This volume explores the state of literary theory today, decades after the repeatedly proclaimed ... more This volume explores the state of literary theory today, decades after the repeatedly proclaimed end of theory. It builds on the idea that theory is historically constituted as it is “always becoming something else” as Leslie Fiedler claimed in the 1950s, arguing that the historical constitution of theory relies on theory’s procedural nature. In order to assess theory’s procedural challenge to the fundamental notions that all the disciplines within an episteme have brought to the fore, it addresses these questions: What are the procedures theory has relied on? Are they a secret to its resistance, or is resistance its primary procedure? And if so, a resistance to what? Secondly, if resistance were theory’s principal vehicle, at which point does resistance, conceptualized only procedurally (as resisting something, questioning anything, criticizing whatever), display hallmarks of a disciplinary closure that must call for new resistances, and perhapsfor a fundamentally another kind? The book turns to what theory does in order to avoid a partial answer to what theory is.
Drawing on a global history of politicized writing, this book explores literature's utility as a ... more Drawing on a global history of politicized writing, this book explores literature's utility as a mode of activism and aesthetic engagement with the political challenges of the current moment.
The question of literature's 'uses' has recently become a key topic of academic and public debate. Paradoxically, however, these conversations often tend to bypass the rich history of engagements with literature's distinctly political uses that form such a powerful current of 20th- and 21st-century artistic production and critical-theoretical reflection.
The Political Uses of Literature reopens discussion of literature's political and activist genealogies along several interrelated lines: As a foundational moment, it draws attention to the important body of interwar politicized literature and to debates about literature's ability to intervene in social reality. It then traces the mobilization of related conversations and artistic practices across several historical conjunctures, most notably the committed literature of the 1960s and our own present.
In mapping out these geographically and artistically diverse traditions – including case studies from the Americas, Europe, Africa, India and Russia – contributors advance critical discussions in the field, making questions pertaining to politicized art newly compelling to a broader and more diverse readership. Most importantly, this volume insists on the need to think about literature's political uses today – at a time when it has become increasingly difficult to imagine any kind of political efficacy for art, even as the need to do so is growing more and more acute. Literature may not proffer easy answers to our political problems, but as this collection suggests, the writing of the 20th century holds out aesthetic resources for a renewed engagement with the dilemmas that face us now.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Introduction
Ivana Perica (University of Vienna, Austria) and Benjamin Kohlmann (University of Regensburg, Germany)
PART I: Revolution, Internationalism and Literary Politics: Interwar Paradigms
1. Marxists Out of Work: Literature and the Useless in Interwar India
Benjamin Conisbee Baer (Princeton University, USA)
2. Politics and Literature on the Peruvian Periphery: Realism and Experimentation in the Works of César Vallejo and José Carlos Mariátegui
Juan E. De Castro (The New School, USA)
3. Reusing Artaud? On the Contemporaneity of Messages révolutionnaires (1936)
Sandra Fluhrer (Freie Universität Berlin, Germany, and University of California-Berkeley, USA)
4. On the German Popular Front and the Novel in Historical and International Context
Hunter Bivens (University of California-Santa Cruz, USA)
5. Narrative Struggle: "Good" and "Bad" Uses of Literature in the Committed Novel of the 1930s (Aragon, Dos Passos)
Aurore Peyroles (University of Regensburg, Germany)
6. Moscow, 1934 – Yan'an, 1942: The Manifesto as Lived Experience
Steven Lee (University of California-Berkeley, USA)
PART II: Politicizing Theory and Literary Practice in the Global 1960s: Inflection Points
7. Militant Structures of Feeling: Raymond Williams, Claude Lefort, and Workers' Inquiry
Daniel Hartley (Durham University, UK)
8. Solidarity in Black and White
J. Daniel Elam (University of Hong Kong)
9. Notes from the Underground, or: Why and How Was Non-Marxist Theory Resisted by Non-Marxists in a Totalitarian Society
Galin Tihanov (Queen Mary University of London, UK)
10. Workshops of Abolition: Attica Print Culture and Small Press Poetry
Mark Nowak (Manhattanville College, USA)
11. An Autofictional Intervention into Working-Class Literature: Karin Struck's Klassenliebe and the Werkkreis Literatur der Arbeitswelt
Christoph Schaub (University of Vechta, Germany)
12. Feminism and Progressive Writing in Twentieth-Century India
Ulka Anjaria (Brandeis University, USA)
PART III: The Political Uses of Literature Today: Legacies and Departures
13. Cultural Politics after the Arab Spring: A New Lotus for a New World?
Maryam Fatima (University of Massachusetts-Amherst, USA)
14. Segments of a Larger Narrative: Political Formalism and Working-Class Story Cycles
Dirk Wiemann (University of Potsdam)
15. Sedimented Reading Habits? The Future Utopia in Contemporary African Science and Speculative Fiction
Peter Maurits (University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany)
16. Literary Activism in Contemporary Africa: Praxis, Publics and the Shifting Landscapes of the 'Literary'
Madhu Krishnan (University of Bristol, UK)
ISBN: 978-3-8260-5712-0
Series Nr: Epistemata Philosophie.
Band Nr: 558
Pagenumbers: 376
Language... more ISBN: 978-3-8260-5712-0 Series Nr: Epistemata Philosophie. Band Nr: 558 Pagenumbers: 376 Language: deutsch
Short description: Trotz des anscheinenden Verlusts der tradierten Dichotomie von Privatsphäre und Öffentlichkeit lässt sich beobachten, dass Begriffe ‚privat‘ und ‚öffentlich‘ keinesfalls aus dem Gebrauch gekommen sind. In den gegenwärtigen Debatten werden sie vielmehr auch für die Linke bestimmend. Angesichts der gesellschaftlichen, politischen und ökonomischen Umlagerung sowohl des Privaten als auch des Öffentlichen werden in der vorliegenden Studie einzelne einander entgegenstehende linke und liberale Positionen beleuchtet. Mit der kontrapunktuellen Lektüre des ‚Linken‘ Jacques Rancière und der ‚Liberalen‘ Hannah Arendt werden die Ordnungsmechanismen des politischen bzw. politisch-theoretischen Feldes ergründet. Ausgehend von Rancières parergonaler Arendt- Kritik wird hier der Frage nachgegangen, ob ihre disparaten Denkgebäude einander nicht viel näher stehen könnten, als dies üblicherweise angenommen wird.
Reviews:
- Anna Hollendung, Politische Vierteljahresschrift 58.4 (2017): 618–620. - Sophia Ermert, Contemporary Political Theory 17.2 (2018): 74–77 (online first 24 March 2017) - Sergej Seitz, Journal Phänomenologie 46 (2016): 68–72.
https://doi.org/10.16995/gc.11086: This essay argues that central assumptions underlying identity... more https://doi.org/10.16995/gc.11086: This essay argues that central assumptions underlying identity politics in literary writing - inclusion, visibility, diversity - are progressive in character. Yet in conditions of social precarity, literary writing and especially literary discussions that derive progressive potential from identity claims involuntarily and inevitably act under the aegis of neoliberal progressivism (as critiqued by Nancy Fraser and many others). Caution about identity politics (rather than its outright rejection) is a necessary minimum in response to the corruption inherent in the systemic placement of literature. When literary discussions, and this does not just mean scholarly research but also literary critique, book presentations and discussions in different reading groups and book clubs, fall short of this critical minimum, they risk missing that common and universal feature of the general intellect upon which revolutionary ideas of emancipation and solidarity once rested. Following Ulrich Brand and Markus Wissen's study of the imperial mode of living, this essay examines the phenomenon of what I call 'literary identity politics' - namely the implementation of identity politics in and through literary writing - in terms of the interval between literature's efforts to right the wrongs of exclusion and its simultaneous entanglement in the system of global injustice.
