lcc liberal arts studies / 2010 volume iii - LCC International University

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GERI HENDERSON / PRAXIS IN PRESERVING NATIONAL IDENTITIES IN LITERATURE
and deals with such issues as well as the unspoken mandate that the educated
woman or man will have read some essential parts of the English/Anglophone
canon. The dyad of the global and local has been named “glocal” and, as it relates to
the curriculum Cooppan states, “[T]he world literature course is characterized
precisely by the de-emphasis of the category of the national … and a renewed
emphasis on some model of the global” (2004, p. 12). But Muhsin al-Musawi's
argument that national identities still persist in literature provides a counterargument
and raises “serious suspicions about the promised accompanying
discourse of global diversity” (2007, p. 305)
Al-Musawi points out that globalization's forward march, propelled by great
economic forces, have goals that may “endanger societies and cultures” (2007,
p.306). On the other hand there is evidence that a strong postcolonial drive is
releasing literature “from the limitations of specific disciplines and ideologies” as it
moves toward stronger engagements with the negative and positive aspects of
globalization. Examples of Arabic literature demonstrate awareness and
engagements with cyberspace, the Internet, and something Al-Musawi calls
technoregions, all serving to defy traditional classifications, i.e. time, place,
borders, boundaries, and limits (2007, p. 307). These works create an alternative
connection that is a-national and Arabic, representative of all Arab nations and
cultures. Al-Musawi holds up Sonallah Ibrahim's The Committee (1981) as an
example of a novel that that will become a global text (in translation) but remain
firmly identified with Arab culture (2007, P. 309).
This is not a new phenomenon, of course. Works such as Homer's
Odyssey, Beowulf, and The Epic of Gilgamesh that are rooted in their culture, their
location, and tied to a specific national identity have been read globally for
hundreds of years because their worth is unquestioned. The degree to which this
still occurs may be less noticeable because both the number and speed with which
they are disseminated have increased dramatically. The idea then that literature
can be strictly national or global is perhaps inaccurate despite the fact that columns
of course offerings in many university catalogs label them as such.
Thus, while I might argue for the preservation of national literatures, there
is a movement to globalize even the field of American Literature, for example, to decenter
it. As Sarika Chandra puts it in her introduction to the volume Shades of the
Planet: American Literature as World Literature (Dimrock, 2007), each essay within
“proposes its own particular way of decentering American literature, ranging from
including literatures written in languages other than English to reimagining the
LCC / LIBERAL ARTS STUDIES / 2010