South/South, South/North conversations: South Africa, India, the west

Abstract

The essay explores a model of literary-historical analysis and evaluation that avoids ‘anxiogenic’ (anxiety-ridden) or competitive comparisons of centres and peripheries: the north versus the south, the First World versus the Third World or, in antagonistic reaction, the Empire writing back to the centre. Instead, a multilingual, differentiated model suggests a way beyond `reaction’ to global filament. Using as a starting point Indian-based attacks on Rushdie’s comment that the Indian novel in English represents India’s greatest contribution to letters, the essay subjects to the perspective of the edge – Africa, India, South America – several Western assumptions about literary history. My aim is to modify the ‘reaction’ of the empire writing back. Rather I seek south/south, south/north conversations: not comparisons of competition, but what Iser refers to as the “recursive looping between cultures”.