The New Modernist Studies, edited by Douglas Mao, 2020
Twenty-first century paradigms of global modernism implicitly endorse “babelization” (the inscrut... more Twenty-first century paradigms of global modernism implicitly endorse “babelization” (the inscrutable styles of literary texts, the addition of lesser taught languages to the field) as a corrective to linguistic imperialism and the reduction of language to a communicative medium. Yet this stance does not fully account for the distinction between natural and artificial languages. “Debabelization,” as linguist C. K. Ogden put it in 1931, motivated rich debates about the nature of language and whether technological intervention could make particular languages more efficient agents of cultural exchange. Designers of Esperanto, Ido, and Basic English each promised that their artificial language would bridge the gap between speakers of different national tongues. This essay shows how the competitive and techno-utopian discourse around auxiliary language movements intersects with the history and aesthetics of modernist literature. While linguists strove to regulate the vagaries of natural languages, modernist writers (for example, Aimé Césaire, G. V. Desani, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, H. G. Wells) used debabelization as a trope for exploring the limits of scientific objectivity and internationalist sentiment.
This introduction argues that literary expertise cannot be understood without the figure of the a... more This introduction argues that literary expertise cannot be understood without the figure of the amateur. It turns to the critic as amateur not to endorse the backlash against experts, but to recover a story of literary study and institutional crossover that might combat it. The contributors to our collection re-examine the professionalization of modern literary study from the point of view of the amateur. Yet, from the outset, point of view is misleading because “the amateur” is not a uniform position so much as an assortment of perspectives on the practice and purpose of criticism. Essays explore the amateurism of canonical critics, eccentric intellectuals, students, small press publishers, book collectors, radio show hosts, and more. View widget of book here: https://bloomsburycp3.codemantra.com/viewer/5d9ba3c5fa4f8c0001c20413
A short methods paper on the significance of Web 2.0 social media platforms for the discipline of... more A short methods paper on the significance of Web 2.0 social media platforms for the discipline of literary studies. It reflects on how social media companies deploy the rhetoric of "platform" to differentiate themselves from gatekeeping publishers and argues that contemporary literary culture is now embedded within internet culture.
The Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry, 2019
A response to a forum convened on my book Chimeras of Form. I reflect on the place of the book i... more A response to a forum convened on my book Chimeras of Form. I reflect on the place of the book in modernist and postcolonial studies. I also argue that the forum as a whole points to major concerns regarding the relationship of literature to social movements. Finally, I consider the impact of postcolonial theory on literary studies and the future of postcolonial studies as an institutional category.
This essay was written for a special issue of Modernism/Modernity entitled "Weak Theory." It the... more This essay was written for a special issue of Modernism/Modernity entitled "Weak Theory." It theorizes the concept of obliterature in relationship to feminist publishing in print and digital media, the modernist canon, and academic labor. We argue that obliterature exists in a shadow formation to capital L, canonical Literature. It explains the relationship between the enduring and ephemeral, the amateur and the professional, in the construction of aesthetic value. Our case studies for amateur criticism are Virginia Woolf's Three Guineas and Kate Zambreno's Heroines.
Global modernism is almost always talked about in terms of expansion: more archives, more languages, longer time frames, wider geographies. This pieces talks about it in terms of scalability. Scalability refers to the ability of a system, network, or project to handle growth without changing its governing principles—that is, to accommodate more material with minimum expenditure. I argue that global modernism as not scaled well and that a lack of scalability is a good thing.
This essay shows how digital publishing practices are changing the field of contemporary literatu... more This essay shows how digital publishing practices are changing the field of contemporary literature. It identifies an overlooked intersection between strategies of amateur creativity and professional literary production across print and digital mediums. Strategies of amateur creativity (a category coined by Lawrence Lessig) include self-publishing stories, novels, and poetry, participating in online writing communities, and using social media platforms to share work. Such online behavior fosters a global popular culture that is, I argue, reshaping traditional literary categories like authorship and canonicity as well as institutions like the publishing house. The essay brings scholarship on fandom, digital sharing economies, and media studies into conversation with literary studies to explain how internet cultures of amateurism alter definitional accounts of artistic works as both commodities and gifts. It further shows how changing conceptions of literary ownership and distribution inform a range of contemporary writers’ experiments with the formal composition of their works, anonymous publishing, and promotion. Writers addressed include Margaret Atwood, Elena Ferrante, Wu Ming, Cory Doctorow, and Lauren Beukes.
