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id	eprints-26004
recordtype	eprints
institution	SOAS, University of London
collection	SOAS Research Online
language	English
language_search	English
topic	DT Africa PN0441 Literary History
description	Through the literary and historiographical works written by Ethiopian intellectual Käbbädä Mikael in the 1940s and 1950s, this article problematizes the concept of the “world” in world literature. In some theories of world literature, the world is presented as a static a priori, a self-evident spatial referent, a background setting for literary activities. Contrary to this objectivist frame, I propose instead to look at the world as a performative category, and to conceive world literature as a study of worldmaking processes. Käbbädä Mikael’s worldmaking attempted to break into the Eurocentric exclusivity of hegemonic narratives of modernity, jostling for recognition within modernization theory but also, at the same time, activating polycentric connections along oblique South-South networks. For him, the world was not a cosmopolitan project, but a pool of symbolic resources from which to draw in building a better future for Ethiopia.
format	Journal Article
author	Marzagora, Sara
author_facet	Marzagora, Sara
authorStr	Marzagora, Sara
author_letter	Marzagora, Sara
title	Ethiopian Intellectual History and the Global: Käbbädä Mikael’s Geographies of Belonging
publisher	Brill
publishDate	2019
url	https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/26004/