams (Durham, N.C.:DukeUniversityPress,1995),The Modernist Response to Chinese Art: Pound, Moore, Stevens (Charlottesville:UniversityofVirginiaPress,2003),andEzra Pound and China (AnnArbor:UniversityofMichiganPress,2003);RobertKern,Orientalism, Modernism, and the American Poem(Cambridge,U.K.:CambridgeUniversityPress,2009);ChristopherBush,Ideographic Modernism: China, Writing, Media(Oxford,U.K.:OxfordUniversityPress,2010);EricHayot,Chinese Dreams: Pound, Brecht, Tel Quel(AnnArbor:UniversityofMichiganPress,2003)andThe Hypothetical Mandarin: Sympathy, Modernity, and Chinese Pain(Oxford,U.K.:OxfordUniversityPress,2009).61.Dimock,Through Other Continents62. Pingali Suranna, The Sound of the Kiss, or the Story That Must Never Be Told,trans.Velcheru

NarayanaRaoandDavidShulman(NewYork:ColumbiaUniversityPress,2002);GurajadaApparao,Girls for Sale: Kanyasulkam, a Play from Colonial India,trans.VelcheruNarayanRao(Bloomington:IndianaUniversityPress,2007).63.Seeeditedvolumeslistedinnote37.RecoveriesofLatinAmericanmodernismsareparticularly

prevalent;seeFernandoJ.Rosenberg,The Avant-Garde and Geopolitics in Latin America (Pittsburgh:UniversityofPittsburghPress,2006);VickyUnruh,Latin American Vanguards: The Art of Contentious Encounters(Berkeley:UniversityofCaliforniaPress,1994);CathyL.Jrade,Modernismo: Modernity and the Development of Spanish American Literature(Austin:UniversityofTexasPress,1998). Forpre-1500 modernisms in India, see Surannna, The Sound of the Kiss; Mohanty, “Alternative Modernities andMedievalIndianLiterature,”andforIndianmodernismsfromthelatenineteenthandtwentiethcenturies, see Priya Joshi, In Another Country: Colonialism, Culture, and the English Novel in India (NewYork:ColumbiaUniversityPress,2002);AparnaDharwadker,“MohanRakesh,Modernism,andthePostcolonialPresent,”South Central Review25,no.1(spring2008):136–62.64.SeeSusanStanfordFriedman,“ModernisminaTransnationalLandscape:SpatialPoetics,

Postcolonialism,andGenderinCésaire’sCahier/NotebookandCha’sDictée.”Paideuma32,no.1/2/3(spring,fall,winter,2003):39–74.

Planetarity (Friedman)

Documents

Transcript of Planetarity (Friedman)