Texts travelling beyond the West: Introduction

At the core of this special issue lies the editors’ own fascination with and research on travelling literature in African languages. We often do not find it represented in postcolonial debates about “contact zones” as well as recently growing discussions about textual entanglements fueled by notions of World Literature, although, as we believe, it can make an important contribution in reflecting about literary connections not only in our specific area, but about literary connections on a global scale. Africa is a part of the world, whose literary networks have a long history of being sidelined. This special issue brings together contributions by scholars working on literature in other “minor” languages from the Far East, the Middle East, India, Papua New Guinea – and East Africa. They can remind us of the relativity of Western categories and Western disciplinary organization of literary studies of the last 200 years, which are, however, often taken as universal.

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This is the Introduction to the Special Issue titled "Travelling texts beyond the West" for the Asian Journal of African Studies (AJAS), Vol. 48, June 2020. Co-authored and co-edited by Clarissa Vierke and Annachiara Raia.