ABSTRACT

Venturing into the ‘virtually unmarked territory’ shared between the disciplines of postcolonialism and world literary studies, while observing their corresponding global reach and utilisation of an expanded canon, nonetheless suggests that the two diverge around issues of politics and of dissent. This chapter explores the ways in which Moretti sets out his case, most notably with respect to the postcolonial and world literary genre of magical realism, before finally embracing Harman’s demand for a criticism that finds in the text the potential for new worlds. Moretti can define modern literature as the reconciliation of or compromise between conflicting values (a rhetoric of innocence) only by imagining literature as a third term mediating between two spheres: in Kantian terms, judgement as that which connects the spheres of nature and reason. However, if one aligns the theoretical framework with Moretti, then exposing a rhetoric of innocence is not an activity of criticality or dissent in the modern era.