Technology is reconfiguring the ways in which we consume, produce and disseminate literature, both within literary studies and outside of the academy. However, most importantly, the apparent breakdown of the gatekeeper function that has been triggered by technology in the distribution of both fiction and criticism leads to a form that looks, at least to some perhaps neo-liberal degree, as though it might be more democratic. In this paper, I explore the ways in which these new technologies unearth value structures within our discipline that have been present for a long time, despite the corrective efforts of cultural studies, but are now more overtly surfacing in a swing back toward Leavisite modes. How are we to strike a balance and sensitivity in our practice of reading and teaching towards a liberal model of value and a top-down authoritarian approach? How might technology enable or hinder such a balancing act?
The post-war years were a period of introspection for British society as the nation endeavoured to remain fiercely insular yet became increasingly troubled by geopolitical relations reshaping the war-torn continent. Britain swiftly assumed the role of the reluctant European; their opposition to integration hindered by a destructive nostalgia for the past, the perceived erosion of cultural heritage and a sense of English exceptionalism. Beginning with a brief contextual analysis of the events leading to the 2016 EU Referendum, this article will argue that early warning signs of British antipathy were evident in literary responses to integration from the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) to the signing of the Maastricht Treaty which established the European Union. Through a close reading of selected fictions by key figures in this period, including Kingsley Amis, Angus Wilson, Nancy Mitford and Malcolm Bradbury, the article identifies how early warning signs of British antipathy to European integration were clearly evident in post-war literature. By reading Brexit backwards, the article excavates the historical roots of Euroscepticism implanted in the cultural imaginary.
The recent rediscovery of the American novelist and academic John Williams (1922-1994) has seen an explosion of popular interest around two novels in particular: Stoner (1965) and Butcher's Crossing (1960). This article argues that, in these two works in particular, Williams establishes a distinct pedagogical position – a politics of failure – that proves philosophically pertinent to our contemporary condition. Both Stoner and Butcher's Crossing mark a powerful intervention in modern American fiction, shifting traditional notions of frontier heroism and post-war American triumphalism towards the experience and endurance of individual hardship, personal failure, and collective catastrophe. The article is split between equal treatments of the two narratives, biographical criticism, and reference to Williams' other work.
This piece explores, necessarily briefly, the conceptions of terrorism in two novels that stand separated by the calamitous events of September 11th, 2001: Pynchon's Against the Day and Don DeLillo's Underworld, with special focus upon the genesis of these depictions in Cold War politics. While there are cases to be made for many geographico-historical connections in both Pynchon's and DeLillo's work – for instance, Sam Thomas has recently highlighted the Balkans – the Cold War presents a locus of economics, religion and terror that is to be found at few other points.
The paper suggests that the increasing proliferation of network fictions in literature, film, television and the internet may be interpreted through a theoretical framework that reconceptuallises the originally strictlypsychoanalytic concept of the Unheimlich (Freud's idea of the 'unhomely' or 'uncanny') within the context of political, economic and cultural disources fo globalisation. 'Network fictions' are those texts consisting of multiple interlocking narratives set in various times and places that explore the interconnections of characters and events across different storylines: novels such as William Gibson's Pattern Recognition (2003), Hari Kunzro's Transmission (2005) and Gods Without Men (2011), David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas (2004), or Rana Dasgupta's Tokyo Cancelled (2005) are some examples. My argument is that central to these fictions is a sense of a 'global unhomely'. The sense of displacement, unhomeliness and global mobility that is conveyed in these fictions is fundamental to the experience of the Unheimlich. In addition, the ability of the concept to convey a combined sense of the familiar and the strange is useful in exploring the ways in which these fictions engage with theoretical debates on globalisation that perceive the interaction between global flows and local cultures either in terms of homogenisation and uniformity or of heterogenisationand hybridity. Moreover, the repetitive temporality of the Unheimlich is another distinctive aspect that allows a reading of the disjunctive, non-linear temporal structure of these fictions from this perspective. The'repetition compulsion', however, that Freud considered to be an example of uncanniness was also theorised by him as a post-traumatic symptom, and this implicit association of uncanniness with post-traumatic experience also allows to interpret the persistent preoccupation of these fictions with suffering and disaster, as well as their explorations of the ways in which collective tragedy and personal trauma reverberate within an increasingly globalised, interconnected world.
"Diane Dubois takes a contextual approach to Northrop Frye's work and claims that it is best assessed in relation to his biographical circumstances. In context and in specific details, Dubois' book seeks to illuminate Frye's œuvre as a personal, lifelong project. This volume successfully situates Frye's work within the social, political, religious and philosophical conditions of the time and place of conception and writing. Dubois ranges from Frye's critical utopia and views on criticism and education through the university, church and William Blake to politics and the Canadian and academic milieu. This book, which is particularly good at tracing Frye's academic influences and his roots in Methodism and Canada, will have a strong appeal to an international audience of general readers, students, teachers and specialists. Frye is a key figure in the cultural and literary theory of the twentieth century, and Dubois' accomplished discussion helps us to see his work anew." Jonathan Hart, author of Northrop Frye: The Theoretical Imagination (1994), Interpreting Cultures (2006), Empires and Colonies (2008) and Literature, Theory, History (2011)
Following Ronen Palan's The Offshore World (2003) Connell understands the central feature of the offshore as the 'bifurcation of the nation state': the state splits itself in two by continuing to govern those areas that remain easy to legislate while surrendering to the international realm those which do not. Connell considers how the offshore can be understood as a form of cosmopolitanism, with a particular emphasis on the way that the obligations of the state are stretched to accommodate foreign businesses, foreign capital and even foreign citizens. Yet, as Connell demonstrates, the cosmopolitan promise of the offshore conceals the double nature of the nation-state which functions both as a node for discursive community formation and, simultaneously, as cover for the evasion of any communal responsibilities that this might imply. Reading Lawrence Chua's Gold by the Inch (1998), Rana Dasgupta's Tokyo Cancelled (2006) and Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger (2008) Connell examines how the idea of national belonging struggles to survive in representations of the offshore. In particular Connell's analysis shows that the difficulty that arises from trying to represent the offshore leads these texts to open up new perspectives on global capitalism by focussing upon its differential relationships to the state.
