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Zusatztext "In Utopian Generations ! Nicholas Brown's grasp of marxian analysis is subtle and his general argument about the literary configurations of the idea of Utopia and the sublime on the works of the modernist and African writers he examines is both riveting and insightful. However! the book's greatest strength lies in its detailed and multilayered analyses of the authors and the texts themselves. Every chapter contains moments of real brilliance! which derive directly from the analyses. In fact! the writing inadvertently illustrates a species of immanent criticism in the best Adornian sense! and in a way that proves really illuminating as a method of comparative scholarship." -Ato Quayson! University of Cambridge! author of Calibrations: Reading for the Social Informationen zum Autor Nicholas Brown Klappentext Utopian Generations develops a powerful interpretive matrix for understanding world literature--one that renders modernism and postcolonial African literature comprehensible in a single framework, within which neither will ever look the same. African literature has commonly been seen as representationally naïve vis-à-vis modernism, and canonical modernism as reactionary vis-à-vis postcolonial literature. What brings these two bodies of work together, argues Nicholas Brown, is their disposition toward Utopia or "the horizon of a radical reconfiguration of social relations.? Grounded in a profound rethinking of the Hegelian Marxist tradition, this fluently written book takes as its point of departure the partial displacement during the twentieth century of capitalism's "internal limit" (classically conceived as the conflict between labor and capital) onto a geographic division of labor and wealth. Dispensing with whole genres of commonplace contemporary pieties, Brown examines works from both sides of this division to create a dialectical mapping of different modes of Utopian aesthetic practice. The theory of world literature developed in the introduction grounds the subtle and powerful readings at the heart of the book--focusing on works by James Joyce, Cheikh Hamidou Kane, Ford Madox Ford, Chinua Achebe, Wyndham Lewis, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, and Pepetela. A final chapter, arguing that this literary dialectic has reached a point of exhaustion, suggests that a radically reconceived notion of musical practice may be required to discern the Utopian desire immanent in the products of contemporary culture. Zusammenfassung African literature has commonly been seen as representationally naive vis-a-vis modernism, and canonical modernism as reactionary vis-a-vis postcolonial literature. What brings these two bodies of work together, argues the author, is their disposition toward Utopia or the horizon of a radical reconfiguration of social relations. Inhaltsverzeichnis ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix INTRODUCTION 1 PART ONE: SUBJECTIVITY 35 CHAPTER TWO: Ulysses: The Modernist Sublime 37 CHAPTER THREE: Ambiguous Adventure: Authenticity's Aftermath 59 PART TWO: HISTORY 81 CHAPTER FOUR: The Good Soldier and Parade's End: Absolute Nostalgia 83 CHAPTER FIVE: Arrow of God: The Totalizing Gaze 104 PART THREE: POLITICS 125 CHAPTER SIX: The Childermass: Revolution and Reaction 127 CHAPTER SEVEN: Ngugi wa Thiong'o and Pepetela:Revolution and Retrenchment 150 CHAPTER EIGHT: Conclusion:Postmodernism as Semiperipheral Symptom 173 NOTES 201 INDEX 231 ...
