Tussen Aleph en avatar: De 21st-eeuwse carrière van James Baldwin en de dynamieken van hedendaagse wereldliteratuur

This PhD dissertation offers an in-depth study of how James Baldwin's oeuvre has (re-)acquired world literary value in the twenty-first century. The project explores the hypothesis that contemporary literary value ascription can be understood through the interactions of different geographical, institutional, and medial practices and discourses by offering a multifaceted account of Baldwin's posthumous career. Divided over seven chapters, this account centers on three main axes: audiovisual media, translation, and literary affiliation. From the vantage point of these axes, the dissertation explores Baldwin's various cultural, social, and political constellations and identifies processes of adaptation, circulation, and (re-)popularization by pragmatically deploying insights and methods from the sociology of literature, cultural studies, adaptation studies, book history, translation studies, digital humanities, and literary analysis. The three main parts are linked to one another by way of two 'interludes,' which focus on Baldwin's circulation on social media and his political 'underground' status. These interludes provide a necessary disquisition on the multimodal dynamics of Baldwin's afterlife and reveal the connections between film and translation (characterized by Baldwin's 'avatar-like' status) and between translation and literary affiliation (distilled in Baldwin's 'Aleph-like' potential), as Baldwin's posthumous career is characterized by the inherent tension between these two dimensions: the 'flattening' paradigm of the avatar and the endless yet underground multiplicity of the Aleph. The dissertation argues that the constant tension and symbiotic relationship between these two dimensions has proven to be exceptionally productive for Baldwin's increasing world literary value. By way of a coda, this dissertation looks ahead to imagine what, as generative AI increasingly becomes an integral part of society and the idea of authorship is steadily altered, future reconfigurations of Baldwin—and of world literary value ascription—will look like tomorrow.