“World,” “Globe,” “Planet”

Topologically, both the empirical world and the globe are measurable, even though the world remains a resilient trope and space of the variegated, mysterious, and illimitable, and thus considerably more complex as structure than the globe. If it is a world-system, the planet is so under the aegis of the toposystemic “relativity” Immanuel Wallerstein foregrounds when he draws attention to the spelling of his celebrated catchphrase. Two years before Masao Miyoshi’s article, Gayatri Spivak had already acknowledged her uneasiness with the world-leveling, universalist legacy of Western rationalism, whether in economic globalism or in cultural analysis. The global world is indeed global – shared in, lucrative, accessible, enjoyable – but only for those whom relatedness benefits. In the “compressed” space and time of interweaving world cultures, authority is increasingly “on loan,” authenticity and originality intertextual affairs, and “individual talent” and “personal tone” often echo from afar, ventriloquisms.