MARC Record from marc_columbia

LEADER: 05618cam a2200625 i 4500
001 15437553
005 20210412121102.0
008 200617t20202020enka b 001 0 eng
010 $a 2020002233
035 $a(OCoLC)on1136964324
040 $aNcD/DLC$beng$erda$cDLC$dOCLCO$dOCLCF$dYDX
019 $a1136964905
020 $a9781478008514$qhardcover
020 $a1478008512$qhardcover
020 $a9781478009405$qpaperback
020 $a1478009403$qpaperback
020 $z9781478012153$qelectronic book
035 $a(OCoLC)1136964324$z(OCoLC)1136964905
042 $apcc
043 $af------
050 00 $aPL8010$b.P575 2020
082 00 $a809/.896$223
049 $aZCUA
100 1 $aPopescu, Monica,$d1973-$eauthor.
245 10 $aAt penpoint :$bAfrican literatures, postcolonial studies, and the Cold War /$cMonica Popescu.
264 1 $aLondon ;$aDurham :$bDuke University Press,$c2020.
264 4 $c©2020
300 $ax, 258 pages :$billustrations ;$c24 cm.
336 $atext$btxt$2rdacontent
337 $aunmediated$bn$2rdamedia
338 $avolume$bnc$2rdacarrier
490 1 $aA Theory in forms book
504 $aIncludes bibliographical references and index.
505 0 $aPens and guns : literary autonomy, artistic commitment and secret sponsorships -- Aesthetic world-systems : mythologies of modernism and realism -- Creating futures, producing theory : strike, revolution and the morning after -- The hot Cold War : rewriting the global conflict through southern Africa -- Conclusion. From postcolonial to world literature studies : the continued relevance of the Cold War.
520 $a"AT PENPOINT aims to rewrite the story of postcolonial African literary and cultural production as one profoundly influenced by the Cold War. Monica Popescu shows how postcolonial studies of African literature have too often neglected the key institutional and aesthetic influence asserted by Soviet agents, and the resulting overlapping imperalisms African writers and creators worked within and contested during the second half of the twentieth century. Popescu's analysis attends to the myriad ways in which the tension between the United States and the USSR played out in the intellectual and aesthetic clashes among Third World intellectuals as well as on the battlefields of the proxy conflicts (specifically, the war in Angola) and experiments in African-style socialism that spread across the continent. Informed by several intellectual projects that have similarly brought postcolonial studies and the history of the Cold War together, Popescu traces a new cartography of cultural communication and meaning-making apart from a Western intellectual history and reinvigorates a leftist critique of imperialism too often occluded by postcolonial studies. Popescu uses her focus on the Cold War both to reassess familiar works from the era, such as Ayi Kwei Armah's The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born as well as to shine light on previously un- or under-studied publications made newly relevant, including Lotus, the journal of the Afro-Asian Writers' Alliance. The book is divided into two parts; the first providing the historical and theoretical framing for the latter's analysis. Chapter 2 in part I introduces Popescu's theory of "aesthetic world systems" in order to frame an alternative aesthetic system set up by the Soviet Union to sway intellectuals disenchanted with Western thought to align their work to the norms and aesthetic values of a Soviet ideology. Popescu illustrates this tension evident in African literature by analyzing both how African writers debated the definitions and functions of realism and modernism within Cold War parameters as well as how the aesthetic prerogatives of both the US and the USSR rendered entire corpuses of Third World texts illegible and invisible. The book's second part takes up more specific works of literature, expanding African literary history by rearticulating connections between texts and contexts. In chapter 3 in part II, which considers Armah's novel among several others, Popescu examines how accounts of decolonization and neocolonialism also bear the traces of Cold War influence in their attitudes toward revolutionary social change and its aftermath Popescu closes with a rethinking of the shift from postcolonial studies to "world literatures," centering African writers' contributions to rethinking the very concept"--$cProvided by publisher.
650 0 $aAfrican literature$y20th century$xHistory and criticism.
650 0 $aAfrican literature$xSoviet influences.
650 0 $aCold War$xInfluence.
650 0 $aPostcolonialism$zAfrica.
650 0 $aPolitics and literature$zAfrica.
650 0 $aLiterature and society$zAfrica.
651 0 $aAfrica$xIntellectual life$y20th century.
650 7 $aAfrican literature.$2fast$0(OCoLC)fst00799832
650 7 $aIntellectual life.$2fast$0(OCoLC)fst00975769
650 7 $aLiterature and society.$2fast$0(OCoLC)fst01000096
650 7 $aPolitics and literature.$2fast$0(OCoLC)fst01069960
650 7 $aPostcolonialism.$2fast$0(OCoLC)fst01073032
650 7 $aWar$xInfluence.$2fast$0(OCoLC)fst01170343
651 7 $aAfrica.$2fast$0(OCoLC)fst01239509
647 7 $aCold War$d(1945-1989)$2fast$0(OCoLC)fst01754978
648 7 $a1900-1999$2fast
655 7 $aCriticism, interpretation, etc.$2fast$0(OCoLC)fst01411635
776 08 $iOnline version:$aPopescu, Monica, 1973-$tAt penpoint.$dDurham : Duke University Press, 2020.$z9781478012153$w(DLC) 2020002234
830 0 $aTheory in forms.
852 00 $bglx$hPL8010$i.P575 2020