Special issue of »Critical Quarterly« 65.4 (2023): 3-11. Edited by Benjamin Kohlmann and Ivana Pe... more Special issue of »Critical Quarterly« 65.4 (2023): 3-11. Edited by Benjamin Kohlmann and Ivana Perica
Jacques Rancière und die Literatur (Hgg. Erik M. Vogt und Michael Manfé), 2020
Rancières »Aisthesis« versteht sich als eine »Gegengeschichte der ›künstlerischen Moderne‹« (Ranc... more Rancières »Aisthesis« versteht sich als eine »Gegengeschichte der ›künstlerischen Moderne‹« (Rancière 2013: 16), welche die breiten gesellschaftlichen Wirkungen und Potenziale einer Aufnahme des Plebejischen, Unteren, Alltäglichen und Nichtkünstlerischen in das, was man gemeinhin »Kunst« nennt, auslotet. »Aisthesis« bestrebt gleichzeitig auch mehr als Studie über die Mechanismen der begrifflichen oder sensuellen Erweiterung von »Kunst« zu sein: Das Buch ist als eine Untersuchung über die revolutionären Umwälzungen im »sinnliche[n] Gewebe« (13) konzipiert, die eine neue Gemeinschaft verkünden und aus diesem Grund den Anspruch auf den Status des Politischen erheben. Ähnlich, wie das Politische eine höchst ästhetisierte Auffassung von Politik impliziert, bleibt auch die »Aisthesis« bewusst abseits von und auf Distanz zu dem, was man traditionell »Politik« nennt. Der große Antipode eines so verstandenen Politischen, der gleich im »Vorspiel« ausbuchstabiert wird, ist die marxistische Kunstkritik, der gegenüber Rancière – ähnlich wie er von Wertow behauptet – »den Spiegel vorzuhalten [möchte], in dem sie das Dilemma ihrer Wissenschaft« (Rancière 2013: 21) erkennen kann. Dieser der marxistischen Wissenschaft vorgehaltene Spiegel vollzieht aber weniger eine dialektische, argumentativ hergestellte Auseinandersetzung als vielmehr die restlose Ablehnung oder ein spiegelverkehrtes Gegenbild dessen, was unter der »marxistischen Wissenschaft« vage verstanden wird.
In 1925, St. K. Neumann's magazine Reflektor published O Anně, rusé proletářce (On Anna, the Red ... more In 1925, St. K. Neumann's magazine Reflektor published O Anně, rusé proletářce (On Anna, the Red Proletarian), a novel by the Czech author Ivan Olbracht. Its significance for Czechoslovak political literature of the interwar period is commonly compared to the role Fedor Gladkov's Cement (1925) played in what was later institutionalised as Soviet socialist realism. However, because the label of socialist realism too quickly draws the reader's attention to typical elements such as positive heroes and political messages, Anna seems to be difficult to approach without bias. Simultaneously, as the novel represents an evidently more straightforward version of literary activism than e. g. the literary avant-gardes, it can also be read as a testament to the gridlocked binarity of sexes and corresponding gender roles, as these were characteristic of both conservative circles and the new communist ethics that were imposed by the Comintern in the late 1920s. Together with these dichotomies, the novel testifies to a solidification of the unbridgeable gap between centre and periphery, capital and province. A careful look, however, reveals an interesting gender, spatial and class dynamic behind this reinforcement - a dynamic far more complex than both the label 'socialist realism' and the postmodern understanding of modern juxtapositions of genders seem to suggest.
In: Die Moderne(n) der Region. Zum Verhältnis von Zentrum und Peripherie am Beispiel der Böhmischen Länder. Hg. Irina Wutsdorff. Themenschwerpunkt in Brücken - Zeitschrift für Sprach-, Literatur und Kulturwissenschaft . Hg. Steffen Höhne und Štěpán Zbytovský. 30.1 (2023): 41–61
Wiener Digitale Revue: https://journals.univie.ac.at/index.php/wdr/article/view/7251, 2022
In her contribution, Ivana Perica shows that Vienna of the 1920s and 1950s had a particular way o... more In her contribution, Ivana Perica shows that Vienna of the 1920s and 1950s had a particular way of dealing with ‘Avant-Garde and Kitsch’ (Clement Greenberg): certainly, kitsch forms go hand in hand with reactionary political forces. But what was, then, progressive art supposed to be an organ for when there was a complete lack of revolutionary consciousness? It is this diagnosis the study of Ernst Fischer’s theatre works Lenin (1928) and Der große Verrat (The Great Treason, 1950) starts with, demonstrating the failure of revolutionary ‘pulp fiction’ in the 1920s and 1950s Vienna: It neither reached the elites nor the masses.
Keywords: Ernst Fischer, Lenin, Der große Verrat, revolutionary theatre, Cold War, pulp
Wie Ivana Perica in ihrem Beitrag ausführt, war der Umgang mit ‚Avant-Garde und Kitsch‘ (Clement Greenberg) im Wien der 1920er und 1950er Jahre ein besonderer: zweifellos gehen Kitschformen mit den reaktionären politischen Kräften Hand in Hand. Aber wofür sollte denn, auf der anderen Seite des politischen Spektrums, progressive Kunst ein Sprachrohr gewesen sein, wenn es gänzlich an revolutionärem Bewusstsein in der Bevölkerung fehlte? An dieser Feststellung setzt die Untersuchung über Ernst Fischers Stücke Lenin (1928) und Der große Verrat (1950) an und zeigt das Scheitern revolutionärer ‚Pulp Fiction‘ im Wien der 1920er und 1950er Jahre auf: Sie verfehlte sowohl die Eliten als auch die Massen.
Schlagwörter: Ernst Fischer, Lenin, Der große Verrat, Revolutionstheater, Kalter Krieg, Pulp
philosophy for another time; towards a collective political imagination. Special issue of Positions Politics (February 2021). Ed. Kamran Baradaran., 2021
Med majem ’68 in novembrom ’89: Transformacije sveta, literature in teorije. Ed. Marko Juvan. Lju... more Med majem ’68 in novembrom ’89: Transformacije sveta, literature in teorije. Ed. Marko Juvan. Ljubljana: ZRC SAZU, 2021. 149-167.
Considering common compartmentalizations of Lukacs’ work into the early, mature, and late phase, ... more Considering common compartmentalizations of Lukacs’ work into the early, mature, and late phase, the article explores elements that speak to what critics regard as a ›continuity thesis‹. Against possible assumptions on the prevalence of form in his early work and the dominance of the aesthetics of content in the later phases, the article explores the dialectical relationship of form and content, which comes to represent a leitmotif in Lukacs’ work as a whole. Here, the early specificity of form does not consist of its domination over content but in the inability of the aesthetic to tackle the social problems of a modernity in which art and life part ways.
The article inspects the political character of the 1968 events in Yugoslavia against the backgr... more The article inspects the political character of the 1968 events in Yugoslavia against the background of culturalised interpretations of this watershed year in post-foundational theory and aesthetics. The article presupposes that to interpret the global 1968 in terms of an emergence of the political as an aesthetic, cultural subversion of outdated politics would result in a myopic conclusion that 1968 did not happen at all in Yugoslavia. Why is this so? In order to pursue this rather banal but pertinent question, the opposition between politics and the political will be extended along the lines of the dialectics of evolution and revolution. It is precisely the continuity of politics that can help us explain why the Yugoslav 1968 did not usher in formations that in the West were subsequently theorised as pertaining to the notion of the political.
This volume explores the state of literary theory today, decades after the repeatedly proclaimed ... more This volume explores the state of literary theory today, decades after the repeatedly proclaimed end of theory. It builds on the idea that theory is historically constituted as it is “always becoming something else” as Leslie Fiedler claimed in the 1950s, arguing that the historical constitution of theory relies on theory’s procedural nature. In order to assess theory’s procedural challenge to the fundamental notions that all the disciplines within an episteme have brought to the fore, it addresses these questions: What are the procedures theory has relied on? Are they a secret to its resistance, or is resistance its primary procedure? And if so, a resistance to what? Secondly, if resistance were theory’s principal vehicle, at which point does resistance, conceptualized only procedurally (as resisting something, questioning anything, criticizing whatever), display hallmarks of a disciplinary closure that must call for new resistances, and perhapsfor a fundamentally another kind? The book turns to what theory does in order to avoid a partial answer to what theory is.
