The panel aims to further the discussion developed in and flowing from Pascale Casanova’s “The world republic of letters” http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/publish/casanop.htm.

It will examine the tension between the aesthetic universalism informing the competition for recognition amongst authors in metropolitan centres such as Paris, London, New York and Barcelona on the one hand, and the powers shaping the hierarchical literary field within which literary capital is produced and distributed. It will scrutinise the principles and processes shaping consecration by literary legislators in these centres. This includes a critical consideration, from a decentralised perspective, of the lines of power that determine the trajectories of literary texts as they travel between local and global fora. And it will investigate specific cases that illuminate the ways in which marginalised authors seek to manage their literary capital in this competition and the ways in which their entry alters the conditions shaping the literary field.

Invitations are extended to panellists who would like to:

• Analyse the notion of literary capital and the ways in which literary capital is generated and distributed locally and globally.
• Discuss the tension between aesthetics and the sociology of literature.
• Broaden Casanova’s claims to a discussion of marginalised literature – in particular from Africa and Asia – she does not investigate.
• Extend Casanova’s theses to related but different non-fiction literary fields, such as travel writing and ego texts.
• Propose alternative accounts of the “geopolitics of literature” (Eagleton) to those put forward in “The world republic of letters”.

For further information about the conference “Forging the Local and the Global: Textual Migration and Translation” 9 – 12 July 2006 Stellenbosch University, please go to http://academic.sun.ac.za/english/localglobal2006/