Literature’s reduced commodity status clashes with its older symbolic value as free ideas

Evidence

Yet, I would argue, the contemporary recognition of literature as an economic commodity in these terms is in tension with its historical symbolic capital and with the traditional premium, so to speak, set on the transmission of ideas as a good in itself. Although a distinctly post-Enlightenment formation, as we have seen, having Romantic and indeed imperial antecedents, the same notion of the free circulation of ideas can be found in the historical model of a “world republic of letters” that stands behind some accounts of world literature today. Now, as a commodity susceptible to the same economic vicissitudes as any other, literature—along with literary studies—occupies a more provisional status in global networks of exchange. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 459

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s work positioning Hamid and Naqvi as writers whose fiction sells within (and contests) a market framing them as authenticity-providers of Muslim experience. — connects to: Literature’s own content overlaps with economic form, weakening it as an abstract model; Authorial branding conceals literature’s commodity status behind individualism — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 463; Postmodernity erases the boundary between commodity and its image — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 605 (+2 more)
• DEFINE: Introduces the world republic of letters model standing behind world-literature accounts, useful vocabulary for contextualizing the two novels’ circulation.
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Literature’s own content overlaps with economic form, weakening it as an abstract model; Authorial branding conceals literature’s commodity status behind individualism — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 463; Postmodernity erases the boundary between commodity and its image — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 605 (+2 more)