Drawing on a global history of politicized writing, this book explores literature's utility as a ... more Drawing on a global history of politicized writing, this book explores literature's utility as a mode of activism and aesthetic engagement with the political challenges of the current moment.
The question of literature's 'uses' has recently become a key topic of academic and public debate. Paradoxically, however, these conversations often tend to bypass the rich history of engagements with literature's distinctly political uses that form such a powerful current of 20th- and 21st-century artistic production and critical-theoretical reflection.
The Political Uses of Literature reopens discussion of literature's political and activist genealogies along several interrelated lines: As a foundational moment, it draws attention to the important body of interwar politicized literature and to debates about literature's ability to intervene in social reality. It then traces the mobilization of related conversations and artistic practices across several historical conjunctures, most notably the committed literature of the 1960s and our own present.
In mapping out these geographically and artistically diverse traditions – including case studies from the Americas, Europe, Africa, India and Russia – contributors advance critical discussions in the field, making questions pertaining to politicized art newly compelling to a broader and more diverse readership. Most importantly, this volume insists on the need to think about literature's political uses today – at a time when it has become increasingly difficult to imagine any kind of political efficacy for art, even as the need to do so is growing more and more acute. Literature may not proffer easy answers to our political problems, but as this collection suggests, the writing of the 20th century holds out aesthetic resources for a renewed engagement with the dilemmas that face us now.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Introduction
Ivana Perica (University of Vienna, Austria) and Benjamin Kohlmann (University of Regensburg, Germany)
PART I: Revolution, Internationalism and Literary Politics: Interwar Paradigms
1. Marxists Out of Work: Literature and the Useless in Interwar India
Benjamin Conisbee Baer (Princeton University, USA)
2. Politics and Literature on the Peruvian Periphery: Realism and Experimentation in the Works of César Vallejo and José Carlos Mariátegui
Juan E. De Castro (The New School, USA)
3. Reusing Artaud? On the Contemporaneity of Messages révolutionnaires (1936)
Sandra Fluhrer (Freie Universität Berlin, Germany, and University of California-Berkeley, USA)
4. On the German Popular Front and the Novel in Historical and International Context
Hunter Bivens (University of California-Santa Cruz, USA)
5. Narrative Struggle: "Good" and "Bad" Uses of Literature in the Committed Novel of the 1930s (Aragon, Dos Passos)
Aurore Peyroles (University of Regensburg, Germany)
6. Moscow, 1934 – Yan'an, 1942: The Manifesto as Lived Experience
Steven Lee (University of California-Berkeley, USA)
PART II: Politicizing Theory and Literary Practice in the Global 1960s: Inflection Points
7. Militant Structures of Feeling: Raymond Williams, Claude Lefort, and Workers' Inquiry
Daniel Hartley (Durham University, UK)
8. Solidarity in Black and White
J. Daniel Elam (University of Hong Kong)
9. Notes from the Underground, or: Why and How Was Non-Marxist Theory Resisted by Non-Marxists in a Totalitarian Society
Galin Tihanov (Queen Mary University of London, UK)
10. Workshops of Abolition: Attica Print Culture and Small Press Poetry
Mark Nowak (Manhattanville College, USA)
11. An Autofictional Intervention into Working-Class Literature: Karin Struck's Klassenliebe and the Werkkreis Literatur der Arbeitswelt
Christoph Schaub (University of Vechta, Germany)
12. Feminism and Progressive Writing in Twentieth-Century India
Ulka Anjaria (Brandeis University, USA)
PART III: The Political Uses of Literature Today: Legacies and Departures
13. Cultural Politics after the Arab Spring: A New Lotus for a New World?
Maryam Fatima (University of Massachusetts-Amherst, USA)
14. Segments of a Larger Narrative: Political Formalism and Working-Class Story Cycles
Dirk Wiemann (University of Potsdam)
15. Sedimented Reading Habits? The Future Utopia in Contemporary African Science and Speculative Fiction
Peter Maurits (University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany)
16. Literary Activism in Contemporary Africa: Praxis, Publics and the Shifting Landscapes of the 'Literary'
Madhu Krishnan (University of Bristol, UK)
ISBN: 978-3-8260-5712-0
Series Nr: Epistemata Philosophie.
Band Nr: 558
Pagenumbers: 376
Language... more ISBN: 978-3-8260-5712-0 Series Nr: Epistemata Philosophie. Band Nr: 558 Pagenumbers: 376 Language: deutsch
Short description: Trotz des anscheinenden Verlusts der tradierten Dichotomie von Privatsphäre und Öffentlichkeit lässt sich beobachten, dass Begriffe ‚privat‘ und ‚öffentlich‘ keinesfalls aus dem Gebrauch gekommen sind. In den gegenwärtigen Debatten werden sie vielmehr auch für die Linke bestimmend. Angesichts der gesellschaftlichen, politischen und ökonomischen Umlagerung sowohl des Privaten als auch des Öffentlichen werden in der vorliegenden Studie einzelne einander entgegenstehende linke und liberale Positionen beleuchtet. Mit der kontrapunktuellen Lektüre des ‚Linken‘ Jacques Rancière und der ‚Liberalen‘ Hannah Arendt werden die Ordnungsmechanismen des politischen bzw. politisch-theoretischen Feldes ergründet. Ausgehend von Rancières parergonaler Arendt- Kritik wird hier der Frage nachgegangen, ob ihre disparaten Denkgebäude einander nicht viel näher stehen könnten, als dies üblicherweise angenommen wird.
Reviews:
- Anna Hollendung, Politische Vierteljahresschrift 58.4 (2017): 618–620. - Sophia Ermert, Contemporary Political Theory 17.2 (2018): 74–77 (online first 24 March 2017) - Sergej Seitz, Journal Phänomenologie 46 (2016): 68–72.
https://doi.org/10.16995/gc.11086: This essay argues that central assumptions underlying identity... more https://doi.org/10.16995/gc.11086: This essay argues that central assumptions underlying identity politics in literary writing - inclusion, visibility, diversity - are progressive in character. Yet in conditions of social precarity, literary writing and especially literary discussions that derive progressive potential from identity claims involuntarily and inevitably act under the aegis of neoliberal progressivism (as critiqued by Nancy Fraser and many others). Caution about identity politics (rather than its outright rejection) is a necessary minimum in response to the corruption inherent in the systemic placement of literature. When literary discussions, and this does not just mean scholarly research but also literary critique, book presentations and discussions in different reading groups and book clubs, fall short of this critical minimum, they risk missing that common and universal feature of the general intellect upon which revolutionary ideas of emancipation and solidarity once rested. Following Ulrich Brand and Markus Wissen's study of the imperial mode of living, this essay examines the phenomenon of what I call 'literary identity politics' - namely the implementation of identity politics in and through literary writing - in terms of the interval between literature's efforts to right the wrongs of exclusion and its simultaneous entanglement in the system of global injustice.
