로컬적인 것과 세계문학, 그리고 (문학)번역

The Local, World Literature and (Cultural) Translation

This paper attempts to examine such theorists' ideas of world literature as Goethe, Marx, Franco Moretti, and Pascale Casanova in terms of the cultural translation of the local. Today the local gets more important because it IS in transition from the control of nation-states to the domination of transnational capital in the process of globalization. This means that as the influence of nation-states on the local gets weaker, the global takes over some of their place. In this re-configuration, however, what is important is the rise of the local as a significant field of cultural negotiation, experimentation and translation. The rise of the local can also give a suggestive perspective in understanding the theories of world literature. In the modern times, it was the dialogue and negotiation among national literatures that has informed and constituted world literature: world literature was thought as an idea towards universalism and human enlightenment beyond the provinciality and particularity of national and local literatures. So it is national and local literatures and their provincial and closed characteristics that should be criticized and sublated for the formation of world literature. But in process of globalization, the site of local literature arises both as a cultural battlefield between the national and the global and as a place where cultures and values repressed and marginalized under modern national culture will reappear and cross over to other cultures in order to produce new cultural products. In the course, the local arises as the space of cultural translation and negotiation which Michael Cronin defined as 'fractal differentiation.' The recognition of the local as a fractal space of complexity and openness can be useful in revisiting the discussions of world literature. In the existing discussions of world literature, the perspectives of the local seem to be overlooked, or regarded only as passive and non-existent. This can result in negating the autonomous and translational capability of the local and make the space of world literature Eurocentric. In fact, the Eurocentrism of world literature is nothing more than both the debasement of the peripheral and local cultures and the disregard of their cultural translation. This paper tries to put the theories of world literature under critical scrutiny of the cultural translation of the (trans)local and display how the local operates in the theories. Furthermore, through this critical examination, it intends to show another possibility of world literature based upon the cultural translation of the local.