Keywords

modernisms, comparative studies, postcolonial literatures

Abstract

Within the framework of global or planetary modernism studies, chronological before and after sequences are receding in importance as situational similarities come to the fore. 'Modernism' has become 'modernisms'. This shift toward an ethical, eclectic inclusivity is especially salutary when it comes to comparative studies of writers such as Derek Walcott and James Joyce. On the face of things, it seems clear that Walcott was a follower of Joyce: a postcolonial writer inspired by the semi-colonial Irishman, who was himself a follower in/of the British literary tradition. And followers are not as great as leaders. Originals are better than copies. As far back as Plato, art itself was maligned as a dangerous derivation of the ideal and the real: "an inferior who from intercourse with an inferior has inferior offspring". Similarly, in the conjoined realms of modern history and politics, Dipesh Chakrabarty has noted that the political modernity of non-Western societies, and of the subaltern classes within those societies, has routinely been seen to have a form of modernity, but a subservient or derivative form, in a "stagist theory of history".

Original Publication Citation

Aaron Eastley, “Walcott, Joyce, and Planetary Modernisms.” Caribbean Quarterly 64.3-4 (2018): 140-158.