This essay examines recent work on world literature theory, with a particular focus on those theorists who treat individual texts as in dialogue with the circulations of linguistic and cultural translation. I treat world literature as the theory without an object and make the counterintuitive claim that its objectlessness makes it well suited for leaving behind antiquated modes of categorizing and canonizing so-called world texts, in order to make room for new kinds of structured thinking about the world. The essay begins with an introduction to the manifold interconnections of the new world literature, including its broad overlap with fields of globalization, translation studies, comparative literature, and postcolonialism. I position four key theorists of 21st century world literature – Emily Apter, Rebecca Walkowitz, Berthold Schoene, and David Palumbo-Liu – in oppositional pairs in order to show the underlying commonality in their thinking about the value of a literature of and for the world. My entry point into the “thinking machine” of the world literature text is the concept of the limit. Far from the commonplace understanding of limit as a limitation or boundary, I argue that understanding world literature at the limit allows literary texts and theory to be read as an event of thinking that is in-process, in-common, and incomplete, an analogue to the necessary impossibility of knowing the world.

中文翻译：

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世界文学的局限性

本文考察了有关世界文学理论的最新研究成果，特别关注那些将个别文本视为与语言和文化翻译传播对话的理论家。我将世界文学视为没有对象的理论，并提出违反直觉的主张，即它的无目标性使其非常适合于抛弃过时的对所谓的世界文本进行分类和规范化的模式，以便为有关世界文学的新型结构化思考腾出空间。世界。本文首先介绍了新世界文学的多种联系，包括与全球化，翻译研究，比较文学和后殖民主义等领域的广泛重叠。我担任21世纪世界文学的四位重要理论家的职位–艾米丽·阿普特（Emily Apter），丽贝卡·沃科维茨（Rebecca Walkowitz），贝特霍尔德·肖恩（Berthold Schoene），和大卫·帕卢博·刘（David Palumbo-Liu）–处于对立状态，目的是在思考世界文学和世界文学的价值时，显示出潜在的共性。我进入世界文学文本“思维机”的切入点是极限的概念。我认为，对极限作为界限或边界的理解并不寻常，我认为对极限的世界文学的理解允许文学文本和理论被理解为一种过程的，不常见的，不完整的，类似的思维事件。不可能了解世界。