Provides a broad European and cross-cultural perspective on the theory and practice of literature and the Left over the past 50 years.

In the wake of Stalin’s death and the publication of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s early fictions, Georg Lukács claimed to discern a revivification of socialist realism, the officially-sanctioned school of Soviet literature. A furtherance of that process was integral to the “renaissance of Marxism” and vitalization of socialist democracy that he hoped would restore the faith in socialism shaken by the Stalinist era. Although he dared not admit it, he envisioned a socialist realism cast in the (...) image of bourgeois “critical realism.”. (shrink)

Success in Soviet trade negotiations depends to a great extent on the images that the Soviet negotiators form of their Western counterparts. These images, in turn, depend to a great extent on the images presented to such Soviet negotiators during their education, through various tales and stories.

In Culture, Genre, and Literary Vocation, Michael Davitt Bell charts the important and often overlooked connection between literary culture and authors' careers. Bell's influential essays on nineteenth-century American writers—originally written for such landmark projects as The Columbia Literary History of the United States and The Cambridge History of American Literature—are gathered here with a major new essay on Richard Wright. Throughout, Bell revisits issues of genre with an eye toward the unexpected details of authors' lives, and invites us to (...) reconsider the hidden functions that terms such as "romanticism" and "realism" served for authors and their critics. Whether tracing the demands of the market or the expectations of readers, Bell examines the intimate relationship between literary production and culture; each essay closely links the milieu in which American writers worked with the trajectory of their storied careers. (shrink)

The article contains the conceptual vision of socialist realism as one of the key characteristics of art, transformed in the postmodern cultural era. Social realism is a cultural manifestation of the historical development of Soviet republics, including the Ukrainian SSR. The essence of socialist realism is seen as a manifestation of ideology in the Soviet conditions. Besides, the article considers the phenomenon in the context of postmodernism, relying on the findings of various scholars, and describes (...) the interaction between postmodernism and socialist realism. Despite the general view that postmodernism emerged in the United States and Western Europe in the 1960s-1970s, there could be another way this movement evolved in fine art and architecture. The fact that the artists from the post-Soviet space managed to adapt to the global cultural field of postmodernism so swiftly proves that the totalitarian system failed to eliminate the plurality of opinions. A post-Soviet variant of postmodernism was largely defined by the influence of socialist realism. The recently proclaimed era of post-truth that allegedly started after the new millennium produced fascinating political and artistic experiments in the post-Soviet space. Hence, it would be logical to assume that some previously developed mechanisms were activated there. Post-truth as an instrument of politics in that sense resonates with the socialist realism used as an instrument of class struggle. Research methods include description, synthesis and analysis. (shrink)

Realism and Russia? Realism is a notion with multiple meanings, so options abound as to how the two might connect with one another. An old Russian proverb conveys a realist message about social properties: "An individual in Rssia was composed of three parts: a body, a soul, and a passport." (Ruben 1985, 83) Having a passport signals the possession of a complex set of social properties, and if these are taken to be real in some appropriate sense, one (...) is inplying a realist view in social ontology. In another sense of the word, realism is a live issues in the study of international relations. Political realism considers the behaviour of states by emphasizing the importance of national interests and the drive for power on the one hand, and the suppression of moral concerns on the other (e.g. Donnelly 2000). Russian realists hold diverse views about the newly emerged unipolar global power structure and Russia's proper strategy for adjusting to this structure (e.g. Shakleyina and Bogaturov 2004). Realism is a family of viewpoints also in the arts (including painting, music and literature) and their study. Socialist realism is a version that used to be an official doctrine in Russia, gently requesting artists to optimistically represent society's march towards communism, glorifying the heroic role of the proletariat in driving the process. Socialist realism was also well known elsewhere. So much so that in the 1970s, a philosophy professor at the University of Helsinki announced to give a lecture course on "scientific realism" but on its way to the university catalogue through the university administration, the title of the course was transformed into "socialist realism". In the spirit of rectifying that old administrative mistake, the remards to follow deal with scientifit realism as a philosophy of science. The general issue to be addressed is how the social sciences relate to the social world, in both directions. (shrink)

