Book Section
Dirk Wiemann
Being Taught Something World-Sized
‘The Detainee’s Tale as told to Ali Smith’ and the Work of World Literature
This paper reads ‘The Detainee’s Tale as told to Ali Smith’ (2016) as an exemplary demonstration of the work of world literature. Smith’s story articulates an ethics of reading that is grounded in the recipient’s openness to the singular, unpredictable, and unverifiable text of the other. More specifically, Smith’s account enables the very event that it painstakingly stages: the encounter with alterity and newness, which is both the theme of the narrative and the effect of the text on the reader. At the same time, however, the text urges to move from an ethics of literature understood as the responsible reception of the other by an individual reader to a more explicitly convivial and political ethics of commitment beyond the scene of reading.
Title |
Being Taught Something World-Sized
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Subtitle |
‘The Detainee’s Tale as told to Ali Smith’ and the Work of World Literature
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Author(s) |
Dirk Wiemann
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Identifier | |
Description |
This paper reads ‘The Detainee’s Tale as told to Ali Smith’ (2016) as an exemplary demonstration of the work of world literature. Smith’s story articulates an ethics of reading that is grounded in the recipient’s openness to the singular, unpredictable, and unverifiable text of the other. More specifically, Smith’s account enables the very event that it painstakingly stages: the encounter with alterity and newness, which is both the theme of the narrative and the effect of the text on the reader. At the same time, however, the text urges to move from an ethics of literature understood as the responsible reception of the other by an individual reader to a more explicitly convivial and political ethics of commitment beyond the scene of reading.
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Is Part Of | |
Place |
Berlin
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Publisher |
ICI Berlin Press
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Date |
April 27, 2021
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Subject |
Ali Smith
anagogy
ethics
Refugee Tales
singularity
world literature
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Rights |
© by the author(s)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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Harvested |
yes
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Language |
en-GB
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short title |
Something World-Sized
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page start |
149
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page end |
172
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Source |
The Work of World Literature, ed. by Francesco Giusti and Benjamin Lewis Robinson, Cultural Inquiry, 19 (Berlin: ICI Berlin Press, 2021-04-27), pp. 149–72
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