Literatures of small nations or small literatures ?
Round table, Kutaisi, Georgia, 25-26 September 2024,
Part of the symposium "Literatures of small countries and challenges of the modern global world",
organised by Shota Rustaveli Institute of Georgian Literature et al.
Literatures of small nations or small literatures? The dilemma refers to two modes of thinking of literature – a ‘socio-centric’ and a ‘literature-centric’ one, and to two approaches to non-dominant literature(s): a quantitative or empirical one (number of readers, ratio between literary ‘imports’, ‘exports’, and ‘slow stock’ or works remaining locked within the language they were created in) and a relational or nomothetic one. (Mind the extolling of ‘circulation’ and capitalist economy as conceptual metaphor and conceptual ground).
Relational approach would classify literatures into a limited number of correlated ideal types (e.g. small, minor, great, hegemonic), and reconstruct constellations of literatures belonging to these types while studying interliterary landscapes of diverse scopes (urban, international, global). A set of ideal types can be constructed along macro-sociolinguistic correlations/typologies like ‘vernacular vs. vehicular vs. referential vs. mythic’ of Henri Gobard (as in the quadruple typology in the previous sentence); or after the basic (op)positions within a field of artistic production after Bourdieu (big vs. small scale production, consecration vs. lack of such, but also economical vs. political heteronomy); or along the Wallersteinian idea of (non)merging world-systems each possessing a core, a periphery and a margin/frontier; or after some other ideal setting (e.g., of a nearly hegemonic ‘I vs. non-I’ axis linking the “Global South” and the colonising powers of the North-West, and of its outskirts: success in (self-)inscription into the postcolonial axis as a measure of size). (Mind the structuralist, and, beyond that, classicist and rhetorical pedigree of the relational approach).
An ‘ideographical’ approach would possibly (more than the former two approaches) try to converge the wings of the dilemma and explore, e.g.: (auto-)perceptions and (auto-)stereotypes, such as the literary misery of a numerically big nation (normally an assessment of a present?) or the literary greatness of a numerically tiny one (normally an assessment of a past?); the gaps between perceptions and self-perceptions of (non)smallness; the approaches to one’s ‘smallness’ – a quietist, entrepreneural, etc.; the qualification of the main qualifier itself (an euphemism, a dysphemism, etc.).
We invite papers thematising the concepts of ‘small literature’ and ‘literature of a small nation’, their correlativity and their signified, as well as the conditions of possibility of their articulation: from any of the perspectives charted above and from any other perspective.
Within this round table, papers and/or presentations of any duration from 10 (ten) to 40 (fourty) minutes shall be possible; individual details shall be negotiated upon submission and acceptance.
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Paper proposals in English of no less than 200 and no more than 250 words are due to rustaveliconference@gmail.com and yljuckanov@gmail.com till 30 May.
Registration form (to be sent to the first address only) and details on the acceptance procedure see here: https://conference.litinstituti.ge/en/symposium-details/.
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Helpful reading: Boschetti, “How field theory can contribute to knowledge of world literary space”, Paragraph, 35 (2012), 1; Bourdieu, The rules of art, 1995 (or. 1992); Domínguez, Di Rosario & Ciastellardi, “On writing a comparative literary history: delocalizing minor literatures in European languages in the age of ‘Big Data’”, Arcadia, 2018; Gobard, L’aliénation linguistique: Analyse tétraglossique, 1976; Mapping minor/small and world literatures: periphery and center, ed. He & Birns, forthcoming; Juvan, Glesener & Kalnačs, “Defining small literatures by numbers”, ppt presentation, 2023, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/375576455_Defining_small_literatures_by_numbers; Lakoff & Johnson, Metaphors we live by, 1980; Lyutskanov, “Conclusion”, in Russian classical literature today: the challenges/trials of messianism and mass culture, ed. Lyutskanov, Manolakev, Rusev, 2014; Satkauskytė, “Small literature as a problem; could it be solved?”, Interlitteraria, 24 (2019), 2; Pascale Casanova’s World of Letters and its legacies, ed. Gisèle Sapiro & Delia Ungureanu, 2022; Scalbert-Yücel, “Languages, politics and field theory – the question of the autonomy of small literatures”, Nationalities papers, 40 (2012), 3; Wallerstein, "World system vs world-systems", in Frank & Gills, The world system, 1993