Perspectivizing World Literature

Rejecting Eurocentrism of the world literature concept, perspectivism promises an alternative to the center/periphery model. Although perspectivism tends to deny the world-systemic asymmetries, it rightly claims that peripheral cultural interaction may bypass global centers, establishing its networks and centers (e.g., the twentieth-century avant-gardes). Moreover, peripheries enable the reproduction and evolution of global metropolises, even though their contribution is exoticized and anonymized. The modernist poetry of Srečko Kosovel (1904–26) illustrates peripheral productivity and its response to evolutionary processes in the center. It also highlights the systemic obstacles that prevent this information from being globalized.