Radical Presentism

This is an attempt to reflect on questions I buried in the footnotes of my monograph, World Literature for the Wretched of the Earth. This reflection took place over the course of a year following its publication, and in the context of finishing an anthology of political theory from the Global South in the twentieth century. This is an indulgent and scattered exercise, but I hope it also demonstrates an attempt to revisit (or foreground, or perhaps unearth) some persistent concerns that haunt the projects of writing world literature and world history. In this essay, I ask how scholars of world literature and world history offer accounts of thinkers and writers who envisioned or theorized world literature and world history in their own times. Additionally, what have been the uses of theorising world literature and world history, especially as political projects? Is it possible, in other words, to wrestle with the political implications of our scholarly endeavor (of writing world history or of analyzing and defining world literature) without identifying the political potency of these categories for other projects? What is the political value of claiming ‘world history’ for the project of anticolonial activism, or ‘world literature’ as a method of critique for anticolonial thought? Keywords: Postcolonialism; Fanon; Ambedkar; Bhagavad Gita; Global Intellectual History This chapter is an attempt to reflect on questions I buried in the footnotes of my monograph, World Literature for the Wretched of the Earth. This reflection took place over the course of a year following its publication, and in the context of finishing an anthology of political theory from the Global South in the twentieth century. This is an indulgent and scattered exercise, but I hope it also demonstrates an attempt to revisit (or foreground, or perhaps unearth) some persistent concerns that haunt the projects of writing world literature and world history. First: how might scholars of world literature and world history offer accounts of thinkers and writers who envisioned or theorized world literature and world history in their own times? Second: what have been the uses of theorising world literature and world history, especially as political projects?