Geopolitics and the Anglophone Novel, 1890-2011Literary fiction is a powerful cultural tool for criticizing governments and for imagining how better governance and better states would work. Combining political theory with strong readings of a vast range of novels, John Marx shows that fiction over the long twentieth century has often envisioned good government not in Utopian but in pragmatic terms. Early-twentieth-century novels by Joseph Conrad, E. M. Forster and Rabindrananth Tagore helped forecast world government after European imperialism. Twenty-first-century novelists such as Monica Ali, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Michael Ondaatje and Amitav Ghosh have inherited that legacy and continue to criticize existing policies in order to formulate best practices on a global scale. Marx shows how literature can make an important contribution to political and social sciences by creating a space to imagine and experiment with social organization. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Chapter 1 Fiction after liberalism | 19 |
Chapter 2 How literature administers failed states | 47 |
Chapter 3 The novelistic management of inequality in the age of meritocracy | 89 |
Chapter 4 Entrepreneurship and imperial politics in twentiethcentury historical fiction | 125 |
Chapter 5 Women as economic actors in contemporary and modernist novels | 170 |
Postscript | 213 |
| 219 | |
| 243 | |
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actors Adichie Adichie’s administrative Amitav Amitav Ghosh Anil’s Ghost appear argues authority Biafran War Bigend Brick Lane British Callon capital Cayce Cayce’s century chapter characters civil society classic liberal collaboration colonial Conrad contends cosmopolitan critics critique cultural describes domestic dynamic economic empire English entrepreneurial ethnic expert expertise explains F. R. Leavis Failed States Index Foucault gender genre Ghosh’s Gibson Glass Palace global governmental Gunny Sack Hasina hierarchy historical fiction historical novel Howards End human imagine imperial India individual inequality Kabeer Kamala Leavis Leavis’s liberal Lily’s literary literature modernist narrative narrator Nazneen neoliberal norm Nostromo novelists Odenigbo offers organization Pattern Recognition political populations portrays postcolonial professional provides Rajkumar readers represent Satthianadhan scholars Scott’s social scientific sort story subjects suggests transnational twentieth twentieth-century Ugwu University woman women Woolf writing Yellow Sun