Comintern aesthetics

__Comintern Aesthetics__ shows how the cultural and political networks emerging from the Comintern have continued, even after its demise in 1943. Cover 1 Title Page 4 Copyright 5 Contents 6 Illustrations 10 Chronology: Comintern Aesthetics – Between Politics and Culture 14 Editors’ Note 24 Introduction: Comintern Aesthetics – Space, Form, History 28 Interwar/Postwar, East/West, Modernism/Realism 37 Organization of the Volume 44 NOTES 45 PART ONE: Space: Geopoetics, Networks, Translation 54 Chapter One: World Literature as World Revolution: Velimir Khlebnikov’s Zangezi and the Utopian Geopoetics of the Russian Avant-Garde 56 World Literature: Beyond the Nation and the Market 57 The Utopian Geopoetics of the Russian Avant-Garde 59 Between Totalization and Rupture: The Mediating Function of Geopoetics 61 1920: Uneven Development and the Eastward Turn of the Comintern 64 Khlebnikov in Baku, or the Utopian Geopoetics of Eurasia 68 Khlebnikov’s Zangezi and the Legacy of Tatlin 79 Zangezi: A World-Text 85 NOTES 92 Chapter Two: Berlin–Moscow–Shanghai: Translating Revolution across Cultures in the Aftermath of the 1927 Shanghai Debacle 106 NOTES 129 Chapter Three: India–England–Russia: The Comintern Translated 134 NOTES 153 Chapter Four: Seeing the World Anew: Soviet Cinema and the Reorganization of 1930s Spanish Film Culture 158 The PCE and the Comintern in Context 161 A Transversal Fascination: The Comintern and Intellectual Circles 162 Learning Revolutionary Aesthetics; the Appeal of Soviet Cinema in Spain 166 Film Clubs and the Bourgeois Introduction of Soviet Films in Spain 170 Soviet Cinema and the Synthesis of Education and Emotion 174 Nuestro Cinema and the Organization of a New Spanish Film Culture 176 Conclusion 181 NOTES 183 Chapter Five: The Panorama and the Pilgrimage: Brazilian Modernism, the Masses, and the Soviet Union in the 1930s 195 Patrícia Galvão: Print Culture, the Proletarian Novel, and a Global Mass Aesthetic 198 Tarsila do Amaral: Painting and Pilgrimage 207 Conclusion: Cinema and the Afterlives of the Soviet Avant-Gardes 215 NOTES 217 Chapter Six: Polycentric Cosmopolitans: Writing World Literature in Indonesia and Vietnam, 1920s to 1950s and Beyond 224 World Republic of Letters or Writers’ International? 224 Polycentric Cosmopolitans 226 The Question of Translation 232 Mayakovsky in Hanoi, Gorky in Jakarta 236 NOTES 240 PART TWO: Form: Beyond Realism-versus-Modernism and Art-versus-Propaganda 250 Chapter Seven: Culture One and a Half 252 The Communist Intranational 254 An Engineer of the Human Soul 266 NOTES 275 Chapter Eight: Street Theatre and Subject Formation in Wartime China: Origins of a New Public Art 280 Divergent Visions of a Public Theatre 283 Moving from Stage to Street 287 The Nation as Stage and Spectacle 292 Conclusion: A Paradigmatic Course of Action 297 NOTES 301 Chapter Nine: In the Shadow of the Inquisition: The Spanish Civil War in Yiddish Poetry 306 Introduction: Spain – Past, Present, and Future 306 Past 310 Present 318 Future 323 Epilogue: Spain to the Second World War 330 NOTES 331 Chapter Ten: “Beaten, but Unbeatable”: On Langston Hughes’s Black Leninism 338 “What Kind of Poem” 339 “Black, Beaten, but Unbeatable Throats” 347 “Like a Flag” 351 “Marx Communist Lenin Peasant Stalin Worker ME!” 356 The Party between Darkness and the Dawn 361 NOTES 363 Chapter Eleven: A Comintern Aesthetics of Anti-racism in the Animated Short Film 377 Mobilizing Mayakovsky 381 Black Labour 387 Black Consciousness 394 NOTES 408 PART THREE: History: Beyond the Interwar Years – Afterlives of Comintern Aesthetics 414 Chapter Twelve: The Revolutionary Romanticism of Alice Childress’s “Conversations from Life” 416 NOTES 440 Chapter Thirteen: When Comintern and Cominform Aesthetics Meet: Socialist Realism in Eastern Europe, 1956 and Beyond 445 The Cominform’s Institutional Aesthetics 446 The Yugoslav Factor 449 The Polish Challenge 453 The Hungarian Explosion 458 The Soviet Response 465 NOTES 470 Chapter Fourteeen: Visions of the Future: Soviet Art, Architecture, and Film during and after the Comintern Years 474 NOTES 494 Chapter Fifteen: Comintern Media Experiments, Leftist Exile, and World Literature from East Berlin 499 Radio Days 505 Émigré Media Culture: Mezhrabpom and After 508 Internaional literature, Communist Diaspora, and World Literature as Decolonization 511 The Aerial: Media Discourse and Discontents 517 NOTES 523 Chapter Sixteen: Workers of the World, Unite! 530 New Worker Art Troupe 530 World Factory by Grass Stage 536 NOTES 549 Coda 554 NOTES 560 Contributors 562 Index 566

