World Literature as Property
2014; Issue: 34 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1110-8673
Autores Tópico(s)Freedom of Expression and Defamation
Resumoinstitutional re-emergence of World Literature as a paradigm for organizing verbal production of world's cultures is taking place simultaneously with a massive transformation in international order of intellectual property law. This second enclosure movement is converting all forms of creative and cultural resources into commodities, private intellectual properties. As system, institution, or aspiration, new World Literature represents one more way of not talking about world, especially when it fails to recognize material inequalities and imbalances that subtend creative production and monopoly model of copyrighted culture that are conditions of its own contemporary possibility. ********** All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except as may be expressly permitted by applicable copyright statutes or in writing by Publisher. Manufactured in United States of America. Canons ... are but ploys, commercial ventures with which 'someone' corners a literary market, many of authors being granted recognition on basis of ethnicity, ideology, nationality and so on. Nuruddin Farah, Address given at ALA Fonlon-Nichols Award Ceremony, 2001 If Presley were alive today, he would just be in way. contradictions and appetites of a living Presley would surely jeopardize simplified image of that has come to sustain an entertainment empire: sanitized, drug-free, fat-free, all-white Elvis that is owned and operated by Presley Enterprises, Inc. (Doss 223). Elvis[TM] is a relatively uncomplicated Elvis, one whose plainness is reflected in formal simplicity of trademark as described in multiple applications that cover certain uses of name Presley: The mark consists of standard characters without claim to any particular font, style, size, or color. In other words, trademark (unlike performer himself) is a generic Elvis. Presley Enterprises needs Aaron Presley out of way, which may be one reason why company's numerous trademark registrations since 1980s repeatedly insist that the name in mark does not identify a particular living individual. This is not a mere legal formality; here, trademark registration itself serves as a kind of death certificate for man, even as it secures his (generic) afterlife in lucrative realm of intellectual property. king is dead, mark mutters sotto voce', long live The King! lives (on) in multiple forms of intellectual property that coordinate institutional memory of man. He is a copyrighted author and performer; his image, vocal characteristics, ... performance style, and mannerisms (Coombe, Cultural Life 90) are reserved for exclusive commercial exploitation by Enterprises under US Personal Rights Protection Act of 1984, a law passed with intellectual property of especially in mind (Doss 229). After left buildings at Graceland for last time, Enterprises enclosed an intellectual estate called Graceland. Elvis, Inc. is famous for its vigorous legal (and extralegal) defenses of its intellectual properties, which is probably why title on cover of Nigerian-born writer Chris Abani's 2004 novel GraceLand--the primary literary example of this essay--in no way resembles any of drawings registered with US Patent and Trademark Office. Trademarks are one of apparent trademarks of postmodern and postcolonial novels; they may be all that is left to us of mystical aura of authenticity in age of information and digital reproduction. As indexes of commercial consistency, they assume some of classical author functions identified by Michel Foucault. …
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