In histories of Serbian painting Sreten Maric is listed among the protagonists of socialist realism, and that on the basis of a single article - his criticism of an exhibition staged by the Association of Visual Artists of Serbia to the benefit of wounded veterans. Without denying the historical basis for this judgment, the author of the present paper pleads for a more nuance approach and propounds the thesis that socialist realism was primarily a complex pattern (...) of social relations, and only in the second place a substantively defined doctrine. On the basis of an insight into the relevant sources it is argued that Maric was not a theorist of socialist realism; on the other hand, an ideologue of social painting he was indeed, believing in a synthesis of Art and Revolution. By way of comparison, the figures of Miroslav Krleza and Georg Luk?cs are referred to: neither of the two was a protagonist of socialist realism, though both belonged firmly to the so-called leftist thought. U istorijama srpskog slikarstva Sreten Maric vazi za protagonistu socijalistickog realizma, i to na osnovu jednog clanka - kritike na izlozbu Udruzenja likovnih umetnika Srbije u korist ranjenih boraca. Ne poricuci istorijsku ocenu, autor pledira za nijansiraniji stav i izlaze tezu da je socijalisticki realizam bio u prvom redu jedan sklop drustvenih odnosa, pa tek onda i neka sadrzinski odredjena doktrina. Uvidom u izvore, zakljucio je da Maric nije bio teoreticar socijalistickog realizma, ali ideolog socijalnog slikarstva jeste bio, uz veru u sintezu Umetnosti i Revolucije. Za poredjenje su mu posluzili Miroslav Krleza i Georg Luk?cs: ni jedan, ni drugi nije bio protagonista socijalistickog realizma, mada su obojica pripadala cvrsto tzv. levoj misli. (shrink)

Few aspects of American military history have been as vigorously debated as Harry Truman's decision to use atomic bombs against Japan. In this carefully crafted volume, Michael Kort describes the wartime circumstances and thinking that form the context for the decision to use these weapons, surveys the major debates related to that decision, and provides a comprehensive collection of key primary source documents that illuminate the behavior of the United States and Japan during the closing days of World War II. (...) Kort opens with a summary of the debate over Hiroshima as it has evolved since 1945. He then provides a historical overview of thye events in question, beginning with the decision and program to build the atomic bomb. Detailing the sequence of events leading to Japan's surrender, he revisits the decisive battles of the Pacific War and the motivations of American and Japanese leaders. Finally, Kort examines ten key issues in the discussion of Hiroshima and guides readers to relevant primary source documents, scholarly books, and articles. (shrink)

It would be no exaggeration to say that our art is presently undergoing a revolutionary stage in its development. The revolutionary renewal that has seized all spheres of life is being ever more forcefully represented in artistic culture as well. That culture is beginning to free itself from bureaucratic regimentation, incompetent pressure from above, inflated authorities, lifeless cliches, and opportunism of the moment. Art is actively seeking its place in perestroika, and is in turn in many respects defining the moral (...) climate of perestroika. Recent works such as Fire [Pozhar] by V. Rasputin, the Sad Detective Story [Pechal'nyi detektiv] by V. Astaf'ev, The Execution Block [Plakha] by Ch. Aitmatov, the paintings of G. Korzhev and V. Sidorov, the sculpture of V. Klykov, etc., are actively working for renewal. (shrink)

The question of the essence of contemporary socialist artistic culture is being acutely posed today, in the period of renewal of the whole life of Soviet society. To what extent does the method of socialist realism, which has become established in our theory and practice, correspond to the processes taking place within art? Is its method adequate for an all-round reflection and analysis of the entire diversity and uniqueness of today's society? After all, the method of (...) class='Hi'>socialist realism presumes a truthful, historically concrete depiction of reality in its revolutionary development, i.e., it orients the artist toward reflecting that reality only in "forms of life" and requires him to represent only progressive processes. (shrink)

The paper aims to present the philosophical background and justification of the theory of social realism. Social realism is a representative example of a literary period in which the autonomy of literature in terms of, for example, the aesthetic value of a literary work, was brought to a negligible level given the radical demands of regime poetics of writing in accordance with politics and ideology. Socialist-realism, poetics in which party writing and educating people in the (...) form of socialist progress and without any concern about literary creation are paramount, finds its postulates in theories of the Union of Russian Proletarian Writers (RAPP) and proletarian cultural and educational organization (Proletkult). Theorists of socialist realism poetics claim that their postulates find philosophical justification in Marx’s and Engels’ texts about art. The primary subject of analysis in the article will, therefore, be the connection between the theory of social realism and the classical Marxist conception of art. Based on the analysis, it can be concluded that the theory of social realism is justified by classical Marxist aesthetics regarding historical materialism which determines art, but not in the sense of denying the autonomy of the art. (shrink)

