The end of the nobel era and the reconstruction of the world republic of letters

In their article "The End of the Nobel Era and the Reconstruction of the World Republic of Letters" Guohua Zhu and Yonghua Tang critically examine mechanisms of cultural hegemony associated with the Nobel Prize in Literature from a neocolonial lens. Borrowing from Casanova's idea of the "World Republic of Letters" and its attentiveness to geopolitics, the essay proceeds to reconstruct the dialectical relations between the nation and the world. It does so, in the first place, by documenting and analyzing the process of negotiation and bargaining entailed in the construction of global cultural hegemony and thereby examine the functions and boundaries of hegemony. Further, it reveals how colonial apparatuses of understanding continue to limit the ways in which we imagine the world and sustain the power relations that ought to be questioned, challenged, and broken. Ultimately, the essay aims to provide a multi-dimensional and multi-layered vision of the World Republic of Letters that is genuinely multi-polar.