Publishing, translating, worldmaking

As Stefan Helgesson and Pieter Vermeulen have pointed out, world literature, as an object of study, has to be made; it cannot simply be found. As readers, students, and teachers of world literature, we construct literary worlds by discerning relations at a range of scales: between devices, works, genres, traditions. Like the more general making of symbolic worlds theorized by Nelson Goodman in the wake of Ernst Cassirer, this specific kind 'always starts from worlds already on hand: the making is a remaking'. Our versions of world literature revise previous versions, often by pointing to what has been left out and stressing its value. Translation does this implicitly and prspectively, providing new materials for the remaking of world literature by allowing works to circulate more widely. But that circulation is channelled and restricted by social, economic, and political forces, which I will explore in this chapter, drawing in part and implicitly on my practical experience as a literary translator.