Ethiopian Intellectual History and the Global: Käbbädä Mikael’s Geographies of Belonging

TY - JOUR

T1 - Ethiopian Intellectual History and the Global

T2 - Käbbädä Mikael’s Geographies of Belonging

AU - Marzagora, Sara

PY - 2019/3/6

Y1 - 2019/3/6

N2 - Through the literary and historiographical works written by Ethiopian intellectual Käbbädä Mikael in the 1940s and 1950s, this article problematizes the concept of the “world” in world literature. In some theories of world literature, the world is presented as a static a priori, a self-evident spatial referent, a background setting for literary activities. Contrary to this objectivist frame, I propose instead to look at the world as a performative category, and to conceive world literature as a study of worldmaking processes. Käbbädä Mikael’s worldmaking attempted to break into the Eurocentric exclusivity of hegemonic narratives of modernity, jostling for recognition within modernization theory but also, at the same time, activating polycentric connections along oblique South-South networks. For him, the world was not a cosmopolitan project, but a pool of symbolic resources from which to draw in building a better future for Ethiopia.

AB - Through the literary and historiographical works written by Ethiopian intellectual Käbbädä Mikael in the 1940s and 1950s, this article problematizes the concept of the “world” in world literature. In some theories of world literature, the world is presented as a static a priori, a self-evident spatial referent, a background setting for literary activities. Contrary to this objectivist frame, I propose instead to look at the world as a performative category, and to conceive world literature as a study of worldmaking processes. Käbbädä Mikael’s worldmaking attempted to break into the Eurocentric exclusivity of hegemonic narratives of modernity, jostling for recognition within modernization theory but also, at the same time, activating polycentric connections along oblique South-South networks. For him, the world was not a cosmopolitan project, but a pool of symbolic resources from which to draw in building a better future for Ethiopia.

KW - Ethiopia

KW - Amharic literature

KW - Worldmaking

KW - Geographies of belonging

KW - Significant Geographies

U2 - 10.1163/24056480-00401006

DO - 10.1163/24056480-00401006

M3 - Article

SN - 2405-6480

VL - 4

SP - 107

EP - 128

JO - Journal of World Literature

JF - Journal of World Literature

IS - 1

ER -