Rather than lamenting that postcolonial writers 'sell out' to multinational corporate publishing, parading their exotic otherness to metropolitan audiences, Sarah Brouillette assesses how they respond
Postcolonial Writers in the Global Literary Marketplace, now in paperback and with a new Preface, considers some of the market conditions that have framed the emergence of English-language postcolonia
This book contends that mainstream considerations of the economic and social force of culture, including theories of the creative class and of cognitive and immaterial labor, are indebted to historic
For nearly twenty years, social scientists and policy makers have been highly interested in the idea of the creative economy. This book contends that mainstream considerations of the economic and soci
People looking for works in cities are immersed in English as the lingua franca of the mobile phone and the urban hustle – more effective instigations to reading than decades of work by traditional publishers and development agencies. The legal publishing industry campaigns to convince people to scorn pirates and plagiarists as a criminal underclass, and to instead purchase copyrighted, barcoded works that have the look of legitimacy about them. They work with development industry officials to 'foster literacy' – meaning to grow the legal book trade as a contributor to national economic health, and police what and how the newly literate read. But harried cash-strapped audiences will read what and how they can, often outside of formal economies, and are increasingly turning to mobile phone platforms that sell texts at a fraction of the price of legally printed books.
This book attempts to understand what ‘contemporary’ has meant, and should mean, for literary studies. The essays in this volume suggest that an attentive reading of recent global literatures challeng
