Most literary-critical programs aim for precision.　Their terms, neologisms and fighting words are finely honed and differentiated.　In an economy of scarcity, market niches and scholarly turf battles depend on such differentiations.　But in seeming defiance of the (modernist?) drive for precision comes the 21st-century shambling, baggy creature of "world literature."　Is there anything new to world literature?　There might be a "planetary system" where all literatures are connected as Franco Moretti argues, but this does not necessarily mean the emergence of a new world, and of new forms of empathy across literary texts and national literatures.　What can be the place of the intellectual/scholar in this planetary system?

Starting with these questions, Anne Mcknight will discuss Ruth Ozeki's novel My Year of Meats as a stabilizer to engage discussion about ways that relations between these localized discussions may be symptoms of something besides failure to be total, or cynical paths to monumentality.　This presentation will be followed by comments on world literature by Asako Nakai.　Flavio Rizzo will then return us to our discussion on the role of the intellectual in this planetary system by taking the case of aphasia in Pier Paolo Pasolini's political writings.