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- Publisher
- Brill
- Copyright
- © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
- Subject
- Review Articles
- ISSN
- 1465-4466
- eISSN
- 1569-206X
- DOI
- 10.1163/1569206X-12341440
- Publisher site
- See Article on Publisher Site
Abstract
The argument that Against World Literature makes about why we might perceive translation as a form of anti-capitalist or ‘deowned’ property does not jibe with basic features of the material organisation of the publishing industry and the intellectual-property regime on which it depends. While it is perhaps unfair to expect everyone to be a cultural materialist or literary sociologist, I point out a number of features of the organisation of the World Literature industry that trouble Apter’s arguments about the anti-capitalist implications of our recognition of the untranslatable. Ultimately ownership is not a matter of perception, and non-owned literature, like non-alienated literary labour, cannot exist under capitalism. These circumstances will not change in the absence of some fundamental reorientation of the class dynamics of writing, publishing, and reading. To deown literature, the whole material constitution of the industry would have to be abolished and replaced with something else.
Journal
Historical Materialism – Brill
Published: Nov 27, 2015
Keywords: cultural materialism; Marxist cultural criticism; world literature; translation; authorship