Abstract
The essay draws on Pierre Bourdieu’s The Field of Cultural Production (1993) to address how the global spread of Anglophone literary studies compels an accounting for who consecrates what and why. Bourdieu’s model of consecration involves the reciprocal validation of intellectual elites and aesthetic canons, a model which has been adopted in such recent influential works as Pascale Casanova’s The Republic of Letters (2004) and Brouillette’s UNESCO and the Fate of the Literary (2019). Asian institutions, even as they turn their critical gaze inward, continue to seek validation from Anglo-center conferences, journals, and publishers. The chapter considers whether the consecratory power of Asian English centers can avoid merely reproducing Anglo-centric colonial, postcolonial, or neo-colonial hierarchies of aesthetic value, canonical durability, and institutional practice.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Ahmad, Aijaz. 1994. Disciplinary English: Third-Worldism and Literature. In Rethinking English: Essays in Literature, Language, History, ed. Svati Joshi, 206–63. Bombay, Calcutta, Madras: Oxford University Press.
Altbach, Philip G. 2016. Global Perspectives on Higher Education. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Baker, David P. 2004. The Schooled Society: The Educational Transformation of Global Culture. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1993. The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature. Trans. various. New York: Columbia University Press.
Casanova, Pascale. 2004. The World Republic of Letters. Trans. M.B. DeBevoise. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Chilton, Myles. 2016. English Studies Beyond the ‘Center’: Teaching English Literature and the Future of Global English. Abingdon: Routledge.
Clark, William. 2006. Academic Charisma and the Origins of the Research University. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.
Davis, Lennard J. 2002. Dancing in the Dark: A Manifesto against Professional Organizations. In The Institution of Literature, ed. Jeffery J. Williams, 153–172. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Knights, Ben. n. d. Out of Invisibility: The English Disciplines and the Study of Pedagogy. Art and Humanities in Higher Education. https://journals.sagepub.com/page/ahh/collections/english-disciplines-pedagogy-full.
Perkin, Harold J. 1987. The Academic Profession in the United Kingdom. In The Academic Profession: National, Disciplinary, and Institutional Settings, ed. Burton R. Clark, 13–59. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Said, Edward. 1983. The World, the Text, and the Critic. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Sapiro, Gisèle. 2016. The Metamorphosis of Modes of Consecration in the Literary Field: Academies, Literary Prizes, Festivals. Poetics 59: 5–19. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.poetic.2016.01.003.
Shumway, David R. 2002. The Star System in Literary Studies. In The Institution of Literature, ed. Jeffrey J. Williams, 173–201. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Shumway, David R., and Dionne, Craig. 2002. Disciplining English: Alternative Histories, Critical Perspectives. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Shumway, David R., and Dionne, Craig. 2002. Introduction. In Disciplining English: Alternative Histories, Critical Perspectives, eds. David R. Shumway and Craig Dionne, 1–18. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Sugars, Cynthia. 2004. Postcolonial Pedagogy and the Impossibility of Teaching: Outside in the (Canadian Literature) Classroom. In Home-Work: Postcolonialism, Pedagogy, and Canadian Literature, ed. Cynthia Sugars, 1–34. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1ckpc18.4.
Vermeulen, Pieter. 2017. New York, Capital of World Literature? On Holocaust Memory and World Literary Value. Anglia 135.1: 67–85. https://doi.org/10.1515/anglia-2017-0005.
Williams, Jeffery J., ed. 2002. The Institution of Literature. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Williams, Jeffrey J. 2002. The Posttheory Generation. In Disciplining English: Alternative Histories, Critical Perspectives, eds. David R. Shumway and Craig Dionne, 115–34. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Wilson, Elizabeth A. 2002. A Short History of a Border War: Social Science, School Reform, and the Study of Literature. In Disciplining English: Alternative Histories, Critical Perspectives, eds. David R. Shumway and Craig Dionne, 59-82. Albany: State University of New York Press.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/consecration.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Chilton, M. (2021). Global English’s Centers of Consecration. In: Chilton, M., Clark, S., Yoshihara, Y. (eds) Asian English. Asia-Pacific and Literature in English. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-3513-7_13
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-3513-7_13
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-16-3512-0
Online ISBN: 978-981-16-3513-7
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)