Archives of Authority: Empire, Culture, and the Cold War

by Andrew N. Rubin

Combining literary, cultural, and political history, and based on extensive archival research, including previously unseen FBI and CIA documents, "Archives of Authority" argues that cultural politics--specifically America's often covert patronage of the arts--played a highly important role in the transfer of imperial authority from Britain to the United States during a critical period after World War II. Andrew Rubin argues that this transfer reshaped the postwar literary space and he shows how, during this time, new and efficient modes of cultural transmission, replication, and travel--such as radio and rapidly and globally circulated journals--completely transformed the position occupied by the postwar writer and the role of world literature.

Rubin demonstrates that the nearly instantaneous translation of texts by George Orwell, Thomas Mann, W. H. Auden, Richard Wright, Mary McCarthy, and Albert Camus, among others, into interrelated journals that were sponsored by organizations such as the CIA's Congress for Cultural Freedom and circulated around the world effectively reshaped writers, critics, and intellectuals into easily recognizable, transnational figures. Their work formed a new canon of world literature that was celebrated in the United States and supposedly represented the best of contemporary thought, while less politically attractive authors were ignored or even demonized. This championing and demonizing of writers occurred in the name of anti-Communism--the new, transatlantic "civilizing mission" through which postwar cultural and literary authority emerged.

Genres: American History

198 pages, ebook

First published July 22, 2012

About the author

Andrew N. Rubin is a Scholar in Residence in English and Comparative Literature at Georgetown University His most recent book is entitled Archives of Authority: Empire, Culture, and the Cold War. Rubin is the co-editor of Adorno: A Critical Reader and the co-editor of The Edward Said Reader. He has written widely on the work of Edward Said, Theodor Adorno, George Orwell, and Joseph Conrad, as well as theories of world literature and transnational modernisms for and journals including Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, The South Atlantic Quarterly, The Journal of Palestine Studies, Arab Studies Quarterly, The Nation, The New Statesman, and al-ahram. In 2007, he was the recipient of a Lannan Residency.

Reviews

[Shayan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book exposing the secret efforts of America in the post-World War II settings to shape a Weltliteratur that fit with its political concerns, excluding those who were deemed disloyal or subversive and promoting those whose works resonated with its ethos. If people around the world are intimately familiar with Orwell it is not only through processes of popular or critical selection. Transnational literary organizations and publications secretly funded by the United States government played a crucial role in translating and disseminating his work and making him visible to the world, employing resources unavailable to other writers. Our literary canon has been produced by an imperial power eager to assert its cultural and ideological hegemony over the world.

[Jenny Maria · Rating 2 out of 5]

Angående den här boken. Kanske är det ett fall av det är inte den, det är jag? Att jag begär för mycket? Det känns som om den behöver ytterligare genomskrivningar. Ni vet, när författare liksom inte lyckas delge grunden till hur de tänker. Som om de tror att alla vet det jag vet, när det är specifik kunskap. Kanske gör jag ett till försök men besviken, den är rörig.

[Z666 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maraming ideyang napulot na maaaring sulatan ng pananaliksik: Weltliteratur (World Literature) bilang sityo (site / "sight" na rin, ayon kay Garcellano) ng digmaan, teksto bilang "terrain of operation," at hanggang sa sukob ng pagsasasansinukob (unibersalismo) ng maka-Amerikanong pagsulat.

[Andrew N. Rubin]

I am interested to hear what others think, and look forward to hearing the criticism and the questions it raises.
andrew

[Mills College Library]

801.9509 R8961 2012