The article examines the phenomenon of conformism in the context of socialist realism, which for a long time was the main direction for the Soviet art sphere. Conformism is interpreted as an effective way for the artist to optimize relations with the authorities and society, giving the opportunity for social self-preservation. Conformism is a kind of strategy for artists, thanks to which they manage to achieve their creative goals and successfully exist within the established cultural framework. The author (...) of the article argues that conformism helped artists who put their creativity at the service of socialist realism to find some basis for their activities, because socialist realism did not initially have such a basis. The author comes to the conclusion that in the conditions of constant transformation of cultural requirements and the need to fully comply with them, conformism becomes for the artist not just a tactic in achieving creative goals, but also a kind of self-defense mechanism that allows to preserve mental and physical health. The most successful Soviet artists were able to realize their talent by creating many bright works of art due to the fact that they created precisely in the mainstream of socialist realism, and if it were not for it, perhaps the world would never have known about some outstanding Soviet artists, as well as not seen their works of art, since the realization of Soviet artists in another cultural environment might well not have taken place. (shrink)

Politicka istorija druge Jugoslavije neprekidno je bila sakralna, a domen sekularizacije obuhvatao je mahom samo umetnost. Informbiro i razlaz sa SSSR-om otvorio je put ka vecoj slobodi u stvaralastvu, napustajuci ideju o kontroli umetnosti u vidu socrealizma. Trece stanoviste o knjizevnosti zastupao je Vladan Desnica.

Critical realism, a philosophical framework originally developed by Roy Bhaskar in the 1970s, represents a relatively new approach to research generally and to nursing research in particular. This article explores the ontological and epistemological tenets of critical realism and examines the application of critical realist principles to nursing research and practice through a review of the literature. It is evident that few published nursing research studies have, as of yet, utilized critical realism as their paradigm of (...) choice. Both the strengths and limitations of the presentation and use of critical realism in these studies are discussed in this article. Given the varying degrees of success of the authors in explicating critical realism as a philosophical framework, the value of critical realism to the research study, and the ways in which usage of the critical realist framework influenced development of the study and interpretation of findings, it is evident that the quality of future publications espousing the use of critical realism must continue to be strengthened significantly. (shrink)

Are any conclusions to be had? We have shown how, at all levels, the system of Soviet literature, has both persisted and fallen into disrepair. The rigid model of socialist realism that took hold during the Ždanovist period no longer exists. However, its presence is still felt not only as a constant negative point of reference, but through the numerous structures that grew out of it. Changes set in motion during the thaw continue at an accelerated pace (...) for the sake ofperestrojka. All the same, five years later the latter has yet to achieve its literary revolution.There is one fundamental change. It would be an anachronism to organize today a conference on “One or two Russian literatures?,” as in Geneva some years ago. But will this merging of the separate branches of Russian literature go beyond confusion in the direction of a development describable as “organic”? Will the different components of the transformed system become compatible?Only time will tell and, it is hoped, dispell our doubts. (shrink)

The concept of alienation has taken firm root in the field of esthetics. One cannot say that its content is identical in everything one reads. Nonetheless, employment of this concept is always for the purpose, so to speak, of "clarification." It is often employed on the assumption that its use permits one to make clear whatever may be incomprehensible in the form and content of a work of art. It has become customary to have recourse to the concept of alienation (...) in esthetic analysis of modern foreign works of literature and art. As an example, we may cite the international discussion around the work of Franz Kafka, many participants in which hold that Kafka is a "product of alienation," "a prisoner of alienation," and that his work either expresses "his self-alienation" or involves depiction of the "consequences of alienation.". (shrink)