Founded by Vladimir Lenin in 1919 to instigate a world revolution, the Comintern sought to advance not only the proletarian struggle but also a wide variety of radical causes, including fighting against imperialism and racism in settings as varied as Ireland, India, the United States, and China. Notoriously, and from the organization’s outset, these causes grew ever more subservient to Soviet state interest and Stalinist centralization.

Comintern Aesthetics shows how the cultural and political networks emerging from the Comintern have persisted, even after the Comintern’s demise in 1943. Tracing these networks through a multiplicity of artistic forms geared towards advancing a common, liberated humanity, this volume captures both the failure and the enduring allure of a Soviet-centred world revolution.

The sixteen chapters in this edited volume examine cultural and revolutionary circuits that once connected Moscow to China, Southeast Asia, India, the Near East, Eastern Europe, Germany, Spain, and the Americas. The Soviet Union of the interwar years provided a template for the convergence of party politics and cultural history, but the volume traces how this template was adapted and reworked around the world. By emphasizing the shared Soviet routes of these far-flung circuits, Comintern Aesthetics recaptures a long-lost moment in which cultures could not only transform perception but also highlight alternatives to capitalism – namely, an anti-colonial world imaginary foregrounding race, class, and gender equality.

Founded by Vladimir Lenin in 1919 to instigate a world revolution, the Comintern advanced not just the proletarian struggle but also a wide variety of radical causes, including those against imperialism and racism in settings as varied as Ireland, India, the United States, and China. Notoriously, and from the organization’s outset, these causes grew ever more subservient to Soviet state interest and Stalinist centralization. Comintern Aesthetics shows how the cultural and political networks emerging from the Comintern have continued, even after its demise in 1943. Tracking these networks through a multiplicity of artistic forms geared towards advancing a common, liberated humanity, this volume captures the failure of a Soviet-centered world revolution, but also its enduring allure in the present.

The sixteen chapters in this edited volume examine cultural and revolutionary circuits that once connected Moscow to China, Southeast Asia, India, the Near East, Eastern Europe, Germany, Spain, and the Americas. The Soviet Union of the interwar years provided a template for the convergence of party politics and cultural history, but the volume traces how this template was adapted and reworked around the world. By emphasizing the shared, Soviet routes of these far-flung circuits, Comintern Aesthetics recaptures a long-lost moment in which cultures could not only transform perception, but also highlight alternatives to capitalism, namely, an anti-colonial world imaginary foregrounding race, class, and gender equality.

"Founded by Vladimir Lenin in 1919 to instigate a world revolution, the Comintern advanced not just the proletarian struggle but also a wide variety of radical causes, including those against imperialism and racism in settings as varied as Ireland, India, the United States, and China. Notoriously, and from the organization's outset, these causes grew ever more subservient to Soviet state interest and Stalinist centralization. Comintern Aesthetics shows how the cultural and political networks emerging from the Comintern have continued, even after its demise in 1943. Tracking these networks through a multiplicity of artistic forms geared towards advancing a common, liberated humanity, this volume captures the failure of a Soviet-centered world revolution, but also its enduring allure in the present."-- Provided by publisher