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The ambition of this book is to resituate the problem of 'world
literature', considered as a revived category of theoretical
enquiry, by pursuing the literary-cultural implications of the
theory of combined and uneven development. This theory has a long
pedigree in the social sciences, where it continues to stimulate
debate. But its implications for cultural analysis have received
less attention, even though the theory might be said to draw
attention to a central - perhaps the central - arc or trajectory of
modern(ist) production in literature and the other arts worldwide.
It is in the conjuncture of combined and uneven development, on the
one hand, and the recently interrogated and expanded categories of
'world literature' and 'modernism', on the other, that this book
looks for its specific contours. In the two theoretical chapters
that frame the book, the authors argue for a single, but radically
uneven world-system; a singular modernity, combined and uneven; and
a literature that variously registers this combined unevenness in
both its form and content to reveal itself as, properly speaking,
world-literature. In the four substantive chapters that then
follow, the authors explore a selection of modern-era fictions in
which the potential of their method of comparativism seems to be
most dramatically highlighted. They treat the novel
paradigmatically, not exemplarily, as a literary form in which
combined and uneven development is manifested with particular
salience, due in no small part to its fundamental association with
the rise of capitalism and its status in peripheral and
semi-peripheral societies as a 'modernising' import. The peculiar
plasticity and hybridity of the novel form enables it to
incorporate not only multiple literary levels, genres and modes,
but also other non-literary and archaic cultural forms - so that,
for example, realist elements might be mixed with more experimental
modes of narration, or older literary devices might be reactivated
in juxtaposition with more contemporary frames.
Written during the 1970s, John McGrath's winding, furious,
innovative play tracks the economic history and exploitation of the
Scottish Highlands from the post-Rebellion suppression of the clans
to the story of the Clearances: in the nineteenth century,
aristocratic landowners discovered the profitability of sheep
farming, and forced a mass emigration of rural Highlanders, burning
their houses in order to make way for the Cheviot sheep. The play
follows the thread of capitalist and repressive exploitation
through the estates of the stag-hunting landed gentry, to the 1970s
rush for profit in the name of North Sea Oil. Described by the
playwright as having a "ceilidh" format, The Cheviot, the Stag and
the Black, Black Oil draws on historical research alongside Gaelic
song and the Scots' love of variety and popular entertainment to
tell this epic story. A totally distinctive cultural and theatrical
phenomenon, the play championed several new approaches to theatre,
raising its profile as a means of political intervention; proposing
a collective, democratic, collaborative approach to creating
theatre; offering a language of performance accessible to
working-class people; producing theatre in non-purpose-built
theatre spaces; breaking down the barrier between audience and
performers through interaction; and taking theatre to people who
otherwise would not access it. The play received its premiere in
1973 by the agit-prop theatre group 7:84, of which John McGrath was
founder and Artistic Director, and toured Scotland to great
critical and audience acclaim.
The ambition of this book is to resituate the problem of 'world
literature', considered as a revived category of theoretical
enquiry, by pursuing the literary-cultural implications of the
theory of combined and uneven development. This theory has a long
pedigree in the social sciences, where it continues to stimulate
debate. But its implications for cultural analysis have received
less attention, even though the theory might be said to draw
attention to a central - perhaps the central - arc or trajectory of
modern(ist) production in literature and the other arts worldwide.
It is in the conjuncture of combined and uneven development, on the
one hand, and the recently interrogated and expanded categories of
'world literature' and 'modernism', on the other, that this book
looks for its specific contours. In the two theoretical chapters
that frame the book, the authors argue for a single, but radically
uneven world-system; a singular modernity, combined and uneven; and
a literature that variously registers this combined unevenness in
both its form and content to reveal itself as, properly speaking,
world-literature. In the four substantive chapters that then
follow, the authors explore a selection of modern-era fictions in
which the potential of their method of comparativism seems to be
most dramatically highlighted. They treat the novel
paradigmatically, not exemplarily, as a literary form in which
combined and uneven development is manifested with particular
salience, due in no small part to its fundamental association with
the rise of capitalism and its status in peripheral and
semi-peripheral societies as a 'modernising' import. The peculiar
plasticity and hybridity of the novel form enables it to
incorporate not only multiple literary levels, genres and modes,
but also other non-literary and archaic cultural forms - so that,
for example, realist elements might be mixed with more experimental
modes of narration, or older literary devices might be reactivated
in juxtaposition with more contemporary frames.
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