The Saga of Dharmapuri by O.V. Vijayan is a dystopian fantasy set in the imaginary country of Dharmapuri, which could be a depiction of India or any other newly independent country in the post-colonial era. Mikhail Bakhtin in his treatise Rabelais and his World justifies the use of Grotesque Realism, a literary trope that allows the author to move away from the conventions of propriety and decency to convey messages that are real and powerful nevertheless. Usually exaggeration and hyperbole (...) are key elements of this style. Through the centuries, literature has often been a medium through which contemporary concerns have been transmitted. This paper argues that O.V. Vijayan uses Grotesque Realism in his novel to depict the political, social and economic condition of India of the 1970s- specifically a country that was under emergency. Like all dystopian fables, The Saga of Dharmapuri has been prophetic in anticipating some of the social issues that we face even today. The paper aims at examining how Vijayan uses explicit language and scatological and sexual imagery so as to achieve this sense of realism within his novel. (shrink)

Semantic realism can be characterised as the idea that scientific theories are truth-bearers, and that they are true or false in virtue of the world. This notion is often assumed, but rarely discussed in the literature. I examine how it fares in the context of the semantic view of theories and in connection with the literature on scientific representation. Making sense of semantic realism requires specifying the conditions of application of theoretical models, even for models that (...) are not actually used, which leads to several difficulties. My conclusion is that semantic realism is far more demanding than one would expect. Finally, I briefly examine some pragmatist alternatives. (shrink)

Richly illustrated study drawing on art, literature and science to explore Victorian attitudes towards sight.

The decision to start the uprising rested chiefly with a few persons from the high command of the Home Army. Political authorities, including Kazimierz Pużak, PPS and the National Unity Council leader, had no influence on the Uprising outbreak and date decisions.Immediately after the uprising outbreak, the socialist movement joined the action, both in the civilian and military area, as did all socialist movement factions. A very important role was played by the well-developed and influential press, coming out (...) in all districts of liberated Warsaw. Socialist activists repeatedly appealed to the allied authorities for active aid for fighting Warsaw.In the city military socialist groups took active part in military operations in all Warsaw’s districts, and in particular in Śródmieście, Wola, Stare Miasto, Powiśle and Żoliborz. Similarly socialist activists took active part in organizing relief for civilian population. The socialist movement was the largest and the most influential political movement in the fighting Warsaw. In the face of insufficient aid from the allied states and the Soviet Army, Warsaw had to capitulate which was reported by socialist Robotnik in words full of sorrow and pathos on 4 October 1944. (shrink)

The concept of “magic realism” raises many problems, both theoretical and historical. I first encountered it in the context of American painting in the mid-1950s; at about the same time, Angle Flores published an influential article in which the term was applied to the work of Borges;1 but Alejo Carpentier’s conception of the real maravilloso at once seemed to offer a related or alternative conception, while his own work and that of Miguel Angel Asturias seemed to demand an enlargement (...) of its application.2 Finally, with the novels of Gabriel García Márquez in the 1960s, a whole new realm of magic realism opened up whose exact relations to preceding theory and novelistic practice remained undetermined. These conceptual problems emerge most clearly when one juxtaposes the notion of magic realism with competing or overlapping terms. In the beginning, for instance, it was not clear how it was to be distinguished from that vaster category generally simply called fantastic literature; at this point, what is presumably at issue is a certain type of narrative or representation to be distinguished from realism. Carpentier, however, explicitly staged his version as a more authentic Latin American realization of what in the more reified European context took the form of surrealism: his emphasis would seem to have been on a certain poetic transfiguration of the object world itself—not so much a fantastic narrative, then, as a metamorphosis in perception and in things perceived . In García Márquez, finally, these two tendencies seemed to achieve a new kind of synthesis—a transfigured object world in which fantastic events are also narrated. But at this point, the focus of the conception of magic realism would appear to have shifted to what must be called an anthropological perspective: magic realism now comes to be understood as a kind of narrative raw material derived essentially from peasant society, drawing in sophisticated ways on the world of village or even tribal myth. Recent debates, meanwhile, have complicated all this with yet a different kind of issue: namely, the problem of the political or mystificatory value, respectively, of such texts, many of which we owe to overtly left-wing revolutionary writers .3 In spite of these terminological complexities—which might be grounds for abandoning the concept altogether—it retains a strange seductiveness which I will try to explore further, adding to the confusion with reference points drawn from the work of Jacques Lacan and from Freud’s notion of the “uncanny,” and compounding it by an argument that magic realism is to be grasped as a possible alternative to the narrative logic of contemporary postmodernism.4 1. See Angel Flores, “Magical Realism in Spanish American Fiction,” Hispania 38 : 187-92.2. See Alejo Carpentier, “Prólogo” to his novel El Reino de este mundo ; the most useful survey of the debate remains Roberto Gonzalez Echeverria, “Carpentier y el realism magico,” in Otros Mundos, otros fuegos, ed. Donald Yates, Congreso International de Literature Iberoamericana 16 , pp. 221-31.3. See Angel Rama, La Novel en America Latina , and especially Carlos Blanco Aguinaga, De Mitólogos y novelistas , in particular the discussions of Gabriel García Márques and Alejo Carpentier.4. My own general frame of reference for “postmodernism” is outlined in my “Postmodernism; or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,” New Left Review 146 : 53-92. Frederic Jameson, William A. Lane Professor of Comparative Literature at Duke University, is the author of The Prison-House of Language and The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. He is also a member of the editorial collective of Social Text. His previous contributions to Critical Inquiry are “The Symbolic Inference; or, Kenneth Burke and Ideological Analysis” and “Ideology and Symbolic Action”. (shrink)