Special issue of »Critical Quarterly« 65.4 (2023): 3-11. Edited by Benjamin Kohlmann and Ivana Pe... more Special issue of »Critical Quarterly« 65.4 (2023): 3-11. Edited by Benjamin Kohlmann and Ivana Perica
Jacques Rancière und die Literatur (Hgg. Erik M. Vogt und Michael Manfé), 2020
Rancières »Aisthesis« versteht sich als eine »Gegengeschichte der ›künstlerischen Moderne‹« (Ranc... more Rancières »Aisthesis« versteht sich als eine »Gegengeschichte der ›künstlerischen Moderne‹« (Rancière 2013: 16), welche die breiten gesellschaftlichen Wirkungen und Potenziale einer Aufnahme des Plebejischen, Unteren, Alltäglichen und Nichtkünstlerischen in das, was man gemeinhin »Kunst« nennt, auslotet. »Aisthesis« bestrebt gleichzeitig auch mehr als Studie über die Mechanismen der begrifflichen oder sensuellen Erweiterung von »Kunst« zu sein: Das Buch ist als eine Untersuchung über die revolutionären Umwälzungen im »sinnliche[n] Gewebe« (13) konzipiert, die eine neue Gemeinschaft verkünden und aus diesem Grund den Anspruch auf den Status des Politischen erheben. Ähnlich, wie das Politische eine höchst ästhetisierte Auffassung von Politik impliziert, bleibt auch die »Aisthesis« bewusst abseits von und auf Distanz zu dem, was man traditionell »Politik« nennt. Der große Antipode eines so verstandenen Politischen, der gleich im »Vorspiel« ausbuchstabiert wird, ist die marxistische Kunstkritik, der gegenüber Rancière – ähnlich wie er von Wertow behauptet – »den Spiegel vorzuhalten [möchte], in dem sie das Dilemma ihrer Wissenschaft« (Rancière 2013: 21) erkennen kann. Dieser der marxistischen Wissenschaft vorgehaltene Spiegel vollzieht aber weniger eine dialektische, argumentativ hergestellte Auseinandersetzung als vielmehr die restlose Ablehnung oder ein spiegelverkehrtes Gegenbild dessen, was unter der »marxistischen Wissenschaft« vage verstanden wird.
In 1925, St. K. Neumann's magazine Reflektor published O Anně, rusé proletářce (On Anna, the Red ... more In 1925, St. K. Neumann's magazine Reflektor published O Anně, rusé proletářce (On Anna, the Red Proletarian), a novel by the Czech author Ivan Olbracht. Its significance for Czechoslovak political literature of the interwar period is commonly compared to the role Fedor Gladkov's Cement (1925) played in what was later institutionalised as Soviet socialist realism. However, because the label of socialist realism too quickly draws the reader's attention to typical elements such as positive heroes and political messages, Anna seems to be difficult to approach without bias. Simultaneously, as the novel represents an evidently more straightforward version of literary activism than e. g. the literary avant-gardes, it can also be read as a testament to the gridlocked binarity of sexes and corresponding gender roles, as these were characteristic of both conservative circles and the new communist ethics that were imposed by the Comintern in the late 1920s. Together with these dichotomies, the novel testifies to a solidification of the unbridgeable gap between centre and periphery, capital and province. A careful look, however, reveals an interesting gender, spatial and class dynamic behind this reinforcement - a dynamic far more complex than both the label 'socialist realism' and the postmodern understanding of modern juxtapositions of genders seem to suggest.
In: Die Moderne(n) der Region. Zum Verhältnis von Zentrum und Peripherie am Beispiel der Böhmischen Länder. Hg. Irina Wutsdorff. Themenschwerpunkt in Brücken - Zeitschrift für Sprach-, Literatur und Kulturwissenschaft . Hg. Steffen Höhne und Štěpán Zbytovský. 30.1 (2023): 41–61
Wiener Digitale Revue: https://journals.univie.ac.at/index.php/wdr/article/view/7251, 2022
In her contribution, Ivana Perica shows that Vienna of the 1920s and 1950s had a particular way o... more In her contribution, Ivana Perica shows that Vienna of the 1920s and 1950s had a particular way of dealing with ‘Avant-Garde and Kitsch’ (Clement Greenberg): certainly, kitsch forms go hand in hand with reactionary political forces. But what was, then, progressive art supposed to be an organ for when there was a complete lack of revolutionary consciousness? It is this diagnosis the study of Ernst Fischer’s theatre works Lenin (1928) and Der große Verrat (The Great Treason, 1950) starts with, demonstrating the failure of revolutionary ‘pulp fiction’ in the 1920s and 1950s Vienna: It neither reached the elites nor the masses.
Keywords: Ernst Fischer, Lenin, Der große Verrat, revolutionary theatre, Cold War, pulp
Wie Ivana Perica in ihrem Beitrag ausführt, war der Umgang mit ‚Avant-Garde und Kitsch‘ (Clement Greenberg) im Wien der 1920er und 1950er Jahre ein besonderer: zweifellos gehen Kitschformen mit den reaktionären politischen Kräften Hand in Hand. Aber wofür sollte denn, auf der anderen Seite des politischen Spektrums, progressive Kunst ein Sprachrohr gewesen sein, wenn es gänzlich an revolutionärem Bewusstsein in der Bevölkerung fehlte? An dieser Feststellung setzt die Untersuchung über Ernst Fischers Stücke Lenin (1928) und Der große Verrat (1950) an und zeigt das Scheitern revolutionärer ‚Pulp Fiction‘ im Wien der 1920er und 1950er Jahre auf: Sie verfehlte sowohl die Eliten als auch die Massen.
Schlagwörter: Ernst Fischer, Lenin, Der große Verrat, Revolutionstheater, Kalter Krieg, Pulp
philosophy for another time; towards a collective political imagination. Special issue of Positions Politics (February 2021). Ed. Kamran Baradaran., 2021
Med majem ’68 in novembrom ’89: Transformacije sveta, literature in teorije. Ed. Marko Juvan. Lju... more Med majem ’68 in novembrom ’89: Transformacije sveta, literature in teorije. Ed. Marko Juvan. Ljubljana: ZRC SAZU, 2021. 149-167.
Considering common compartmentalizations of Lukacs’ work into the early, mature, and late phase, ... more Considering common compartmentalizations of Lukacs’ work into the early, mature, and late phase, the article explores elements that speak to what critics regard as a ›continuity thesis‹. Against possible assumptions on the prevalence of form in his early work and the dominance of the aesthetics of content in the later phases, the article explores the dialectical relationship of form and content, which comes to represent a leitmotif in Lukacs’ work as a whole. Here, the early specificity of form does not consist of its domination over content but in the inability of the aesthetic to tackle the social problems of a modernity in which art and life part ways.
The article inspects the political character of the 1968 events in Yugoslavia against the backgr... more The article inspects the political character of the 1968 events in Yugoslavia against the background of culturalised interpretations of this watershed year in post-foundational theory and aesthetics. The article presupposes that to interpret the global 1968 in terms of an emergence of the political as an aesthetic, cultural subversion of outdated politics would result in a myopic conclusion that 1968 did not happen at all in Yugoslavia. Why is this so? In order to pursue this rather banal but pertinent question, the opposition between politics and the political will be extended along the lines of the dialectics of evolution and revolution. It is precisely the continuity of politics that can help us explain why the Yugoslav 1968 did not usher in formations that in the West were subsequently theorised as pertaining to the notion of the political.
The paper draws on possibilities of applying Rancière’s views to the poetics and politics of “Red... more The paper draws on possibilities of applying Rancière’s views to the poetics and politics of “Red Vienna,” that is, to the cultural and educational policies developed by Social Democratic Workers’ Party of Austria (SDAP), which in the 1920s supported aesthetic policies structurally related to Rancière’s own conceptions of art and aesthetic revolution. The aim of the paper is to discuss Rancière’s understanding of aesthetic revolution in the light of the historical achievements and impasses of the Viennese social democratic politics.
