Making and Reading World Literature in a Pandemic

Global Logistics in Ling Ma’s Severance

Bibliographic Data

ID22131982
AuthorsAnna Muenchrath (0000-0003-3712-9660, Appalachian State University, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume7
Issue2
Pages184-201
Publication date2022-05-18
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of World Literature (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2405-6472 • E-ISSN: 2405-6480
PublisherWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1163/24056480-00702005
OpenAlexW4285004961
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited4

This essay intervenes in a debate about world literature that pits commodity circulation against normativity and literature’s causal force. By taking into account the history of book production and circulation as intimately linked with the history of global capitalism, this essay reads Severance (2018) by Ling Ma as a critique of the logic of global logistics and its labor relations. Reading the novel during a pandemic ironically draws attention to the reader’s own position in this global labor hierarchy, highlighting that the novel itself necessarily participates in the material injustices of global print capitalism. The essay argues that paying attention to book production and circulation – in the form of global supply chains, the world market’s global reach, and particularly the human relations this produces – is in fact not antithetical to, but instead a highly leveraged way of understanding literature’s potential for transformative agency

Capitalism · Commodity · Economics · Hierarchy · Market economy · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Severance · Social science · Sociology · Transformative learning · Law · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access