Die vorliegende Arbeit stellt einen Versuch dar, Entstehung und Funktionsweise des sozialistischen Realismus in jeweils spezifischen politischen und kulturellen Kontexten zu analysieren und zu beschreiben. Eine auf den Vergleich von Prozessen und Mechanismen ästhetischer Kanonbildung in der DDR und in Polen gerichtete Perspektive erlaubt nicht nur, die Dynamik von Handlungen und Vorgängen, die sich auf die offizielle Literatur- und Kunstdoktrin bezogen, in ihrer Gleichzeitigkeit und Interferenz zu erfassen. Indem sie den "sozialistischen Realismus" als ein Normierungssystem betrachtet, dessen Beschreibungen den Anspruch (...) der politischen Eliten auf die Regulierung aller gesellschaftlichen Bereiche sichtbar macht, versucht sie zugleich, den Vermittlungszusammenhang von gesellschaftlicher Entwicklung, Kulturpolitik und literarischem resp. literaturbezogenen Handeln aufzuzeigen. (shrink)

Through the examination of anti-psychiatric theory and literary texts, this timely and thought-provoking volume explores the possibilities of liberating our habitual patterns of perception and consciousness beyond the confines of a capitalist era. In Post-Capitalist Subjectivity in Literature and Anti-Psychiatry, Skott-Myhre asks the question, how might we be different if we didn't live in a capitalist society? By drawing on Marxist and post-Marxist theory, and conducting nuanced analysis of the professional writings of anti-psychiatrists including Basaglia and Laing, and the (...) work of fiction writers Kafka and Garcia Marquez, the text identifies alternative conceptualizations of the self. Focusing in particular on portrayals of institutions and the family, Skott-Myhre proposes that these social systems offer new modes of reading the world and ourselves which will transform social organization and free subjectivity from dominant capitalist structures. This transdisciplinary text responds to a revitalized interest in alternatives to traditional psychology, an interest in life beyond capitalism, and the crisis in the traditional family. Post-Capitalist Subjectivity in Literature and Anti-Psychiatry will offer timely reading for graduate students, researchers, and scholars in the fields of cultural studies, psychology, philosophy, family studies, and interdisciplinary studies. (shrink)

Even though there do seem to be moves towards interdisciplinary rapprochement in most of the essays collected here, I am not sure that the editor's goal of "breaking down the absoluteness of the relativist/antirealist positions of the literary camp and the objectivist/realist positions of the scientific one" is accomplished. Analytically inclined philosophers may well find it eye-opening to discover first hand what Levine details in his excellent essay: that the literary theorists proceed by assuming anti-realism to be the received (...) position and a commonsense starting position. Although there is talk about the problem of theoretical entities, only Livingston seems to be primarily concerned with this notion, treating the aesthetic object as a theoretical entity because of the radically differing interpretations typically proposed for a literary work. Most of the literary theorists' contributions seem to be concerned with the problems engendered by representative realism. Thus the early placement of Churchland's clear description of connectionism is apt. Rorty's observations in his short comment on Scholes, that contextual or holistic accounts of meaning such as those of Davidson and Derrida actually undercut anything interesting to be made of the connection between reality and representation, seem devastating to the presuppositions of the literary theorists. (shrink)