Restaging World Literature in the Age of Neoliberalism/Neocolonialism

In his article "Restaging World Literature in the Age of Neoliberalism/Neocolonialism" Shaobo Xie argues that Goethe's notion of world literature spells a genuine universalism that contributes to resistance to neoliberal imperialism. In the age of neocolonialism/neoliberalism all conduct, and all spheres of human life are framed and measured by economic terms and metrics and neoliberalism both as a governing rationality and as an economic policy is penetrating into every part of the world. The politics that is really heterogeneous or external to the rule of neoliberal capitalism in the neocolonial global present consists in thinking towards new possibilities of organizing our life in ways that are radically different than endorsed by the hegemonic global system itself. The Goethean world-literature mode of thinking, one can argue, richly nurtures such thoughts of the outside, for, while insisting on the universal as articulated in culture-specific forms, it always sees other ways of being human, other modes of making sense, and other possibilities of organizing social life.