Political and literary controversies on the Yugoslav literary left, known as Sukob na ljevici (Co... more Political and literary controversies on the Yugoslav literary left, known as Sukob na ljevici (Conflict on the left), remain famous for their culmination points, such as Miroslav Krleža’s book of essays Moj obračun s njima (My reckoning with them, 1932), his “Predgovor Podravskim motivima Krste Hegedušića” (The foreword to the Podravina motives by Krsto Hegedušić, 1933), Bogomir Hermann’s (alias A.B.C.) subsequent invective “Quo vadis, Krleža?” (1933), Krleža’s later “Dijalektički antibarbarus” (Dialectical antibarbarous, 1939), and the one-issue journal Književne sveske (Literary volumes, 1940). As the historiographic memory of these controversies is mainly concentrated on the authoritative personality of Krleža himself, the arguments of his opponents are mostly remembered as arguments of ‘the others’ and are granted only marginal validity. This article gives an account of the debates of the Conflict’s first stage (1928–1934), which were manifold and profound, and which foreshadowed the literary and ideological positions of the Conflict’s later, culminating stages. By taking into account the dynamic and complex international context that serves as a backdrop to the Conflict, this paper explores the developments in the Yugoslav ‘counterpublic’ literary sphere, especially with a view to discussions, debates, and polemics over the emerging social literature. Particular attention goes to the group of authors gathered around Socijalna Misao, Zagreb’s sociological and cultural journal edited by Božidar Adžija. As this journal’s most productive authors were derogated as ‘social literature swindlers,’ which affected their marginal position in the cultural historiography of this period, the aim of this article is to offer a proper analysis of their particular position on the literary and political left.
Rezension zu: Christine Magerski, Imperiale Welten. Literatur und politische Theorie am Beispiel ... more Rezension zu: Christine Magerski, Imperiale Welten. Literatur und politische Theorie am Beispiel Habsburg (Weilerswist: Velbrück Wissenschaft, 2018)
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26908537
Review of Ingo Cornils' "Writing the revolution: the construction of '1968' in Germany" (Woodbri... more Review of Ingo Cornils' "Writing the revolution: the construction of '1968' in Germany" (Woodbridge and Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2016)
Konferenzbericht "Feminisms in a transnational perspective 2014: Feminist knowledge in action" (D... more Konferenzbericht "Feminisms in a transnational perspective 2014: Feminist knowledge in action" (Dubrovnik, 26.-30. Mai 2014).
„Zarez“ XVI (2014) 396: 36-37
Poetikom fragmenta, kritičkim pogledom na suvremenost, pozicioniranjem vlastitih argumenata izmeñ... more Poetikom fragmenta, kritičkim pogledom na suvremenost, pozicioniranjem vlastitih argumenata izmeñu umjetničkog dojma i znanstvene objektivacije, ukratko, adornovskom «metodičnom nemetodičnošću» 1 Vojislav Mataga u eseju Posustajanje kulture i profani čovjek 2 crpe iz forme eseja kao svojevrsne žile kucavice (srednjo)europske intelektualne tradicije za čijim se posustajanjem larmoajantno osvrće. Ne uvodim ovaj tekst Adornovim odrednicama eseja slučajno: Uz navedene značajke eseja kao forme, Adorno navodi još i esejistovu individualnu iskustvenost, specifično odricanje od totaliteta istine, diskontinuiranost i proturječnost esejističkog diskurza, ali i anakronost. S obzirom na navedene značajke eseja kao forme iščitat ću Matagin tekst. Pritom Adorna ne zazivam isključivo kao autoritet na području definiranja nedefinirljive forme eseja, nego i kao kritičara kulture s kojim Vojislav Mataga zasigurno dijeli odreñene stavove, ali koji u slavnom Eseju kao formi esej shvaća znatno šire nego je tekst Posustajanje kulture koncipiran: Dok Adorno kao svojevrsnu bît eseja ističe pojmovnu otvorenost, u Posustajanju kulture 'srednjoeuropski identitet i kultura', odnosno 'srednjoeuropski identitet zasnovan na visokoj kulturi' nastoji se fiksirati; Dok prema Adornu esej otvara prostor za budućnost kao l'avenir prije nego li za budućnost kao predvidljiv i unaprijed prihvatljiv slijed dogañaja (a samim time i nedogañaja), Posustajanje je zagledano u prošlost kao projekcijsku plohu za ideal istinskog čovjeka, koji je u dosluhu s iskonom i koji se u suvremenosti ne (s)nalazi. Kada se povede riječ o budućnosti i izgledima za K/kulturu, autor zaključuje da se gubitkom Kulture u pitanje dovodi i opstanak čovjeka uopće pa time on ne stavlja samo točku na i, nego točku na kraj poglavlja o čovjeku i humanosti uopće. Takvim zaključavanjem identiteta u Kulturi i zaključivanjem vremena, tj. svojom zatvorenošću, Matagin esej kao ostvaraj znatno odmiče od Adornove otvorene ideje eseja kao forme. Meñutim, postoji i aspekt u kojem se, smatram, Matagin diskurz otvara. 3 Efemernost moderniteta, tj. kasnog moderniteta (15), glavna je meta autorove kritike. Budući da se oslanja prvenstveno na dijagnoze Zeitgeista proizišle iz pera njemačkih 12 Eagleton 2002, str. 39. 13 Usp. primjerice Jacques Le Rider: Mitteleuropa, prev. V. Pavković, Zagreb 1998. sljedeće: «'Centralna Evropa' danas kao neka vrsta mixtum composituma za estetskomorfološke diferencijacije apstraktna je mješavina koja ne govori mnogo više nego slične varijante: Centralna Amerika, Centralna Afrika ili Centralna Azija, a što bi to imalo da znači u literarnom smislu nije mi jasno.» 14 Hrvatski kulturni prostor, ili barem sjevernohrvatski kulturni prostor tek katkad se uspijevao 'prištekati' fantomskom carstvu naroda Srednje Europe, i Krleža je tu vjerojatno pravi primjer. Time što kozmopolitski zaziva vrijeme srednjoeuropske Kulture, zajednice koja je bila u dosluhu s transcendentnim (17), Mataga se ne zagleda samo u prošlost jer se želi odmaknuti od profanog čovjeka današnjice, čovjeka nedjela, nestvaralačkog čovjeka, nositelja civilizacije (16), ukotvljenog «u golom povijesnom vremenu» (8), nego se i prostorno pomiče iz diluvijalnog blata prema Srednjoeuroplju, čime se utječe Kunderinoj želji da Srednja Europa postane «sažeta verzija same Europe i svekolike njezine kulturne različitosti, mala supereuropska Europa, model Europe u malom koju čine više nacija prema jednom jedinom pravilu: najviše različitosti na najmanjem prostoru" 15 . U tom se sastoji njegovo otvaranje -u približavanju kulturnog prostora Kulturnom. Očigledno je, uostalom, da «najviše različitosti» još uvijek podrazumijeva tek 'različitost meñu Kulturama', ali ne i različitost Kulture i kulture, kulture i ne-kulture, umjetnosti i kiča... Razumijevajući Kulturu kao iskon i istinu, Posustajanje kulture briše i negira ne-kulturu ili uniženu kulturu: "neistina u koju se esej nesvjesno zapleće jest element njegove istine. Neistinito se sigurno nalazi i u njegovoj pukoj formi, odnošenju spram kulturno definiranoga, izvedenoga, kao da je to nešto po sebi." 16 Drugo Kulture u Posustajanju prisutno je samo kao nepoželjna, ali prisutna devijacija: Vrijeme Kulture jasno je nadreñeno vremenu u kojem Kultura uranja u kič i trivijalnost pa nema smisla da se u potonje ulažu napori za ikakvu izmjenu koja ne bi bila sustavno i potpuno vraćanje Kulture. Očigledno se, dakle, ovaj esej zapetljao u proturječje koje mu se nametnulo kao obilježje njegove forme. U posljednjem paragrafu Mataga parafrazira Simone Weil: «Umjetnost [Kultura] nema neposredne budućnosti […]. Uzaludno je žudjeti za Leonardom ili Bachom. Veličina naših dana mora krenuti drugim stazama. Ali ona može biti samo usamljena, nejasna i bez odjeka. A bez odjeka -umjetnosti [Kulture] nema.» (25) Učini li se isto s Adornovom oprekom kulturapriroda, koja leži u osnovi njegova eseja, dobiva se sukus Posustajanja: "Što energičnije, meñutim, suspendira pojam nečega prvog i odbija izdvojiti Kulturu iz kulture, to temeljnije otkriva esej iz kulture izraslu samu bit Kulture. [...] esej reflektira upravo to: njegova je 14 Predrag Matvejević: Razgovori s Krležom, VII. dopunjeno i prošireno izdanje, Zagreb 2001, str. 63-64. 