West Africa
David Damrosch’s conception of world literature as “literary works that circulate beyond their culture of origin” (2003, 4) has become an influential perspective in thinking about world literature. However, this circulation model, a major conceptual approach to the question of world literature remains problematic in many respects, not least because of its presumption that “culture of origin” is a stable reference point. In addition to this is the fact that it also ignores the important factor of the writing/production of texts, especially in non- metropolitan contexts. Eileen Julien has argued (cf. 2006) that the novels that make up the canon of modern African literature are outwardly oriented, largely addressed to audiences beyond their “cultures of origin”, a view that has been taken up in connection with literatures in other, non-Anglophone parts of the world. Martin Kern, focusing mainly on Chinese poetry, suggests a useful addition to Damrosch’s circulation model: “World Literature is not only a mode of reading (ideally in Goethe’s productive intuition as reader), that is, reception; it is also a mode of creative composition. World Literature can be written” (Kern 2017/2018, 11; emphasis in original). Following upon Julien’s and Kern’s arguments, this chapter explores the discursive construction of West African literature as world literature; it argues that written into its constitution at the moment of its emergence is an unmistakable opening to a world beyond the nation-state and the African continent.
