The naked communist : Cold War modernism and the politics of popular culture Cover Image

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The naked communist : Cold War modernism and the politics of popular culture

Summary: "The book argues that the political ideologies of modernity were determined in a fundamental manner by four basic figures: the world, the enemy, the secret, and the catastrophe. While the "world" names the totality that functioned as the ultimate horizon of modern political imagination, the three other figures define the necessary limits of this totality by reflecting on the limits of representation. Although the four figures have formed a number of different historical constellations, the book highlights their enduring presence in the modern imagination through the detailed analysis of one concrete historical example: American anti-Communist politics of the 1950s. Within this historical context, the primary objective of the book is to describe the internal mechanisms of what we could call an anti-Communist "aesthetic ideology." The book traces the way anti-Communist popular culture emerged in the discourse of Cold War liberalism as a political symptom of modernism. Based on a discursive analysis of American anti-Communist politics, the book presents parallel readings of modernism and popular fiction from the 1950s (nuclear holocaust novels, spy novels, and popular political novels) in order to show that in spite of the radical separation of the two cultural fields they both participated in a common ideological program."--Publisher's abstract

Record details

ISBN: 0823245578
ISBN: 9780823245574
ISBN: 082324556X
ISBN: 9780823245567
ISBN: 0823245594
ISBN: 9780823245598
ISBN: 0823250350
ISBN: 9780823250356
ISBN: 0823252531
ISBN: 9780823252534
Physical Description: 1 online resource (245 pages)
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Publisher: New York : Fordham University Press, 2013.

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:	Includes bibliographical references and index.
Formatted Contents Note:	Part I: Anti-Communist Politics. The Aesthetic Unconscious -- Anti-Communist Politics and the Limits of Representation -- The Enemy, the Secret, and the Catastrophe -- Anti-Communist Aesthetic Ideology -- Part II: Anti-Communist Fiction. One World: Nuclear Holocausts -- Two Worlds: Stolen Secrets -- Three Worlds: Global Enemies.
Source of Description Note:	Print version record.