Neocolonial Fictions of the Global Cold War (New American Canon)

Bringing together noted scholars in the fields of literary, cultural, gender, and race studies, this edited volume challenges us to reconsider our understanding of the Cold War, revealing it to be a global phenomenon rather than just a binary conflict between U.S. and Soviet forces. Shining a spotlight on writers from the war’s numerous fronts and applying lenses of race, gender, and decolonization, the essayists present several new angles from which to view the tense global showdown that lasted roughly a half-century. Ultimately, they reframe the Cold War not merely as a divide between the Soviet Union and the United States, but between nations rich and poor, and mostly white and mostly not. By emphasizing the global dimensions of the Cold War, this innovative collection reveals emergent forms of post-WWII empire that continue to shape our world today, thereby raising the question of whether the Cold War has ever fully ended. Review “Neocolonial Fictions distinguishes itself in the field of new Cold War studies by arguing that, at least in terms of culture and literature, the Cold War was not sui generis, but rather was distinguished by relations and dynamics that came into being long before 1946 and have, in many cases, continued to the present. The contributors read Cold War–era literature with an eye to decolonization, the civil rights movement in the U.S., the struggle for women’s liberation, and the metastasis of the bureaucratic state.”—Greg Barnhisel, author, Cold War Modernists: Art, Literature, and American Cultural Diplomacy (Greg Barnhisel) “Neocolonial Fictions is a welcome, worthwhile collection that takes seriously the centrality of world liberation movements in the making of a mid-century U.S. literary canon; as important, the anthology maps the afterlives of such movements and Cold War–engagements vis-à-vis the contemporary ‘War on Terror’ imaginary. Neocolonial Fictions is impressive and capacious.”—Cathy J. Schlund-Vials, author, War, Genocide, and Justice: Cambodian American Memory Work (Cathy J. Schlund-Vials) About the Author Steven Belletto is professor of English at Lafayette College. He is the author of No Accident, Comrade: Chance and Design in Cold War American Narratives. Joseph Keith is associate professor and chair of English at Binghamton University, SUNY. He is the author of Unbecoming Americans: Writing Race and Nation from the Shadows of Citizenship: 1945–1960. "This collection brings together some of the best scholars writing on the U.S. literatures of the global Cold War. The introduction argues that the concept of "neocolonialism" is a significant though neglected theoretical and historical framework through which to recast postwar literature because it helps us see the Cold War as a global conflict, not merely in terms of the East/West divide between Soviet-style totalitarianism and U.S.-style democratic freedom, but in terms of the North/South divide, between nations rich and poor, mostly white and mostly not. Neocolonial fictions draws together and puts into conversation two broad critical developments: the transnational turn in American Studies and the global turn in Cold War cultural and literary studies. While these fields are implicitly linked insofar as one cannot talk about the Cold War U.S. without gesturing toward the rest of the world, this collection is the first to place these fields in explicit conversation with each other. In doing so, this volume contributes to both fields, but also reframes them in significant ways by reorienting Cold War U.S. literatures within a transnational frame and by providing a much needed historical and political contextualization for the emergence and investments of transnational American literary studies"-- Provided by publisher

Bringing together noted scholars in the fields of literary, cultural, gender, and race studies, this edited volume challenges us to reconsider our understanding of the Cold War, revealing it to be a global phenomenon rather than just a binary conflict between U.S. and Soviet forces. Shining a spotlight on writers from the war's numerous fronts and applying lenses of race, gender, and decolonization, the essayists present several new angles from which to view the tense global showdown that lasted roughly a half-century. Ultimately, they reframe the Cold War not merely as a divide between the Soviet Union and the United States, but between nations rich and poor, and mostly white and mostly not. By emphasizing the global dimensions of the Cold War, this innovative collection reveals emergent forms of post-WWII empire that continue to shape our world today, thereby raising the question of whether the Cold War has ever fully ended.