The global novel can critique globalization while risking reproducing its assumptions

Evidence

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

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘the global novel’ as distinct from Spivak’s planetarity—a term grounded in lived positionality within power networks rather than an outside-looking-in stance.
• XREF: Connects to Kadir’s ‘worlding’ concept and to the reader’s task of situating Hamid and Naqvi as producing ‘global novels’ in this precise sense.
• SEED: A possible essay hook: ‘the global novel’ as a third option between Spivak’s planetarity and uncritical globalization—testing both Hamid and Naqvi against its criteria.