Global Mapping or Transcultural Exchange?

Most literary histories with a global ambition attempt to map the world, often tilted toward a European/Western perspective and written as a teamwork by individual experts on a variety of regions – and maybe originating from those regions – each of them taking responsibility for their own linguistic and regional specialty. Often, the regional or local chapters offer few new insights for readers from that region, but useful insights for people from other parts of the world. A project along those lines follows what I will call a mapping strategy, which often leaves out an idea or a concept of what ‘world’ means in this context apart from the sum total of separate localities. This is, however, a necessary conceptualization which allows for a rethinking and rewriting of literary history, leading it in new directions beyond the aim of achieving global coverage. This article attempts to sketch an alternative to the mapping strategy.