Description
Since English is the dominant global language at present, English Studies features significantly in humanistic pedagogy and scholarship worldwide. Of necessity then, English Studies has become a site of sustained and ongoing pluralization. The conventional integrities and geopolitical centrings of the academic discipline now seem anachronistic. The global purchase of the discipline has been described and examined to some extent already. For instance, James English’s The Global Future of English Studies (2012) gave a useful comparative description of student recruitment figures, career trajectories, and curricular emphases for the discipline in various countries across several continents. From a different direction, in Globalization and Literature (2009) I had outlined how globalization is represented in and acts upon literature, primarily with the Anglophone circuit in mind and with specific reference to English Studies. However, while such accounts confirm the global purchase of English Studies, what that means for the discipline is yet indifferently conceptualized. It is clear that in practice English Studies is global but it is unclear whether English Studies is yet conceptualized as global, whether its current diversities and integrities are yet sufficiently embedded in pedagogy and scholarship. English Studies is usually still engaged in limited ways: either by deferring to dominant Anglophone cultures, or by focusing on local relevance, or by exploring transactions across preconceived boundaries (North/South, Anglophone/non-Anglophone, colonial/postcolonial, etc.). Naturally, these approaches variously clarify the global scope of the discipline, and yet these do not quite comprehend the discipline’s global penetrations and pluralistic formation. English Studies always seems to contain more than can be articulated, or every attempt to describe it seems less than its reach.
This study attempts to conceptualize and comprehend the current condition of English Studies in a general way, with its global reach and proliferating diversities in view.
For the purposes of this book English Studies consists primarily in the advanced study of English linguistics and literary analysis of texts in English. “English linguistics” here encompasses all scholarship addressed to the English language and the variegated Anglophone sphere; and “literary analysis of texts in English” is addressed to all available cultural texts in English, including translations from/into English. Naturally English linguistics can only be understood in terms of general linguistics, and literary analysis in English according to the broad remit of literary theory. The focus on English Studies here is underpinned throughout by broader, generalist theoretical considerations that attach to linguistics and literary study. So, while this book seeks to clarify particularly the condition of English Studies now, its observations have some bearing on linguistics and literary study for any circuit of languages and texts. Also, the fact that the following is primarily concerned with advanced-level study, typically at university level and beyond, does not mean that it is indifferent to literary and linguistic pursuits beyond academia.
Contents
Part 1 Philology
1 The Four Nodes of Convergence in Philological Knowledge 9
Fixing the Text 13
Origin and Genesis 20
Aspiration to Unity 28
Institutional Grounding 36
In Sum 40
2 Muting of, Return to, and Further Departure from
Philology 43
Muted 44
“Greatness” and Reiterated Returns 47
Centering Edward Said 55
Further Departure 62
Part 2 Institutional Histories
3 The Former Heartlands of English Studies 69
United Kingdom 71
The United States of America 83
4 The Former Hinterlands of English Studies 93
Continental “New Europe” 94
India 106
Moving On 117
Part 3 Linguistics and Literary Studies
5 From Philology to General Linguistics and Literary Theory 123
Renewing the Philological “Science of Language” 124
General Linguistics Contra Philology 129
Invigorating Literature via Saussure 139
The Environment of Language Itself 146
6 The Politics of Language Corpora and Literary Theory 150
Phase 1 English Corpora and Liberation from
Literary Texts
Corpus-Based Approaches to Literature 158
The Political Desire of Literary Theory 165
7 Theory Debates and Discourse Analysis 174
Identity Politics and (Literary) Theory 174
The Territorial Anxieties of Linguistics 186
The Political Desire of Discourse Analysis 193
8 Englishes and Global English Studies 202
Conceiving World Englishes 203
Toward Global Englishes and English Studies 213