1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910811037603321

Autore

Cucu Sorin Radu

Titolo

The underside of politics [[electronic resource] ] : global fictions in the fog of the Cold War / / Sorin Radu Cucu

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New York, : Fordham University Press, 2013

ISBN

0-8232-5436-4

0-8232-6099-2

0-8232-5437-2

0-8232-5435-6

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (414 p.)

Disciplina

809.3/935809045

Soggetti

Fiction - 20th century - History and criticism

Cold War in literature

Political fiction - History and criticism

National characteristics in literature

Cold War - Social aspects - Europe

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Writing the Cold War: literature, democracy and the global polis -- Kafka and the Cold War fantasies of the invisible master -- The vicissitudes of popular sovereignty -- National security in the age of the global picture -- All power to the networks! -- Transnational American studies in the fog of the Cold War.

Sommario/riassunto

This book argues that during the Cold War modern political imagination was held captive by the split between two visions of universality—freedom in the West versus social justice in the East—and by a culture of secrecy that tied national identity to national security. Examining post- 1945 American and Eastern European interpretive novels in dialogue with each other and with postfoundational democratic theory, The Underside of Politics brings to light the ideas, forces, and circumstances that shattered modernity’s promises (such as secularization, autonomy, and rights) on both sides of the Iron Curtain. In this context, literary fictions by Kundera and Roth, Popescu and Coover, Kiš and DeLillo become global as they reveal the trials of



popular sovereignty in the “fog of the Cold War” and trace the elements around which its world discourse or global picture is constructed: the atom bomb, Stalinist show trials, anticommunist propaganda, totalitarian terror, secret military operations, and political targeting.