15 Kundera 1985, str. 292. 16 Adorno 1985, str. 32. deziluzijom" 20 . Konačno se nameće sljedeće pitanje: Ako je esej kao forma radikalan "u suzdržavanju od svake redukcije na jedan princip, u akcentuiranju parcijalnog spram totalnog, u djelomičnom" 21 , zašto se ovdje djelomično, individualno ljudsko iskustvo zakukuljuje u kolektivnoj zamjenici koja nas zavodi na svoj pogled i pasivizira? Možda odgovor leži -opet -u vremenu. Nije li se autor Posustajanja, baš kao i Madžar iz Kunderina teksta, 22 zakasnio priključiti na vlak koji, kako i sam kaže, vozi sve brže? I nije li taj 'feler' upravo repeticija felera Johana Huizinge, za kojeg Miroslav Bertoša kaže sljedeće: "Valja ipak pripomenuti da uza svu erudiciju, sjajno opažanje i komentiranje ljudskog pojedinačnog ophoñenja i kolektivne psihologije u proteklim stoljećima, Huizinga postupno počinje gubiti korak s vremenom; više nije mogao razumjeti ni slijediti njegove evolucije i preobrazbe, nagli tehnološki napredak i nove oblike životne svakodnevice. U svakoj novosti on vidi opasnost za ljudski duh i znakove njegova slabljenja.» 23 Mada i sam Huizinga uopćene stavove o vremenu i kulturi na koncu svodi na individualna i trenutna raspoloženja onog koji piše, 24 ne želim privatizirati Matagine konstatacije i kao rješenje preporučiti da «uzme crvenu pilulu» 25 i riješi se depresije. Moja pozicija nije pozicija zanesenog optimista, dapače. Pa ako se na spomenutom čarobnom brijegu Thomas Mann zdušno ruga neobrazovanoj gospoñi Stöhr, koja brka 'kozmično' i 'kozmetičko', ne želim stati na stranu dotične gospoñe i rugati se s duhom, da se poslužim Mataginom parafrazom naslova knjige Mirka Kovača. Radije bih stvar primila malo lakše i sjetila se one stare (!): «Ko na srcu ima feler, mora puno jesti celer!». Šalu na stranu, konstatacije iz Posustajanja kulture posve su točne, samo što one još ne znače gubitak čovjeka. Zaključujem stoga da spomenuta je za njega nepovoljniji nego ikada." 26 A svi se mi, zapravo, ne snalazimo. Anakronost je više odraz diskurzivnog zatvaranja, zaključavanja sebe u nekom prošlom vremenu, posljedica neprilagoñenosti. No, neprilagoñenost ne znači nužno i neprilagodljivost. Jer kako Huizinga, tako i Adorno u prilagodljivosti i mobilnosti traže potencijal za otvorenost prema budućnosti: "Oni koji misle da moraju braniti duh od nesolidnosti njegovi su neprijatelji: emancipira li se jednom, sam je duh mobilan. Čim hoće više od pukog administrativnog ponavljanja i obrañivanja već bitkujućega, donekle je nepokriven; istina napuštena od igre bila bi još samo puka tautologija." 27 Zapetljati se u Möbiusovu petlju u kojoj se budućnost repetitivno nadaje samo kao izvrnuta prošlost, i u kojoj prošlost ne može iskliznuti ni u što radikalno novo, značilo bi zamrznuti i prošlost i budućnost te dokinuti sadašnjost kao otvorenost, kao sjecište mogućnosti. Mada je "sama kriza hipokritski pojam" 28 , upravo sadašnjost kao kriza omogućuje (s)kretanje u bolje: "Svi mi, kakva god bili smjera i uvjerenja, znamo: ne možemo natrag, moramo ići skroz. To je novo, tog još nikad prije nije bilo u našoj svijesti o krizi. […]
Calls for literature to be politically active have always been energized by situational and conju... more Calls for literature to be politically active have always been energized by situational and conjunctural pressures. Undoubtedly, ‘capitalist realism’ is one such pressure, and despite a variety of interlinked crises—economic, climate, famine, migration, and wars—it still proves powerful enough to block any form of agency that might be capable of fundamentally challenging its globally imperious status quo. There are those who would argue that we should not bother looking to literature for solutions to this prevailing status quo. However, activist literature and art do not just constitute a dead or fossilized archive—instead they provide the tools required for preserving radical political impulses and articulating anew in new conjunctures. To this extent, they provide a reservoir of future-oriented modes of thinking, feeling, and being-in-the-world that we desperately need today.
"When catastrophes occur, the sands of time stand still and everything is engulfed in a benumbing... more "When catastrophes occur, the sands of time stand still and everything is engulfed in a benumbing silence. Often we experience a mixture of fear and astonishment in the face of a catastrophe, not knowing what to do in its unhomely hour." - Introduction to the special issue of Philosophy World Democracy, "Where Do We Go From Here?"
https://www.philosophy-world-democracy.org/articles-1/the-apocalyptic-hitchhiker
Postavi li se pitanje o budućnosti sveučilišta, napose humanističkih i nekih društvenih znanosti ... more Postavi li se pitanje o budućnosti sveučilišta, napose humanističkih i nekih društvenih znanosti u vrijeme globalizacije i stvaranja konkurentski snažnijeg jedinstvenog Europskog prostora visokog obrazovanja (EHEA) i Europskoga istraživačkog prostora (ERA), kad se studij teži paušalno pragmatizirati, a nastava nastoji postupno rasteretiti navodno nepotrebne teorije i komercijalizirati prema načelu zapošljivosti («employability»), onda se htjeli-ne htjeli nameće katastrofična budućnosna perspektiva, popraćena kišom prognoza poput «smrti discipline», «sveučilišta u ruševinama», «društva neznanja i neobrazovanosti» i sl. Istovremeno se društvo samostilizira u društvo znanja, u zajednicu obrazovanih i izvrsnih, vrednovanu prema eksternim kriterijima i mjerenu nekakvim točkicama, bodovima, citiranošću, powerpointovima… Meñutim, koliko god se danas osjećali na prekretnici, treba imati na umu da se pitanje o budućnosti humanističkih znanosti ne postavlja po prvi put. Štoviše, kultura je uvijek nekako u krizi. Ni kritika neobrazovanosti nije novina koja se pojavljuje tek s vječitim krivcem Bolonjskim procesom, «kvizovima znanja» poput Milijunaša, Najslabije karike, popularnim dugim noćima muzeja ili dugim noćima znanosti. Ljetos je u Nakladi Jesenski i Turk izišao prijevod knjige austrijskog filozofa Konrada Paula Liessmanna pod naslovom Teorija neobrazovanosti. 1 Liessmann secira suvremeno društvo znanja -ili društva znanja, jer «Wissensgesellschaft» je floskula koja se copy-paste metodom prenosi EHEA-om gotovo jednakom brzinom kao trač -i ne skriva svoju skepsu po pitanju institucije u kojoj, ili za koju radi. Znaci rastućeg neznanja s jedne strane, a napumpavanja ECTS-bodova, bjesomučne hiperprodukcije znanstvenih radova koji bi trebali odražavati znanje, omasovljenje znanja i s tim sukladno banaliziranje istog te paralelno oblikovanje vrhunski obrazovanih elita koje se produciraju na skupim sveučilištima izvrsnosti svakako su ozbiljni signali onog što bi Liessmann nazvao «šupljim europskim sveučilišnim prostorom». Jedan od glavnih krivaca jest, dakako, Bologna, koju proziva i kao «bijedu europskih sveučilišta». Meñutim, koliko god Liessmannove primjedbe bile zabavne, točne i primamljive jer u čitatelja bude nostalgiju za nekim vremenom prije i pozivaju na oživljenje ideala onog slojevitog znanja, koje pretpostavlja da obrazovan čovjek zna da, primjerice, fraza homo homini lupus ne dolazi od Hobbesa, nego zapravo od Platona (primjer koji je dospio i u Pola ure kulture), Teorija neobrazovanosti ipak je samo široko postavljena društvena kritika upućena adresatu-istomišljeniku iz kule od bjelokosti i ne nudi konstruktivna rješenja. Lako bi 1 Recenzija Nevena Jovanovića objavljena je u 16. listopada 2008. u zarezu.
