Revolutionary Subjects - by Benjamin Kohlmann (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A literary history spanning borders and centuries to explore radicalization as portrayed in fiction

Tracing the evolution of socialist world literature from the nineteenth century to the present, Benjamin Kohlmann uncovers the formal repertoires through which a set of political ideals found aesthetic expression. At the heart of this study is the radical bildungsroman, a genre that subverts dominant narratives of individual formation. Broad in scope, Revolutionary Subjects explores the work of Balestrini, Chernyshevsky, Ding Ling, Lessing, Nizan, Sartre, Weiss, Wright, and many others. These novels challenge conventional ideas of selfhood and belonging, presenting new ways to imagine the self in relation to collective struggle and global solidarity.

Review Quotes

"Seen, for once, from a radically global perspective, as Kohlmann allows us to see it, the bildungsroman reveals a genuinely radical counter-tradition. A source of much-needed cultural sustenance in hard times."
--Bruce Robbins

"Everyone in novel studies needs to read this book! Kohlmann uncovers a counter-tradition to the traditional bildungsroman plot--the radical left bildungsroman--which is formally experimental and committed to the collective and transnational work of living and making worlds together. With bravura new readings of a vast range of novelists, from Nikolay Chernyshevsky and Nanni Balestrini to Ding Ling, Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, and Doris Lessing, this is a magisterial work of criticism."
--Caroline Levine, author of The Activist Humanist: Form and Method in the Climate Crisis

About the Author

Benjamin Kohlmann is Professor of English at the University of Regensburg (Germany), working on the relationship between literature and politics. He is the author of Committed Styles: Modernism, Politics, and Left-Wing Literature and British Literature and the Life of Institutions: Speculative States. He co-founded and co-edits the book series Literature & Politics at Oxford University Press.