ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates how the oceanic paradigm can function as a mode of world-literary reading on a scale one notch below the potentially problematic notions of “globe” and “planet”, yet decisively larger and less containable than nations. It looks at how the oceanic approach can group texts and organize literary study along significantly different lines than nation-based and monolingual modes of investigation. Adopting oceans as a framework for reading means privileging geography and history, yet the implications for literature are far-reaching. The literary version of Indian Ocean studies has taken shape under inspiration from the Black Atlantic. The Geniza serves as a compelling image of the fragility of cultural memory and, by extension, of alternative conceptions of world literature. If world literature has its focus on what moves across, beneath and beyond nations, then oceans are one of the most significant trans- and non-national arenas.