Uploads
Books by Ivana Perica
The question of literature's 'uses' has recently become a key topic of academic and public debate. Paradoxically, however, these conversations often tend to bypass the rich history of engagements with literature's distinctly political uses that form such a powerful current of 20th- and 21st-century artistic production and critical-theoretical reflection.
The Political Uses of Literature reopens discussion of literature's political and activist genealogies along several interrelated lines: As a foundational moment, it draws attention to the important body of interwar politicized literature and to debates about literature's ability to intervene in social reality. It then traces the mobilization of related conversations and artistic practices across several historical conjunctures, most notably the committed literature of the 1960s and our own present.
In mapping out these geographically and artistically diverse traditions – including case studies from the Americas, Europe, Africa, India and Russia – contributors advance critical discussions in the field, making questions pertaining to politicized art newly compelling to a broader and more diverse readership. Most importantly, this volume insists on the need to think about literature's political uses today – at a time when it has become increasingly difficult to imagine any kind of political efficacy for art, even as the need to do so is growing more and more acute. Literature may not proffer easy answers to our political problems, but as this collection suggests, the writing of the 20th century holds out aesthetic resources for a renewed engagement with the dilemmas that face us now.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Introduction
Ivana Perica (University of Vienna, Austria) and Benjamin Kohlmann (University of Regensburg, Germany)
PART I: Revolution, Internationalism and Literary Politics: Interwar Paradigms
1. Marxists Out of Work: Literature and the Useless in Interwar India
Benjamin Conisbee Baer (Princeton University, USA)
2. Politics and Literature on the Peruvian Periphery: Realism and Experimentation in the Works of César Vallejo and José Carlos Mariátegui
Juan E. De Castro (The New School, USA)
3. Reusing Artaud? On the Contemporaneity of Messages révolutionnaires (1936)
Sandra Fluhrer (Freie Universität Berlin, Germany, and University of California-Berkeley, USA)
4. On the German Popular Front and the Novel in Historical and International Context
Hunter Bivens (University of California-Santa Cruz, USA)
5. Narrative Struggle: "Good" and "Bad" Uses of Literature in the Committed Novel of the 1930s (Aragon, Dos Passos)
Aurore Peyroles (University of Regensburg, Germany)
6. Moscow, 1934 – Yan'an, 1942: The Manifesto as Lived Experience
Steven Lee (University of California-Berkeley, USA)
PART II: Politicizing Theory and Literary Practice in the Global 1960s: Inflection Points
7. Militant Structures of Feeling: Raymond Williams, Claude Lefort, and Workers' Inquiry
Daniel Hartley (Durham University, UK)
8. Solidarity in Black and White
J. Daniel Elam (University of Hong Kong)
9. Notes from the Underground, or: Why and How Was Non-Marxist Theory Resisted by Non-Marxists in a Totalitarian Society
Galin Tihanov (Queen Mary University of London, UK)
10. Workshops of Abolition: Attica Print Culture and Small Press Poetry
Mark Nowak (Manhattanville College, USA)
11. An Autofictional Intervention into Working-Class Literature: Karin Struck's Klassenliebe and the Werkkreis Literatur der Arbeitswelt
Christoph Schaub (University of Vechta, Germany)
12. Feminism and Progressive Writing in Twentieth-Century India
Ulka Anjaria (Brandeis University, USA)
PART III: The Political Uses of Literature Today: Legacies and Departures
13. Cultural Politics after the Arab Spring: A New Lotus for a New World?
Maryam Fatima (University of Massachusetts-Amherst, USA)
14. Segments of a Larger Narrative: Political Formalism and Working-Class Story Cycles
Dirk Wiemann (University of Potsdam)
15. Sedimented Reading Habits? The Future Utopia in Contemporary African Science and Speculative Fiction
Peter Maurits (University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany)
16. Literary Activism in Contemporary Africa: Praxis, Publics and the Shifting Landscapes of the 'Literary'
Madhu Krishnan (University of Bristol, UK)
Notes of Contributors
Index
Series Nr: Epistemata Philosophie.
Band Nr: 558
Pagenumbers: 376
Language: deutsch
Short description: Trotz des anscheinenden Verlusts der tradierten Dichotomie von Privatsphäre und Öffentlichkeit lässt sich beobachten, dass Begriffe ‚privat‘ und ‚öffentlich‘ keinesfalls aus dem Gebrauch gekommen sind. In den gegenwärtigen Debatten werden sie vielmehr auch für die Linke bestimmend. Angesichts der gesellschaftlichen, politischen und ökonomischen Umlagerung sowohl des Privaten als auch des Öffentlichen werden in der vorliegenden Studie einzelne einander entgegenstehende linke und liberale Positionen beleuchtet. Mit der kontrapunktuellen Lektüre des ‚Linken‘ Jacques Rancière und der ‚Liberalen‘ Hannah Arendt werden die Ordnungsmechanismen des politischen bzw. politisch-theoretischen Feldes ergründet. Ausgehend von Rancières parergonaler Arendt- Kritik wird hier der Frage nachgegangen, ob ihre disparaten Denkgebäude einander nicht viel näher stehen könnten, als dies üblicherweise angenommen wird.
Reviews:
- Anna Hollendung, Politische Vierteljahresschrift 58.4 (2017): 618–620.
- Sophia Ermert, Contemporary Political Theory 17.2 (2018): 74–77 (online first 24 March 2017)
- Sergej Seitz, Journal Phänomenologie 46 (2016): 68–72.
Papers by Ivana Perica
In: Die Moderne(n) der Region. Zum Verhältnis von Zentrum und Peripherie am Beispiel der Böhmischen Länder. Hg. Irina Wutsdorff. Themenschwerpunkt in Brücken - Zeitschrift für Sprach-, Literatur und Kulturwissenschaft . Hg. Steffen Höhne und Štěpán Zbytovský. 30.1 (2023): 41–61
Keywords: Ernst Fischer, Lenin, Der große Verrat, revolutionary theatre, Cold War, pulp
Wie Ivana Perica in ihrem Beitrag ausführt, war der Umgang mit ‚Avant-Garde und Kitsch‘ (Clement Greenberg) im Wien
der 1920er und 1950er Jahre ein besonderer: zweifellos gehen Kitschformen mit den reaktionären politischen Kräften Hand in Hand. Aber wofür sollte denn, auf der anderen Seite des politischen Spektrums, progressive Kunst ein Sprachrohr gewesen sein, wenn es gänzlich an revolutionärem Bewusstsein in der Bevölkerung fehlte? An dieser Feststellung setzt die Untersuchung über Ernst Fischers Stücke Lenin (1928) und Der große Verrat (1950) an und zeigt das Scheitern revolutionärer ‚Pulp Fiction‘ im Wien der 1920er und 1950er
Jahre auf: Sie verfehlte sowohl die Eliten als auch die Massen.
Schlagwörter: Ernst Fischer, Lenin, Der große Verrat, Revolutionstheater, Kalter Krieg, Pulp
will be extended along the lines of the dialectics of evolution and revolution. It is precisely the continuity of politics that can help us explain why the Yugoslav 1968 did not usher in formations that in the West were subsequently theorised as pertaining to the notion of the political.
The question of literature's 'uses' has recently become a key topic of academic and public debate. Paradoxically, however, these conversations often tend to bypass the rich history of engagements with literature's distinctly political uses that form such a powerful current of 20th- and 21st-century artistic production and critical-theoretical reflection.
