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Deathworlds, the world novel and the human
Ganguly, Debjani
Ganguly, Debjani
Author
Abstract
Foundational to the English novel in the eighteenth century was a narrative grammar of the human structured around two ideas: sympathy and sovereignty. Linking these two were deliberations on the role of technology in determining the reach and extent of the sympathetic imagination. This essay reprises the novel’s historical links with distant suffering and technologies of mediation – the staple of debates on the sentimental novel and the rise of Abolitionism in the late eighteenth century – in the context of the emergence of a critical mass of world novels written against the backdrop of post-1989 sites of geopolitical carnage. New media technologies and multiple visual regimes have been critical in mediating these deathworlds for diverse publics around the world. What changes, I ask, are being wrought on the narrative grammar of the human in the novel form in this era of spectatorial capitalism where the capacity to respond to distant suffering has increased manifold with advances in information technology?
Keywords
human, world, novel, post-1989, war, techno-mediation
Date
2011
Type
Journal article
Journal
Angelaki
Book
Volume
16
Issue
4
Page Range
145-158
Article Number
ACU Department
Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences
Faculty of Education and Arts
Faculty of Education and Arts
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Open Access Status
License
All rights reserved
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Controlled