Abstract:

This dissertation discusses the political implications of postwar novels from both sides of the infamous Iron Curtain, focusing on the critical engagement of these fictional texts with two of the key mythological structures created in modernity: the constitution of the political subject---centered around the Marxist idea of emancipation---and the "emergence of the public sphere"---according to Habermas, central to the construction of democratic imaginary, in the liberal tradition.

The theoretical assumption that late 20th century culture directly engages specific politico-historical experiences appears in literary criticism as the central element of the shift from the high modernist aesthetics to a new model. More so, classical studies on the much-debated concept of postmodernity suggest various political acts that tacitly point towards the Left. More specifically than Ihab Hassan, Brian McHale or Matei Calinescu, Linda Hutcheon's work, for instance, aims at a "politics of postmodernism" emerging within the poetic structure of historiographic metafiction. Yet, there is no comprehensive study of the possible intersections between political thought and the "innovative" contemporary novel. Only recently, Marcel Cornis-Pope has discussed the poetic strategies that lie behind this label (i.e. innovative fiction) and has argued for their political impact, focusing on the contextual significance of the cold war era. However, in most contemporary literary studies, the categories that define politics are taken for granted.

This comparative study is a new approach to the particular significance of postmodernism to contemporary American literature. Similarly to Alan Nadel, I see postmodern writing as a specific cultural attitude that encompasses, politically, narrative strategies to overcome the anxieties of the cold war or the political turmoil of its aftermath. As a result of my study, the specific poetic strategies used to approach the rise of American hegemony after World War II are a matter of aesthetic choice that gives contemporary writers an active sense of political agency. My study focuses on three distinct poetic and affective modalities, through which the political acquires a central literary significance: (a)?the lyrical evocation of the decline of the American Left; (b)?the expression of frustration/dissent via deliberate fictional mis-representations of historical facts; (c)?the attempt to tackle collective anxiety through narrative. Instead of restricting the research of literary politics to either representation of historical events or to the writers' commitment to a specific set of political ideas, my solution is to approach the question of power by situating American postwar fiction, emerging from a culture of suspicion, mistrust and paranoia, to paraphrase Don DeLillo, in the proximity of Central-European anti-communist literature. The rejection of the geopolitical name "Eastern Europe" by Milan Kundera and Danilo Kis also emphasizes the anti-colonialist (i.e. anti-Soviet) project of Czech, Serbian and, (too a lesser extent) Romanian writers.

My first two chapters deal with the theoretical distinction in post-foundational thought between politics and the political in the work of Jean-Luc Nancy, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Alain Badiou, Claude Lefort, and, more recently, Ernesto Laclau. While the contemporary meanings of politics are restricted to a positivist and empirical understanding, the new category (i.e. the political ) opens up a space to think anew central notions of modern political thought: emancipation, community and the organization of the social.

In my third chapter (The Obscene Underside of Private Life ) I read Milan Kundera's novel The Joke in relation to Philip Roth's I Married a Communist . My text focuses on the relation between the failures of authentic political subjectivity and the ideological excesses of the cold war age.

In my fourth chapter, I discuss the political stakes of American postmodern narratives of excess (such as Robert Coover's The Public Burning ) in contrast to Eastern European mythical realism (D.R. Popescu's The Royal Hunt ).

My last chapter two chapters examine the literary engagement with paranoid conspiracies. I argue that the fictional investigation of this specific political mythology needs to be related to the question of sovereignty.

By analyzing representative novels about American politics in the cold war period in relation to Central-European fiction I was able to examine the literary meanings of the cold war opposition between democracy and communism. Using the theoretical distiction between politics and the political , I was able to identify the specific significance of leftist politics for American fiction, written in the cold war. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)