ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book is concerned with the circuits of language in the contemporary world, and with their implications for our understanding of literature now. It explores the relationship between language and mobility from numerous angles, as transnational authors—migrants, exiles, and the bicultural first-generation descendants of migrants—register the realities and effects of border crossing both thematically and formally. The book also sets out to establish, critical formulations and disciplinary paradigms that foreground the relationship of literary praxis to language as situated social practice, embedded in social, material, and political realities. It also explores how ideas about literature, literary form, and organizing concepts such as language itself must be rethought in light of these accelerating processes, which operate at scales from the local to the global.
