Directing criticism to the local and cultural level best addresses global formations

Evidence

What kind of critique is possible when you are positioned in the center of a system of power on which your livelihood, future, and family depend? How to imagine his position and portray his choices without lapsing into an apologia for them? In Valck’s case the distinction at the moment was clear: between a good state and corrupt men, between a moral project and immoral people. But that too was to change. He knew he would be “thwarted, duped, and slandered from all sides.” Still, he trusted the Governor-General to back his efforts to expose “the real situation to the highest placed people in the Indies.” — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1434 (#complicates, via linked claim)

We may feel that such moral high ground is a long way off as we struggle with everyday situations that position us in networks of power among which we grope uncertainly, our own small-scale local negotiations presenting themselves as more pressing. This negotiated nature of lived experience is why I would ultimately propose the phrase “the global novel” as a description of what Aslam and Shamsie are producing. The term global in my usage suggests that these novels describe subjects and situations that are the result of the logic of globalization, at the same time thereby criticizing, exposing, and awakening in the reader a new awareness of the costs of that process. Inasmuch as the contemporary novel itself takes its place in a globalized market for ideas, the addition of an element of distancing or defamiliarization—worlding, in Kadir’s terms—at least allows conventional reactions and expectations to be bracketed and exposed to scrutiny. As we have seen, writing a “world novel” is not a smooth process, and there is always the possibility that to explore the outcomes of global power through one of its major cultural vehicles is to risk reproducing some of its foundational assumptions about art, life, and the relationship between them. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 437 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Restricting concern to local issues stunts learning about the wider world — Nina Eliasoph, Avoiding politics: how Americans…, 130; Localized critique gains its justification from the specific historical moment — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 499; Critique from within a colonial power system is entangled with the critic’s own interests — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1434 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Critique from within a colonial power system is entangled with the critic’s own interests #complicates (0.75) — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1434
• The global novel can critique globalization while risking reproducing its assumptions #complicates (0.72) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 437