Literature, Politics and Culture in Postwar Britain

Alan Sinfield

• Publisher: Continuum
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9780826494757
• eBook ISBN: 9781441185594
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Literature, Politics and Culture in Postwar Britain is a landmark work in contemporary literary and cultural analysis. It offers a provocative and brilliant account of political change since 1945 and how such change shaped the cultural output of our time. It also looks at how and when literature intersects with other cultural forms - includingjazz and rock music, television, journalism, commercial and "mass" cultures -and the growth of American cultural dominance. This edition includes a new foreword by the author.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Note on notes
• A new introduction – Ideology and Commitment: A Personal Account xi
• Foreword to the Second Edition
• The politics and cultures of discord ( 1997) Spotting cultures; ‘fat, rich festival cunts’; rectifying our anomaly; materialism and subculture; making it political
• 1 Introduction
• 2 War stories Bringing us victory; consensus and its enemies; the broken promise
• 3 Literature and cultural production Telling stories; literature as a cultural apparatus; contesting stories; literature and intervention
• 4 Class/culture/welfare Culture, class and dissidence; ‘a Woolworth life’: culture under threat; literature and welfare- capitalism; culture preserved; discrimination; after welfare
• 5 Queers, treachery and the literary establishment The return of Ambrose Silk; civilization and the ‘effeminate’; the homosexual disturbance; treachery and after; sex and the Movement
• 6 Freedom and the Cold War Existentialism and politics; the Cold War; the myth of 1984; the Free World and free literature; the free market; free – for what?
• 7 Cultural plunder and the savage within Cultural plunder; phobic and structural racism; colonial crisis; literature and the metropolis; a crisis of self esteem; the savage within; nature and culture
• 8 Making a scene Putting on the style; music and movement; Blacks, existentialists and Beats; reasons for attendance; lipstick on your collar; commerce and authenticity
• 9 Reinventing Modernism Anglo-Saxon attitudes; Modernism in the global village; alienation; conductors; the politics of English studies; journalism and literature
• 10 Women writing: Sylvia Plath What happened to feminism; the politics of madness; women writing; the scriptor scripted; TH; rabbit catcher; the case for extremism; afterlife
• 11 The rise of Left-culturism Class and the establishment; socialism with a British face; CND and a new-left intelligentsia; Left-culturism; the state and the Left
• 12 Intellectuals and workers What about the workers?; new-left subculture; the working class revisited; cultural work
• 13 The ways we live now The failure of welfare-capitalism; the failure of ‘good’ culture; Postmodernism and standards; new-right cultural production; dismantling ‘the culture’; freedom once more
• List of books and articles cited 353
• eCopyright