Immanuel Wallerstein and the Problem of the World

A collection of essays that bring the humanities into conversation with Immanuel Wallerstein's world-systems theory.

Acknowledgments viiIntroduction: The Most Important Thing Happening 1Part 1. System and ResponsibilityThe Modern World-System: Its Structures, Its Geoculture, Its Crisis and Transformation / Richard Lee 27Blaming the System / Bruce Robbins 41Part 2. Literature: Restructured, Re-historicized, Re-scaledWorld-Systems Analysis, Evolutionary Theory, Weltliteratur / Franco Moretti 67The Scale of World Literature / Nivrana Tanoukhi 78Part 3. Respatializing, Remapping, RecognizingThe Space of the World: Beyond State-Centricism? / Neil Brenner 101Cartographies of Connection: Ocean Maps as Metaphors for Inter-Area History / Kären Wigen 138What Is a Poem?: The Event of Women and the Modern Girl as Problems in Global or World History / Tani E. Barlow 155Part 4. Ethics, Otherness, SystemLegal System of International Rights / Helen Stacy 187Rationality and World-Systems Analysis: Fanon and the Impact of the Ethico-Historical / David Palumbo-Liu 202Thinking about the Humanities / Immanuel Wallerstein 223The Twilight of Capital? / Gopal Balakrishnan 227Bibliography 233Contributors 249Index 251