The World-Literary System and the Atlantic grapples with key questions about how American studies, and the Atlantic region in general, engages with new considerations of literary comparativism, international literary space and the world-literary system. The edited collection furthers these discussions by placing them into a relationship with the theory of combined and uneven development – a theory that has a long pedigree in Marxist sociology and political economy and that continues to stimulate debate across the social sciences, but whose implications for culture have received less attention. Drawing on the comparative modes, concepts, and methods being developed in the "new" world-literary studies, the essays cover a diverse range of topics such as, the periodization of world literature, racism and the world-system, singular modernity, critical "irrealism," commodity frontiers, semi-peripherality, and world-ecology. The chapters in this book were originally published in the journal, Atlantic Studies.

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.

The World-Literary System and the Atlantic grapples with key questions about how American studies, and the Atlantic region in general, engages with new considerations of literary comparativism, international literary space and the world-literary system. The edited collection furthers these discussions by placing them into a relationship with the theory of combined and uneven development - a theory that has a long pedigree in Marxist sociology and political economy and that continues to stimulate debate across the social sciences, but whose implications for culture have received less attention. Drawing on the comparative modes, concepts, and methods being developed in the "new" world-literary studies, the essays cover a diverse range of topics such as, the periodization of world literature, racism and the world-system, singular modernity, critical "irrealism," commodity frontiers, semi-peripherality, and world-ecology. The chapters in this book were originally published in the journal, Atlantic Studies.

Into our Labours explores the literary representation of work across the globe since 1850, setting out to show that the literature of modernity is best understood in the light of the worlding of capitalism. The book proposes that a determinative relation exists between changing modes of work and changes in the forms, genres, and aesthetic strategies of the writing that bears witness to them. Two aspects of the 'worlding' of modernity, especially, are emphasised. First, an 'inaugural' experience of capitalist social relations, whose literary registration sometimes makes itself known through a crisis of representation, as the forms of space- and time-consciousness demanded by life in contexts in which market-oriented commodity production has become the dominant form of social labour are counterposed with inherited ways of seeing and knowing, now under acute pressure if not already obsolete. Second, a moment corresponding to the consolidation, regularisation and global dispersal of capitalist development. Into Our Labours focuses on the naturalisation of capitalist social relations: forms of sociality and solidarity, ideologies of familialism, individualism and work, relations between the sexes and the generations. Arguing that the only plausible term for the vast body of literary work engendered by the worlding of capitalist social relations is 'modernist', the book proposes that it is then important to challenge the still-entrenched Eurocentric understandings of modernism. Modernism is neither originally nor paradigmatically 'Western' in provenance; and its temporal parameters are much broader than are usually assumed in modernist studies, extending both backward and forward in time.

The Postcolonial Unconscious is a major attempt to reconstruct the whole field of postcolonial studies. In this magisterial and, at times, polemical study, Neil Lazarus argues that the key critical concepts that form the very foundation of the field need to be re-assessed and questioned. Drawing on a vast range of literary sources, Lazarus investigates works and authors from Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa and the Arab world, South, Southeast and East Asia, to reconsider them from a postcolonial perspective. Alongside this, he offers bold new readings of some of the most influential figures in the field: Fredric Jameson, Edward Said and Frantz Fanon. A tour de force of postcolonial studies, this book will set the agenda for the future, probing how the field has come to develop in the directions it has and why and how it can grow further.

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.

The Cambridge Companion to Postcolonial Literary Studies, first published in 2004, offers a lucid introduction and overview of one of the most important strands in recent literary theory and cultural studies. The volume aims to introduce readers to key concepts, methods, theories, thematic concerns, and contemporary debates in the field. Drawing on a wide range of disciplines, contributors explain the impact of history, sociology and philosophy on the study of postcolonial literatures and cultures. Topics examined include everything from anti-colonial nationalism and decolonisation to globalisation, migration flows, and the 'brain drain' which constitute the past and present of 'the postcolonial condition'. The volume also pays attention to the sociological and ideological conditions surrounding the emergence of postcolonial literary studies as an academic field in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The Companion turns an authoritative, engaged and discriminating lens on postcolonial literary studies.

This wide-ranging study contains individual chapers on modernity, globalization and the "West," nationalism and decolonization, cricket and popular consciousness in the English-speaking Caribbean, and African pop music. Neil Lazarus offers extended discussions of the work of such influential writers, critics and activists as Frantz Fanon, C. L. R. James, Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, Samir Amin, Raymond Williams, Paul Gilroy and Partha Chatterjee. This book is a politically focused, materialist intervention into postcolonial and cultural studies, and constitutes a major reappraisal of the debates on politics and culture in these fields.

The Postcolonial Unconscious is a major attempt to reconstruct the whole field of postcolonial studies. In this magisterial and, at times, polemical study, Neil Lazarus argues that the key critical concepts that form the very foundation of the field need to be re-assessed and questioned. Drawing on a vast range of literary sources, Lazarus investigates works and authors from Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa and the Arab world, South, Southeast and East Asia, to reconsider them from a postcolonial perspective. Alongside this, he offers bold new readings of some of the most influential figures in the field: Fredric Jameson, Edward Said and Frantz Fanon. A tour de force of postcolonial studies, this book will set the agenda for the future, probing how the field has come to develop in the directions it has and why and how it can grow further.

The Cambridge Companion to Postcolonial Literary Studies, first published in 2004, offers a lucid introduction and overview of one of the most important strands in recent literary theory and cultural studies. The volume aims to introduce readers to key concepts, methods, theories, thematic concerns, and contemporary debates in the field. Drawing on a wide range of disciplines, contributors explain the impact of history, sociology and philosophy on the study of postcolonial literatures and cultures. Topics examined include everything from anti-colonial nationalism and decolonisation to globalisation, migration flows, and the 'brain drain' which constitute the past and present of 'the postcolonial condition'. The volume also pays attention to the sociological and ideological conditions surrounding the emergence of postcolonial literary studies as an academic field in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The Companion turns an authoritative, engaged and discriminating lens on postcolonial literary studies.

What is the relationship between Marxism and postcolonial thought? Can a revolutionary European ideology be an emancipatory intellectual tool in the post-imperial world? Or, in sites where European thought is often treated with suspicion, does it repeat distrusted legacies and epistemologies? This collection is the first systematic attempt to provide an overview of this collision. An international cast of contributors challenge the elision of Marxist thought in the debate on what the term "postcolonial" actually entails. The volume is essential reading for all engaged in postcolonial and cultural studies.

This wide-ranging study contains individual chapers on modernity, globalization and the "West," nationalism and decolonization, cricket and popular consciousness in the English-speaking Caribbean, and African pop music. Neil Lazarus offers extended discussions of the work of such influential writers, critics and activists as Frantz Fanon, C. L. R. James, Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, Samir Amin, Raymond Williams, Paul Gilroy and Partha Chatterjee. This book is a politically focused, materialist intervention into postcolonial and cultural studies, and constitutes a major reappraisal of the debates on politics and culture in these fields.