عالمگیریت کے تناظر میں ادبی متون کا مطالعہ

The Study of Literary Texts in the Context of Globalization

Abstract

Abstract: This study examines the intersection of literary theory and globalization within Urdu scholarship, arguing for a shift from close, text-by-text reading toward a "distant reading" approach that treats literature as a dataset revealing broader patterns, structures, and systemic shifts. Drawing on Abul Kalam Qasmi's expansive notion of intertextuality, the paper situates literary studies within postcolonial and postmodern frameworks, tracing how decolonization movements (1940s–1960s) politicized literary criticism around identity, gender, race, and class. It engages Edward Said's Orientalism and Jacques Derrida's deconstructive lens to interrogate the power asymmetries between "dominant" and "developing" literary economies, while Roland Barthes' "death of the author" is reconsidered as evidence of literature's inherently cross-cultural formation. The discussion extends to translation as a socio-political mediator rather than a neutral linguistic exercise, and to Jean-François Lyotard's account of knowledge becoming a commodified, computerized force of production. Nasir Abbas Nayyar's reflections on Urdu's relative resilience—sustained through local media and television—are contrasted with the erosion of smaller languages under globalization. Urdu travel narratives (safarnama), including those of Mustansar Hussain Tarar and Ibn-e-Insha, are read as sites of hybrid identity per Homi Bhabha's postcolonial theory. The paper concludes that grand narratives have not disappeared but resurfaced in new forms—nationalism, capitalism, religiosity—within Fredric Jameson's "political unconscious."