The Political Uses of Literature reopens discussion of literature's political and activist genealogies along several interrelated lines: As a foundational moment, it draws attention to the important body of interwar politicized literature and to debates about literature's ability to intervene in social reality. It then traces the mobilization of related conversations and artistic practices across several historical conjunctures, most notably the committed literature of the 1960s and our own present.
In mapping out these geographically and artistically diverse traditions – including case studies from the Americas, Europe, Africa, India and Russia – contributors advance critical discussions in the field, making questions pertaining to politicized art newly compelling to a broader and more diverse readership. Most importantly, this volume insists on the need to think about literature's political uses today – at a time when it has become increasingly difficult to imagine any kind of political efficacy for art, even as the need to do so is growing more and more acute. Literature may not proffer easy answers to our political problems, but as this collection suggests, the writing of the 20th century holds out aesthetic resources for a renewed engagement with the dilemmas that face us now.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Introduction
Ivana Perica (University of Vienna, Austria) and Benjamin Kohlmann (University of Regensburg, Germany)
PART I: Revolution, Internationalism and Literary Politics: Interwar Paradigms
1. Marxists Out of Work: Literature and the Useless in Interwar India
Benjamin Conisbee Baer (Princeton University, USA)
2. Politics and Literature on the Peruvian Periphery: Realism and Experimentation in the Works of César Vallejo and José Carlos Mariátegui
Juan E. De Castro (The New School, USA)
3. Reusing Artaud? On the Contemporaneity of Messages révolutionnaires (1936)
Sandra Fluhrer (Freie Universität Berlin, Germany, and University of California-Berkeley, USA)
4. On the German Popular Front and the Novel in Historical and International Context
Hunter Bivens (University of California-Santa Cruz, USA)
5. Narrative Struggle: "Good" and "Bad" Uses of Literature in the Committed Novel of the 1930s (Aragon, Dos Passos)
Aurore Peyroles (University of Regensburg, Germany)
6. Moscow, 1934 – Yan'an, 1942: The Manifesto as Lived Experience
Steven Lee (University of California-Berkeley, USA)
PART II: Politicizing Theory and Literary Practice in the Global 1960s: Inflection Points
7. Militant Structures of Feeling: Raymond Williams, Claude Lefort, and Workers' Inquiry
Daniel Hartley (Durham University, UK)
8. Solidarity in Black and White
J. Daniel Elam (University of Hong Kong)
9. Notes from the Underground, or: Why and How Was Non-Marxist Theory Resisted by Non-Marxists in a Totalitarian Society
Galin Tihanov (Queen Mary University of London, UK)
10. Workshops of Abolition: Attica Print Culture and Small Press Poetry
Mark Nowak (Manhattanville College, USA)
11. An Autofictional Intervention into Working-Class Literature: Karin Struck's Klassenliebe and the Werkkreis Literatur der Arbeitswelt
Christoph Schaub (University of Vechta, Germany)
12. Feminism and Progressive Writing in Twentieth-Century India
Ulka Anjaria (Brandeis University, USA)
PART III: The Political Uses of Literature Today: Legacies and Departures
13. Cultural Politics after the Arab Spring: A New Lotus for a New World?
Maryam Fatima (University of Massachusetts-Amherst, USA)
14. Segments of a Larger Narrative: Political Formalism and Working-Class Story Cycles
Dirk Wiemann (University of Potsdam)
15. Sedimented Reading Habits? The Future Utopia in Contemporary African Science and Speculative Fiction
Peter Maurits (University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany)
16. Literary Activism in Contemporary Africa: Praxis, Publics and the Shifting Landscapes of the 'Literary'
Madhu Krishnan (University of Bristol, UK)
Notes of Contributors
Index
Series Nr: Epistemata Philosophie.
Band Nr: 558
Pagenumbers: 376
Language: deutsch
Short description: Trotz des anscheinenden Verlusts der tradierten Dichotomie von Privatsphäre und Öffentlichkeit lässt sich beobachten, dass Begriffe ‚privat‘ und ‚öffentlich‘ keinesfalls aus dem Gebrauch gekommen sind. In den gegenwärtigen Debatten werden sie vielmehr auch für die Linke bestimmend. Angesichts der gesellschaftlichen, politischen und ökonomischen Umlagerung sowohl des Privaten als auch des Öffentlichen werden in der vorliegenden Studie einzelne einander entgegenstehende linke und liberale Positionen beleuchtet. Mit der kontrapunktuellen Lektüre des ‚Linken‘ Jacques Rancière und der ‚Liberalen‘ Hannah Arendt werden die Ordnungsmechanismen des politischen bzw. politisch-theoretischen Feldes ergründet. Ausgehend von Rancières parergonaler Arendt- Kritik wird hier der Frage nachgegangen, ob ihre disparaten Denkgebäude einander nicht viel näher stehen könnten, als dies üblicherweise angenommen wird.
Reviews:
- Anna Hollendung, Politische Vierteljahresschrift 58.4 (2017): 618–620.
- Sophia Ermert, Contemporary Political Theory 17.2 (2018): 74–77 (online first 24 March 2017)
- Sergej Seitz, Journal Phänomenologie 46 (2016): 68–72.
In: Die Moderne(n) der Region. Zum Verhältnis von Zentrum und Peripherie am Beispiel der Böhmischen Länder. Hg. Irina Wutsdorff. Themenschwerpunkt in Brücken - Zeitschrift für Sprach-, Literatur und Kulturwissenschaft . Hg. Steffen Höhne und Štěpán Zbytovský. 30.1 (2023): 41–61
Keywords: Ernst Fischer, Lenin, Der große Verrat, revolutionary theatre, Cold War, pulp
Wie Ivana Perica in ihrem Beitrag ausführt, war der Umgang mit ‚Avant-Garde und Kitsch‘ (Clement Greenberg) im Wien
der 1920er und 1950er Jahre ein besonderer: zweifellos gehen Kitschformen mit den reaktionären politischen Kräften Hand in Hand. Aber wofür sollte denn, auf der anderen Seite des politischen Spektrums, progressive Kunst ein Sprachrohr gewesen sein, wenn es gänzlich an revolutionärem Bewusstsein in der Bevölkerung fehlte? An dieser Feststellung setzt die Untersuchung über Ernst Fischers Stücke Lenin (1928) und Der große Verrat (1950) an und zeigt das Scheitern revolutionärer ‚Pulp Fiction‘ im Wien der 1920er und 1950er
Jahre auf: Sie verfehlte sowohl die Eliten als auch die Massen.
Schlagwörter: Ernst Fischer, Lenin, Der große Verrat, Revolutionstheater, Kalter Krieg, Pulp
will be extended along the lines of the dialectics of evolution and revolution. It is precisely the continuity of politics that can help us explain why the Yugoslav 1968 did not usher in formations that in the West were subsequently theorised as pertaining to the notion of the political.
By taking into account the dynamic and complex international context that serves as a backdrop to the Conflict, this paper explores the developments in the Yugoslav ‘counterpublic’ literary sphere, especially with a view to discussions, debates, and polemics over the emerging social literature. Particular attention goes to the group of authors gathered around Socijalna Misao, Zagreb’s sociological and cultural journal edited by Božidar Adžija. As this journal’s most productive authors were derogated as ‘social literature swindlers,’ which affected their marginal position in the cultural historiography of this period, the aim of this article is to offer a proper analysis of their particular position on the literary and political left.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26908537
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41296-016-0082-y?wt_mc=Internal.Event.1.SEM.ArticleAuthorOnlineFirst
„Zarez“ XVI (2014) 396: 36-37
https://www.philosophy-world-democracy.org/articles-1
https://www.philosophy-world-democracy.org/articles-1/the-apocalyptic-hitchhiker
https://www.zfl-berlin.org/veranstaltungen-detail/items/what-is-the-political-novel-defining-the-genre.html
//
caponeu.eu
//
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100089829465487