Collected in The Cambridge Companion to British Fiction Since 1945, ed. David James (Cambridge: C... more Collected in The Cambridge Companion to British Fiction Since 1945, ed. David James (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2016)
The New Modernist Studies, edited by Douglas Mao, 2020
Twenty-first century paradigms of global modernism implicitly endorse “babelization” (the inscrut... more Twenty-first century paradigms of global modernism implicitly endorse “babelization” (the inscrutable styles of literary texts, the addition of lesser taught languages to the field) as a corrective to linguistic imperialism and the reduction of language to a communicative medium. Yet this stance does not fully account for the distinction between natural and artificial languages. “Debabelization,” as linguist C. K. Ogden put it in 1931, motivated rich debates about the nature of language and whether technological intervention could make particular languages more efficient agents of cultural exchange. Designers of Esperanto, Ido, and Basic English each promised that their artificial language would bridge the gap between speakers of different national tongues. This essay shows how the competitive and techno-utopian discourse around auxiliary language movements intersects with the history and aesthetics of modernist literature. While linguists strove to regulate the vagaries of natural languages, modernist writers (for example, Aimé Césaire, G. V. Desani, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, H. G. Wells) used debabelization as a trope for exploring the limits of scientific objectivity and internationalist sentiment.
This introduction argues that literary expertise cannot be understood without the figure of the a... more This introduction argues that literary expertise cannot be understood without the figure of the amateur. It turns to the critic as amateur not to endorse the backlash against experts, but to recover a story of literary study and institutional crossover that might combat it. The contributors to our collection re-examine the professionalization of modern literary study from the point of view of the amateur. Yet, from the outset, point of view is misleading because “the amateur” is not a uniform position so much as an assortment of perspectives on the practice and purpose of criticism. Essays explore the amateurism of canonical critics, eccentric intellectuals, students, small press publishers, book collectors, radio show hosts, and more. View widget of book here: https://bloomsburycp3.codemantra.com/viewer/5d9ba3c5fa4f8c0001c20413
A short methods paper on the significance of Web 2.0 social media platforms for the discipline of... more A short methods paper on the significance of Web 2.0 social media platforms for the discipline of literary studies. It reflects on how social media companies deploy the rhetoric of "platform" to differentiate themselves from gatekeeping publishers and argues that contemporary literary culture is now embedded within internet culture.
The Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry, 2019
A response to a forum convened on my book Chimeras of Form. I reflect on the place of the book i... more A response to a forum convened on my book Chimeras of Form. I reflect on the place of the book in modernist and postcolonial studies. I also argue that the forum as a whole points to major concerns regarding the relationship of literature to social movements. Finally, I consider the impact of postcolonial theory on literary studies and the future of postcolonial studies as an institutional category.
This essay was written for a special issue of Modernism/Modernity entitled "Weak Theory." It the... more This essay was written for a special issue of Modernism/Modernity entitled "Weak Theory." It theorizes the concept of obliterature in relationship to feminist publishing in print and digital media, the modernist canon, and academic labor. We argue that obliterature exists in a shadow formation to capital L, canonical Literature. It explains the relationship between the enduring and ephemeral, the amateur and the professional, in the construction of aesthetic value. Our case studies for amateur criticism are Virginia Woolf's Three Guineas and Kate Zambreno's Heroines.
Global modernism is almost always talked about in terms of expansion: more archives, more languages, longer time frames, wider geographies. This pieces talks about it in terms of scalability. Scalability refers to the ability of a system, network, or project to handle growth without changing its governing principles—that is, to accommodate more material with minimum expenditure. I argue that global modernism as not scaled well and that a lack of scalability is a good thing.
This essay shows how digital publishing practices are changing the field of contemporary literatu... more This essay shows how digital publishing practices are changing the field of contemporary literature. It identifies an overlooked intersection between strategies of amateur creativity and professional literary production across print and digital mediums. Strategies of amateur creativity (a category coined by Lawrence Lessig) include self-publishing stories, novels, and poetry, participating in online writing communities, and using social media platforms to share work. Such online behavior fosters a global popular culture that is, I argue, reshaping traditional literary categories like authorship and canonicity as well as institutions like the publishing house. The essay brings scholarship on fandom, digital sharing economies, and media studies into conversation with literary studies to explain how internet cultures of amateurism alter definitional accounts of artistic works as both commodities and gifts. It further shows how changing conceptions of literary ownership and distribution inform a range of contemporary writers’ experiments with the formal composition of their works, anonymous publishing, and promotion. Writers addressed include Margaret Atwood, Elena Ferrante, Wu Ming, Cory Doctorow, and Lauren Beukes.
Collected in The Cambridge Companion to British Fiction Since 1945, ed. David James (Cambridge: C... more Collected in The Cambridge Companion to British Fiction Since 1945, ed. David James (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2016)
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Books by Aarthi Vadde
Papers by Aarthi Vadde
Global modernism is almost always talked about in terms of expansion: more archives, more languages, longer time frames, wider geographies. This pieces talks about it in terms of scalability. Scalability refers to the ability of a system, network, or project to handle growth without changing its governing principles—that is, to accommodate more material with minimum expenditure. I argue that global modernism as not scaled well and that a lack of scalability is a good thing.
Global modernism is almost always talked about in terms of expansion: more archives, more languages, longer time frames, wider geographies. This pieces talks about it in terms of scalability. Scalability refers to the ability of a system, network, or project to handle growth without changing its governing principles—that is, to accommodate more material with minimum expenditure. I argue that global modernism as not scaled well and that a lack of scalability is a good thing.