Lens, Not Object: Caribbean Literature and the Epistemological Critique of World Literature Theory

This article proposes a paradigm shift in world literature studies by repositioning Caribbean literature from an object of study to an epistemological instrument. Rather than seeking admission to world literature’s canon, Caribbean literary production–constituted through slavery’s rupture, colonialism’s imposition, and multilingualism’s necessity–functions as a converging lens through which the categories of world literature theory themselves become objects of scrutiny. Methodologically, this lens brings background relations into focus, rescales apparently bounded literary traditions within imperial and transoceanic networks, and reverses the usual direction of explanation by using Caribbean texts to test the assumptions of theory itself. Through close readings of Jean Rhys, Wilson Harris, Derek Walcott and Patrick Chamoiseau, this article exposes four interconnected fissures in world literature theory: a temporal paradox naturalizing European developmental sequence, an influence model concealing the violence of transformation, a spatial imagination reproducing imperial geography, and an ethics of transparency encoding colonial demands. Drawing on Glissant’s creolization theory, Wynter’s critique of the coloniality of being, and archipelagic thinking, the study argues for epistemic transformation over territorial expansion, for positioned knowledges over universal frameworks, and literature’s originary worldliness over models that treat worldliness as the result of subsequent circulation.