Global Voices: Second-Rate Writing from Third World Countries?

Of course the question mark is there in the title because I do not think the writing is Second-rate at all.

Nor am I happy with the description ‘Third world country’, with its implicite valuation of a place as not the best, nor even the second best, but making a third rank. But both these rankings imply a ‘first rate’ writing and a ‘first world’ country, the ‘relationship between which is at the centre of this lecture.

The relationship calls upon a notion of national literatures and national identities; and necessarily also asks how individuals and writers relate to those national identities, and how the people living in those nations relate to either or both.

The basic questions I would like to work around in this lecture are these: do artists represent us culturally? and, is the artist a cultural hero?