New York, Capital of World Literature? On Holocaust Memory and World Literary Value

Abstract

The question of how world literary value is produced has been central to recent debates. While Pascale Casanova’s influential account of a relatively autonomous ‘world literary space’ follows the work of Pierre Bourdieu in applying economic metaphors to processes of world literary value production, this essay argues that Casanova’s 1999 account needs to be updated in light of recent economic and cultural developments: the economic and the literary sphere are no longer separate but fundamentally entwined, which means that processes of world literary value creation cannot be modeled as a pseudo-market. The essay traces ongoing debates on the transcultural circulation of Holocaust memory to put forward a more flexible and multifaceted model for the production of world literary value. To demonstrate the claim that world literary value is today articulated with other forms of value, the essay investigates the role of Holocaust memory in the recent world literary consecration of Roberto Bolaño, Karl-Ove Knausgaard, and Elena Ferrante. Concentrated around New York-based publishers and media, these three cases not only demonstrate the crucial role of Holocaust memory in articulating literary value, they also show the recent shift from Paris to New York as a primary center of world literary value production.